You may have noticed that we are not in the Upper Midwest any longer! Enjoy some scenes from the Desert Southwest.

Coming soon: Insightful commentary on the run-up to 2024 – in between siestas.

Waning Crescent Moon – March 6, 2024

Mt. Lemmon in Alpenglow with Pink “Underscore” – January 5, 2024

Sunset Rain Clouds – August 14, 2023

Full Moon Rising – May 4, 2023

Summer 2022 Santa Catalina Mountains

Winter 2023 Snow Caps on Santa Catalina Mountains

December 2022 Desert Sunset

Check back as the seasons progress.

Stacey Abrams, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and founder and leader of Fair Fight, a voting rights organization, delivered the Democratic Party’s State of the Union Address on February 5, 2019.

Our power and strength as Americans lives in our hard work and our belief in more. My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible.

But we do not succeed alone.

In these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbors will come for us. Our first responders will come for us. It is this mantra, this uncommon grace of community that has driven me to become an attorney, a small-business owner, a writer, and most recently the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.

My reason for running was simple. I love our country and its promise of opportunity for all. And I stand here tonight because I hold fast to my father’s credo.

Together, we are coming for America. For a better America.[…]

In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for and with one another. America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality. But with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends.[…]

And with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America together. Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is who we are, and when we do so, never wavering, the state of our union will always be strong.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has announced her candidacy for president of the United States.

From Oakland California:

Senator Harris:

We are here knowing that we are at an inflection point in the history of our world.

We are at an inflection point in in the history of our nation.

We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before.

We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question.

Who are we? Who are we as Americans? […]

America’s story has always been written by people who can see what can be unburdened by what has been. That is our story.

Full transcript below.

Watching the rally in Philadelphia last night and seeing Chelsea Clinton introducing her father, former President Bill Clinton, who introduced our First Lady Michelle Obama who introduced her husband, President Barack Obama, who then introduced the woman we hope will be our next president, Hillary Clinton, I was struck by what it means to be a Democrat.

We put smart, caring, capable people in the White House.

We do not insult people’s intelligence by saying that having “enough working digits to hold a pen and sign legislation” is the only qualification for the presidency. We do not pretend that words, and actions, don’t matter, that a reality TV celebrity is the same as a person whose depth and breadth of experience makes her the most qualified presidential candidate in our lifetimes. We put country over party by making sure that the candidates our party nominates are qualified and capable not just popular or flamboyant.

We are the Democratic Party and look at how wonderful our political leaders are!

Transcripts of Michelle Obama’s and President Obama’s speeches are below.

A few days ago, a popular liberal pundit Tweeted out that Hillary Clinton must bring up the birtherism issue in the debate and that if she doesn’t, she is stupid. Maybe a stupid woman? It is hard to tell what is in someone’s thought bubble when they are limited to 140 characters.

So that, I suspect, is the template for “advice” to Hillary Clinton for the debate. Something like this: “I would be very surprised if Hillary doesn’t raise [latest outrage]. Big mistake if she doesn’t!!”

But undecided voters don’t want to see eye pokes, they want to see who looks and sounds presidential.

(It is different for partisans who *do* want to see blows landed. But we are already voting for her!!)

Remember … if you wrestle with a pig, you will get coated in pig poop. And even if you “win”, you will still stink.

#WhenHeGoesLowSheGoesHigh

Yesterday, the State of Alabama denied parole to the murderer of these children.

(Clockwise from top left, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair)

These girls were killed for one reason: hatred for the color of their skin.

We are often called upon to forgive (and forget – now that we are post-racial!) but these four girls should never be forgotten and their murderers should never be set free.

Say their names:
– Addie Mae Collins
– Cynthia Wesley
– Carole Robertson
– Carol Denise McNair

We must never again allow racism and bigotry to be accepted as the norm. We must forcefully reject a political party, the Republican Party, where politicians who embrace the rhetoric of white supremacy can be nominated for the highest office in the land. Reject hatred, reject bigotry, reject Republicans.

The only way to end discrimination is to keep the power to make laws out of the hands of those who do not recognize the worth of every person.

Vote. And then when you finish voting, help someone else to vote.

Dear Democratic Party,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you.

We don’t always see eye to eye, Democratic Party. Some of the choices you have made over the years have left me shaking my head.

But in my lifetime you have never once nominated someone completely unsuited, someone who rejects Democratic Party values, someone who I would be unable to vote for over concern that my country, and the world, would be damaged if they were to win the election.

Oh, you flirted with it: Strom Thurmond (actually before my time) and George Wallace come to mind. You sometimes allowed single issues to take priority over electability, leaving us out of power while Republicans hurt us and our causes, but you never nominated someone who I couldn’t vote for.

The United States has a two-party system of government. We elect a president from one of our two major political parties. It is winner take all, loser gets nothing.

Good, bad or indifferent, that is the reality. If a presidential choice turns out to be an absolute disaster, there is no “call a new election” option as there is in parliamentary democracies such as Canada and the United Kingdom. We are stuck with that president until the next presidential election … and the Congressional majority until the next biennial election.

The latest Pew Poll (July 7, 2016) showed that people are expressing widespread dissatisfaction with both major party candidates.

It also showed this terrifying graph reminding us of what happened in 2000; that the last time the lie of “both parties are the same” was sold to people as conventional wisdom, we ended up with Republican President George W. Bush.

There are two political parties in America. One of the them just nominated Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.

The other party is the Democratic Party.

When you attack the Democratic Party, you don’t attack the DNC or DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, you attack every Democrat who has worked their butts off to make the Democratic Party a party that can win national elections.

You attack Barack Obama.

You attack Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin and John Lewis and Keith Ellison.

You attack Paul Wellstone and Lyndon Baines Johnson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And you should stop. Now.

And “movement conservatives” planning a third-party, featuring a conservative candidate to rally around in November, will find that there is actually no single candidate who appeals to the disparate factions that were cobbled together to create the modern Republican Party.

The problem that Erick Son of Erick and his compatriots will run up against is that the Republican Party is shattering not splitting and the groups that the GOP has brought together under their aegis – nativists, racists, misogynists, religious extremists, tenthers, teapartiers – have no common identity except their hatred of People Not Like Them.

The men who used to run the party, the “establishment wing”, are horrified to discover that the rabble they attracted with racist dog whistles now want one of their own – “Give us the vulgarian!!”, they are shouting. The #NeverTrump’ers crying over the debasing of their party are risible; the Republican “identity” was an illusion, a mask covering up a hideous visage. Trump did not hijack “their” party, he simply pulled away the mask that the GOP has been putting over their pustule-ridden face since 1968. Purdy, ain’t it?

When the Party That Should Never Be Called The Party of Lincoln pick around in the detritus left over from the November election, it is anyone’s guess what they will find to build on.

All I know is that we Democrats need to focus on our party and our presidential candidate and win back the Senate and the House so that our coalition, the Obama coalition, can finish the work started in 2009.