cageyness

Post-election recovery, Texas, Day 1

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:17:50 -0800

I have pictures and news, ~~but not the time to actually post everything~~, so here's a brief rundown. UPDATE: Photos made it in after all!

Voting at my precinct didn't finish until almost 9--meaning the last person in line at 7 didn't vote until almost 2 hours later, and yes, the line wound up and down inside the building when I arrived.

That kept all would-be caucus-ers (?) outside the building until 9, and it took another 2 hours to finish the process after that, including reading resolutions, etc. As has been reported, organization at the caucus level was somewhat lacking, which wasn't helped by the fact that most people who showed up had never participated in a caucus before--including me, but I had done my research and so I just tried to go with the flow.

Excuse me, is this precinct 223?

Chief among misunderstandings is that at caucus time people are, in fact, allowed to show their candidate support and talk about their candidate and even attempt to sway others to their side. The caucus is not an anonymous process--it's not like your vote (although, if you still believe your vote is anonymous you are very, very trusting...I have some beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.) I'm sure there were some nefarious deeds going down in other places, but all I saw last night were people making honest mistakes and the best quick-fix decisions they could make on the fly. The worst part about the night was the wait--not for me, but rather for the folks who showed up with 1 or 2 or 3 kids in tow. How's that for dedication?!

The best part about the night was being stuck in a room with people from the community who had never spoken with eachother before. People kept finding connections and striking up conversations...at the end of the night, with 30 plus people still hanging around to vote on resolutions, I think there was a general sense of "So THIS is why civic participation used to hold society together! Interesting...perhaps we should do this again sometime."

crowd waits to caucus

As you've likely seen, Obama was better at getting his supporters out to the caucuses, but boy was it close. My precinct went 14 delegates to the county convention for Obama and 13 delegates to the county convention for Clinton. And, um, oh yeah...I'm one of those Clinton delegates! Basically, we had 14 Clinton supporters at the end of the night, one who didn't want to be a delegate, and so we unanimously nominated and voted the remaining 13 of us as delegates. The alternate delegates will be chosen from the list of people who caucused and said they would like to be delegates, but didn't stay for the nominating and voting process.

crowds on the other side of bldg

And whether you're a Democrat, a Republican, or whether your candidate did well in your eyes last night, I will tell you this...this primary has done great things for my generation of voters in Texas. Today at the office, THE talk of every stolen social minute was about the election, about voting, about being part of the caucus and how "next time, I'm going to try to get involved to help things run more smoothly." Next time?! Such talk is unheard of in my voting experience. I loved it!

i voted on the fridge scrapbook

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Don't believe the hype?

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:51:59 -0800

I can't help it. Despite last night's freeze and the one to come tomorrow night, today feels like and certainly looks like spring!

my hillary sign

I woke up this morning to put my Hillary sign on the corner part of my property--yes, now that I'm decided, I'm in all the way--then headed to the polls this morning to try to beat the line that I thought would surely wind around the building. I'd forgotten that since the last time I voted little ol' Kyle had built and opened a new city hall, and this time only 2 precincts would be voting there instead of three. So, it was hardly a mad rush but there was a small line, at least for the Democratic primary, that went through the atrium to the outside doors. I imagine that this evening will be a little nuttier--what with all those people who had intended to vote this morning, but running late for school and work, probably figured, eh, I'll just do it tonight. (I have been there many times before.)

I think, though, that the caucus process is probably going to be long, tedious madhouse. I could be wrong.

It was cool in the morning, warm and breezy midday, and the trees in the front yard have buds and blooms coming to life. My run today cut my time to an 8.5 minute mile, and I even fit some yoga in too. I'm busy, but pleased to be, and I'm hopefully excited, rather than anxious, that good news of my divorce will come soon.

It's spring, I tell you! I declare it and so I call it forth!

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I've made my decision...

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:32:33 -0800

and I'm voting for Hillary.

I went to her rally tonight in Austin--a much smaller crowd, a much smaller venue than Obama's mass rally downtown last week--but whether the numbers bode ill for her or not, my conscience and my logic says she's the better candidate.

So I'll be "Texas Two-Stepping" it for Hillary tomorrow.

I plan to have my camera handy for as much as possible and do a little small-town Kyle reporting. Come back to see what unprecedented voter turnout looks like.

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I'm not sure who am voting for...but I understand why the lines are drawn

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:33:08 -0800

Photos from Obama for President Rally, Austin TX, February 22, 2008

Just came back from Sen. Obama's rally in downtown Austin. I hadn't planned to go, but with my 15 year-old cousin-godson staying the night with me, I realized this would be a cool thing to take him to experience. So I checked for parental approval and off we went, rather on a whim, driving into town. We were only about 20 minutes late--which was pretty good time since we had to get through traffic from an accident on the highway, as well as walk about 10 blocks from where we parked to the capitol.

