A New Challenge: The Cabinet

My friend, Laura C, suggested that all the current Democratic candidates would make a good next cabinet. Which made me think ... who would I like to see? Below are some thoughts, though not a full cabinet. We need more women and people of color. Also, I don't want to take too many of our best senators and representatives out of those roles. Discuss.

President: Dennis Kucinich
Vice President: Barack Obama
Secretary of State: Bill Richardson
Secretary of Defense: Wesley Clark
Attorney General: Andrew Cuomo
Secretary of the Interior: Barbara Boxer
Secretary of Labor: John Edwards
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Hillary Clinton
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Eleanor Holmes Norton
Secretary of Energy: Al Gore
Secretary of Education: Howard Dean
Secretary of Veterans Affairs: John Kerry
Department of Peace: Mike Gravel!

Fool Me Once ...

Y'all probably get all these MoveOn videos, but this one bears repeating, if only for the last line.

Australian humor

The Chasers explain how to dress if you're a terrorist in Australia:

Political Choices: Discuss

OK, my left-leaning friends of the blogosphere. It is still 14 months before we elect a president, but the early primaries make the Democratic election only 6 months away. The mainstream media narrowed the field to two months ago. But I'm not buying it. What if this election really was turned by the grassroots, the internet generation, a nation full of people tired of sound-bytes and caricatured candidates?

Personally, I've gone from falling in love with Barack, to backing Bill Richardson, to giving Dennis Kucinich a good look, to even reconsidering Hillary (if only because we'd get Bill back into the mix and because my son thought it would be "amazing" to have a woman president). I'm still undecided. What about you? If you could vote next week for the person you genuinely wish could be president, not the person you assume is most electable (that was the cry that brought us John Kerry, lest we forget) who would it be?

Discuss. (If there are right-leaning readers of this blog, I'd love to hear from you as well!)

A poem

"Keys" by Nancy Henry

When things got hard
I used to drive and keep on driving—
once to North Carolina
once to Arizona—
I'm through with all that now, I hope.
The last time was years ago.

But oh, how I would drive
and keep on driving!
The universe around me
all well in my control;
anything I wanted on the radio,
the air blasting hot or cold;
sobbing as loudly as I cared to sob,
screaming as loudly as I needed to scream.
I would live on apples and black coffee,
shower at truck stops,
sleep curled up
in the cozy back seat I loved.

The last time, I left at 3 a.m.
By New York state,
I stopped screaming;
by Tulsa
I stopped sobbing;
by the time I pulled into Flagstaff
I was thinking
about the Canyon,
I was so empty.
Thinking about the canyon
I was.

I sat on the rim at dawn,
let all the colors fill me.
It was cold. I saw my breath
like steam from a soup pot.
I saw small fossils in the gravel.
I saw how much world there was

how much darkness
could be swept out
by the sun.

Since I Lost My Illegal Cable TV Reception

... when the guy came to fix my interent connection, I figured I could get this fabulous item and take care of multiple needs at once. I can pretend I'm still watching TV while seasoning my meal with salt, pepper and prayer.

Between this and the plastic Jesus on my dashboard, I think I've got most bases covered.

Out of Purgatory at last!

My four days without internet at home have finally ended, after 4 long technical phone calls and TWO FULL DAYS waiting at home for a technician who finally came at 3 p.m. on Sunday when I had just stepped out to buy groceries and spent two hours rewiring my house after which he told me everything was working perfectly and since I was about to be late to church I said "great" and headed out the door, only to come home to discover it was not working perfectly, but after TWO MORE very long technical phone calls, it finally is.

On the bright side, I did get some house-cleaning done and read all of last week's newspapers.

But now I have lots of blogs to catch up with. See ya!