“When I see a dead fly on the windowsill — one that wasn’t there
the day before — I always wonder how he died. I wonder if he had a
stroke, or maybe a little fly heart attack. Then I think maybe he’s
pretending to be dead so I won’t swat him. So I swat him.”
George Carlin
Editorial from The New York Times:
We’ve been interested to hear that the state dirt movement is gaining steam. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, 21 states have now named an official state dirt, and New Jersey is considering adding a sandy loam to the list of honored soils. People have, of course, laughed. Some have suggested that a state legislature facing an $18 billion pension shortfall should have something better to do with its time. That kind of negative thinking misses the point.
From The Associated Press
CONNECTICUT
SENATE: Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman lost to anti-war challenger Ned Lamont. The three-term senator was criticized by some Democrats for supporting the Iraq war and defending President Bush.
GOVERNOR: New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy competed for the Democratic nomination to run against Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in November. Rell has a 75 percent approval rating and better than 2-to-1 leads over her challengers.
GEORGIA
HOUSE: Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who made headlines this year for a scuffle with a U.S. Capitol Police officer, was defeated by Hank Johnson, a former county official, in a runoff for the Democratic nomination.
COLORADO
HOUSE: Six GOP candidates competed to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Joel Hefley, a 10-term veteran. The winner faces Democratic Air Force veteran Jay Fawcett. In another race, three Democrats vied to replace Rep. Bob Beauprez, the Republican nominee for governor.
MICHIGAN
CONGRESS: Republican Rep. Joe Schwarz trailed former state lawmaker Tim Walberg.
SENATE: Mike Bouchard, sheriff of Oakland County in suburban Detroit, competed with minister Keith Butler for the GOP nomination. The winner will take on Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in November.
GOVERNOR: Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Republican multimillionaire Dick DeVos faced no opposition in their primaries.
MISSOURI
SENATE: Republican Sen. Jim Talent and Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill, the state auditor, won their party’s primaries.
Aides put a wrestler in governor’s office;
now they’re in Kinky’s corner
From The Dallas Morning News:
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Lightning struck eight years ago for a group of Minnesota political consultants when it helped an eccentric long shot beat a field of established politicians to become governor.
The same team that surrounded Jesse Ventura then is working for Kinky Friedman in Texas now. And one of the candidates it vanquished in 1998 sees plenty of similarities.
“For Kinky to win, the stars have to align just right,” said Hubert H. Humphrey III, a former state attorney general and namesake of one of Minnesota’s most vaunted political figures.
“My own gut feeling about that election was that people were tired of hearing what the Republicans were saying,” Mr. Humphrey said.
“And, frankly, I was babbling the same kind of traditional Democratic rhetoric to all our small groups.”
This year’s crowded contest for Texas governor offers striking similarities – and some considerable differences – with Mr. Ventura’s upstart victory in Minnesota.
Can the revolution outlive its leader?
by JON LEE ANDERSON
Late one Friday afternoon in March, a crowd gathered for a rally in downtown Havana to denounce an incident that had occurred the previous evening in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During a game between Cuba and the Netherlands in the first international Baseball Classic, a spectator held up a sign to the television cameras which said “Abajo Fidelâ€â€”“Down with Fidelâ€â€”and shouted similar sentiments to the Cubans on the field. Among them was Antonio Castro, an orthopedic surgeon, who is the Cuban team’s doctor and one of Fidel Castro’s sons. A Cuban official angrily confronted the protester, whereupon Puerto Rican policemen detained him. He was released after receiving a lecture about freedom of speech. Cuba won, 11–2, but the following day, in a tone of high umbrage, Cuba’s official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, decried the “cynical counter-revolutionary provocations†of U.S. and Puerto Rican officials.
The rally was held, as are most such events in Havana these days, outside the U.S. Interests Section, a sleek seven-story building on a curving stretch of Havana’s seaside promenade, the Malecón. In the absence of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, the Interests Section serves as the de-facto embassy. (The building is technically part of the Swiss Embassy.) Six years ago, during the custody battle over Elián González, the five-year-old boy who was rescued after his mother and others drowned while trying to reach Florida in a motorboat, Castro ordered the construction of a permanent protest forum on a traffic island in front of the Interests Section. Today, the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal, as it is known, consists of a raised stage studded with klieg lights atop a bunkerlike command center. A large banner bears a photomontage of men with guns, houses burning, people weeping, and the baleful verdict “You did this.â€