Anyhow, I'll have more on the evening later perhaps. I just thought I'd post some links to the rally tonight.(These are from the Austin-American Statesman; I only had my cell phone camera.)

I have a lot to think about in the meantime. I wish a win for Hillary could be a clear-cut, feminist victory and a victory for the country; I wish she wasn't Bill's wife (I liked him, really, but I just don't like that she's the wife of a former president), I wish she had had the chance to become President before him; I wish I didn't worry that she could polarize the right against the Democrats and risk losing the general election; I wish she didn't come with that baggage; and I wish she was speaking to me more than she is, connecting with the country more than she is doing. She would make a good president. I just don't know if, even after so many years, this is really her time. She just seems to have lost momentum...more on that later.

The crowd was probably the most striking part of the evening...young, old, families, couples, all ethnicities...they were there. His is a mobilizing effort I haven't seen before in my adult life; I've only seen it on TV, in film, in old footage of JFK. It's true; I'm not exagerrating--that's what the crowd felt like. That alone is certainly powerful.

I don't know, folks...I don't know what's going to happen, but I understand either way.

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Election time: A moral dilemma

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:50:27 -0800

So it's Super Tuesday and Texas' own primary is just under a month away. There's all manner of local political theorizing that perhaps, for once, Texas could "decide this whole thing." I'm hardly convinced.

This great big red state's hardly been a battleground. Sure there are traditional pockets of blue--Austin and El Paso, but with Bush's stamp on the state for the last four presidential elections (first as 'guberner', then as pres), Democrats hadn't even bothered to give more than a cursory "keep fighting the good fight" glance to its Texas supporters.

Yes, I know that the presidential election isn't everything, and that our lives are touched more often by local, county, and state politicians than the empty promises of the Executive Office. Still, it would be nice to experience an election season in one of those swing states that seem to get all the press and the pressing of the flesh by every possible candidate from day one. If Texas is going to decide this thing--either at the party level for nominations or in November for the big dance--we may have to do it mostly on our own.

I'm being asked often who I plan to vote for and my honest answer is still "I don't know." I have problems with Hillary. I have problems with Obama. And before you ask for confirmation, yes I lean to the left, but if Giuliani didn't have skeletons in his closet to make the devil himself blush and could have actually mounted a real run, I just might have voted for him. Instead, in the first election of my adult years where there were actually a number of viable Democrat candidates, I don't feel terribly good about anyone.

I want to be passionate about a candidate, dammit! I want to believe in someone, not just choose out of desperation. I'd vote for Hilary if she weren't the wife of a former President. I'd vote for Obama if he weren't so celebrity slick and so wet behind the ears. On the day of the primaries, it may come down to a coin toss for me. I only wish I were joking.

I think that if I could believe that either of the candidates hadn't twisted rules and told lies daily to get where they are, I'd be willing to take the risk. But I don't believe it. I know better. Politics is messy and it's easier to participate if moral ambiguity is one of the special skills you can list on your resume. If you play by the rules, if you never stoop to the level of loopholes and half-truths, if you aren't just someone with the potential to be good, but the conviction that integrity means more than winning...well, you rarely win. As soon as you say "I won't go there" a competitor gleefully says "I will" and you and your high ideals and morality are left in the dust.

So where does that leave us, the voting public, when it comes to choosing our supposed leaders? If we look askance at every candidate, trying only to choose the lesser of evils, how does government ever become anything but a necessary one?

Back home in El Paso, the grey area of "anything for the greater good" and "oh, that's just politics" is playing out very close to me. Political corruption has been increasingly in the local press there over several years. And I mean, serious, old school, vote-buying corruption. So now at a time when the city needs its faith in the political process rebuilt, and when the next generation coming of age could actually help in that effort, its politically ambitious are only following the old guard.

Here's the story. Dee Margo, husband to Adair Margo of the Adair Margo Gallery (local art gallery in El Paso) and arguable gal pal of First Lady Laura Bush, is running for State Representative against the incumbent Pat Haggerty. The shadiness in this story begins before we even get into any mud slinging. You see, as reported by the El Paso Times and Newspaper Tree of El Paso (see links below), Margo conveniently took up a second residence or "moved his residence", or however you'd like to label the maneuver, in order to become eligible to run in Haggerty's district. It's an old move, one that political parties often encourage and facilitate in order to position viable candidates in key races. I would argue, though, that a tradition of rule twisting doesn't make it right.

In another district, the local race for city councilman/woman/person has multiple candidates who twisted, or who are claiming to have twisted, the same rule to be eligible to run in that district. One of those latter candidates is my soon to be ex-husband. The El Paso Times has called him out repeatedly for this Margo-like maneuver.

