Tuesday, January 06, 2009

(insert The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" catch phrase here)

It's been a little overused in blog headlines of late. So anyway, I suppose I can believe now:

Joe Straus, a legislator from San Antonio with just one full legislative session behind him, all but assured his election as the next speaker of the House on Monday, picking up at least 12 more pledges from House members and losing his only remaining opponent.

Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, dropped out of the race Monday afternoon. Smithee was endorsed by Speaker Tom Craddick on Sunday after Craddick had given up the fight for a fourth term as the House's leader.

Straus, 49, said more than 100 House members were now committed to vote for him when the session convenes Jan. 13. The minimum number required for election as speaker is 76. ...

Straus stands to become only the second urban House speaker in 70 years and the first since Gib Lewis of Fort Worth won the powerful office in 1983. Only one other San Antonio member has been elected House speaker: Chester Terrell in 1913. The last Houston House speaker was R. Emmett Morse in 1939.


Vince thinks Straus is bad news for Democratic prospects of taking back the House, especially in 2010 when redistricting will be on the slate. Philip, not so much. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Monday, January 05, 2009

A post-Craddick Wrangle

As Will Hartnett, Sid Miller, and Alexis DeLee prepare the body for viewing, let's catch up on last week's postings from the blogs of the Texas Progressive Alliance.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees the USA is not the "goodie two shoes" it claims to be. Among other discrepancies, euphemisms don't change hard cold facts: US Teaches Terrorism As “Irregular Warfare”.

SHOCKING! How Exxon Fixes Benzene Leaks. Also at Bluedaze: links to the five-part series, Behnd the Shale. Part five highlights blogger TXsharon.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes the monarchists are using words like 'insurgency', 'coupe d'etat' and 'overthrow' to describe the Speaker's race.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about how our terrible Texas Senator John Cornyn is silent on hard economic times in Texas, but quite vocal about the Senate race in Minnesota.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at the possibility of a higher federal gas tax, and offers suggestion on new ideas.

Off the Kuff looks at various possibilities for the presumed eventual special election to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Senate.

jobsanger addressed both political and lifestyle issues last week. First, he answered those who questioned the qualification of Caroline Kennedy to be a senator in Is Kennedy Qualified?, and then expressed his amusement that a swinger's club exists in the absurdly religious Texas Panhandle in Panhandle Swingers - Who Knew?

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs remains skeptical about the prospects of Tom Craddick being unseated. He's still got Hope for Change, he just isn't sure that the Republicans have it in them.

McBlogger this week takes a look at the hard times some are having the Bush's 'Economic Miracle'. Mayor McSleaze gives us an inside look at a Wendy's in DC metro that has a Supreme new employee.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson says that Ronnie Earle should run for Governor of Texas.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at Joe Strauss, the candidate for speaker anointed by the 11 "Anybody But Craddick" Republicans and now the presumed Speaker.

Do you think he's really dead this time?

I can't quite shake the feeling that I'm watching one of the thirteen Halloween films and that Michael Myers Tom Craddick, though he has been shoved out a third-story window, is going to rise yet again to savage the naive teenagers the House Democrats, not to mention poor Texas children and most of the rest of the state's population as well -- excepting a few conservative politicians and lobbyists, and thousands of corporate executives.

(Hell of a run-on sentence that was.)

It's still a week before the vote. I think I'll hold off on the cheering until they drive a stake through his heart AND cut off his head, as in Bram Stoker's versions.

Meanwhile you can raise a post-New Year's toast with those who are celebrating (I certainly don't mean to rain on anyone else's parade).

Sunday, January 04, 2009

The new dog's name is Lucky



She's a pittie, about two years old, found us on our walk on New Year's Eve. Wonderful disposition -- sweet, calm, loves to play with the #1 dog. We're going to keep trying to find her owner before we decide to keep her. All of the so-called "no-kill" shelters aren't really when it comes to a pit bull. The breed gets a bad rap.