Now before the jokes start to fly about hell having no fury, I should say that I believe strongly that my husband--or at least the man I knew as my husband--could truly do a great deal of good for the city, for the district that he grew up in, and could be a major force for energizing and engaging the youth of El Paso in city life and the political process in general. I know that he loves the city, always has; he cares about his old neighborhood and the many generations of families living there. I know that he has the potential to be a great local leader and to affect change for the better.

However, I also know that he doesn't meet all of the residency requirements to run right now. That fact, that attempt to sneak through the loophole and its implications for personal integrity, rather overshadow his potential and his promise. Instead of being a passionate, energetic, sincerely and selflessly concerned candidate who stands away from the expected shadiness of a Dee Margo, he seems just another candidate whose intentions are called into question, whose motives can only be doubted, a candidate no better or worse than any other.

And so I'm left wondering how that microcosmic example plays out at the presidential level. In the end, whether I vote for Obama or Clinton, whether a Republican or a Democrat gains the top office, will it really make any difference? If the prim-rose path is the same for every candidate, whether they've already walked it or are just a few steps in, then no matter who wins the election, we, the public, have already lost.

Like the generations before me, perhaps I should just put my hope in the next one.

******************************

http://www.newspapertree.com/politics/1803-the-inner-loop-11-11-07

http://www.newspapertree.com/politics/2019-moreno-marquez-haggerty-and-margo

http://www.newspapertree.com/politics/2043-haggerty-and-margo-debate

District 3 race gets new candidate, same residency concerns

Who cares where politicians live?

Race for City Council's 3rd District draws second candidate

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ignorance is everywhere...

nobody@vox.com(cageyness) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:34:51 -0800

even in my own family! A relative forwarded me an email about Barack Obama today that I just couldn't ignore. I normally just shrug off this kind of ridiculous stuff, but...from a family member, whose husband is a deacon in a Catholic parish? I just couldn't let it go. Below is my response, and below that is the original email forward.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I recommend that anyone who was inclined to take the previous email forward (see below) at face value also take it upon themselves to research Senator Obama through other news and academic sources and to read his autobiography. Much of what is listed in the email forward as "uncovered facts" are written about in plain sight, and have been covered by mainstream media long before this.

I'm not certain if I support him, to be honest, due to his lack of foreign policy experience, but I can't condone the exclusionist, xenophobic, scare-tactic language that the forward's author used. As for speculation on what Obama's upbringing and schooling may mean for the fate of the country, those arguments strike me as absurd--much like the fear that JFK would take his orders from the Pope and thus bring ruin to the country.

Furthermore, the racial undertones in the email smack of such backward thinking, such ignorance, that I am saddened anyone would read it and agree enough to forward it to others. It is still hard for me to believe there are people, lots of people, in this country--like the forward's author--who still feel that "miscegenation" and mixed-race heritage is an abomination and cause enough to bring a person's suitability for office, or existence, into question. The forward states "Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHIEST from Wichita, Kansas." The way the sentence reads, the author may as well have written, "There is no place in this country for people of any faiths other than Christian, and certainly not for the children of 'Negros' and the traitor Whites who consort with them."

Foreign policy experience aside, if electing someone like Barack Obama would help to lessen that kind of thinking and that kind of disgusting language, I would vote for him in a heartbeat. Of course, it's not that simple--paradigm change only occurs over time, when generations come together again and again to work tirelessly for the things they believe in, not against others, but for others and for change--in this case, for tolerance, for education, for personal responsibility. I hope that whichever candidate is elected, we will be able to look back and see those values as part of his or her legacy.

And unlike the author of the forward--who could have been either a random citizen, like me, or someone affiliated with an organized effort--I take full ownership over these words and this forward. You are welcome to send it on to whomever you like, and you may reach me at vraquel@live.com.

Vanessa R. Torres-Villescas

Kyle, Texas

In a message dated 1/5/2008 10:02:50 A.M. Central Standard Time, xxxxxxx writes:

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 6:56 PM

Subject: Who is Barack Obama

Who is Barack Obama? Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice. If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scarey to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it. We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself. Who is Barack Obama? Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHIEST from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.? When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocate to Indonesia. Obama att ended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear thatthat he is not a radical.Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United State s, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegience norwill he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their handsover their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches. Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United State s, one of their own!!!! Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME~~~NOR THE CACKLING HILLARRY

Admittedly, the email forward was poorly written and probably not worth responding to, and the dig at Hilary Clinton near the end is, to say the least, a non sequitur, but considering the way these things get around, I felt I had to get my two cents in there. And yes, I sent the email to EVERY email address that was listed in the forward. Feel free to pass it on too.

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