Sunday Not-So-Funnies






Saturday, January 03, 2009

Responses to "Why I am a Socialist"

My posting of the essay from Chris Hedges drew a pair of responses; the first, from the always erudite Open Source Dem, follows:

===============

Indeed, these are some of the challenges of our day, not least in Texas and Harris County. But for the life of me I do not see what any of the received doctrines of European socialism or even the Jacobin threads in our distinctively American traditions allow us to deal effectively with any of this; “confront” it, as political poseurs like to say.

Consider a different way of looking at these challenges:


“These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states.”


Actually it is our propertied and credentialed elites -- as a class -- who lack any notion of loyalty at all, even to their own class and phony-baloney corporations. Hell, look at Bernie Maddoff, squandering the savings of his fellow Wilhelmine Jews, while the idiot LaRouchites were obsessed with George Soros. What we have here are extremes of narcissism among the educated elites and simple plutocracy throughout the ruling elites.


Loyalty, by contrast, is cultivated by egalitarian civil and military institutions that have been replaced by a hierarchy of educational institutions starting with prisons at the bottom and ending with your Princetons at the top. The middle-class institutions in the middle are the most muddled and insecure of all. There are actually no common, patriotic institutions, nothing like the Swiss Barrackenschule -- although that is what the Second Amendment implied -- or the French Ecoles Superieres -- although that is what the Land Grant Colleges were supposed to be.


So, what about “a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state.”


What can we learn here from this? Very little! Europe still has states, bureaucracies, patriotic institutions that can regulate corporations, private enterprises of any sort, even banks, and each other. The “EU” is newer and weaker than our federal union. But it has institutional legacies to build on whereas our federal union is rotting at the head and tail, vanishing before an Anglo-American overclass that recognizes no constitutional restraints on personal power, ambition, or their own entitlements at all.


So, are the “free market and globalization” a new problem, our problem?”


Actually the legacies of American and Russian economic autarky pose problems of corruptly regulated financial markets, obsolete import concessions, arms and drugs barter, perverse industrial policies, subverted professions, and financial bubbles such as predate both socialism and capitalism. Socialism and capitalism are both semi-reputable doctrines of political economy with, however, limited application to problems of recent history and even less to those of the immediate future.


That is the problem with “confronting” matters with either of these doctrines, reduced to mostly buzz-words now with no analysis, standards, or plans.


In other words, Chris Hedges is an ignorant fool.


“The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression.”


Actually, the 1964-1994 Neo-Confederate GOP was able to do that given a failure of the other, Republican and Democratic, parties to compete. The looting going on before our very eyes consists of panicked Congressional Democrats throwing money at financial institutions they failed to regulate for decades and mortgaged their own balls to: Jay Rockefeller, Chuck Schumer, Charlie Rangel ... who are we kidding with these? The depression was financially engineered by Clinton appointee Alan Greenspan. This is a failure of responsible, two-party government -- something we do not have today but could have relatively easily provided Democrats stop perpetuating their own, failed leaders.


The situation is so exasperating today that pleas for a magic formula will come from the left and right. But the answer may lay deeper in the middle, not further on either extreme. For instance, the European countries Chris cites still have “a draft”-- actually that is an Anglo-American term for the break-down of “all-volunteer” armed forces. They have universal suffrage and very low incarceration rates. They have very few lawyers and medical doctors do not make much more money than police officers. They have strong political parties. Moreover the left, right, and center largely agree on such institutions, whatever else they disagree on. In any case they do not confuse remnants of a titled nobility with merely wealthy mountebanks.

Recently in Belgium, the King joined with the firemen in a violent protest. They used their hoses to blow out the windows of the interior ministry and drench corrupt police and prosecutors who had been protecting a ring of informers, pimps, and gun-runners, who were also murderous pedophiles. The cowardly coalition government -- sort of like the Democrats and Republicans in city and county government here -- fell and was replaced. Contrast that with Bill White and Ed Emmett making excuses for each other, borrowing money hand over fist and levying regressive, indirect taxes to cover up their own improvidence and roll over a mountain of debt.

Where is the competition and accountability in our “system” of government? How does importing socialist jargon do anything but obscure elementary breakdown of our own traditions? Would it not be simpler if the Democratic Party simply competed, instead of collaborated, with the GOP today? We could use over 200 years of robust traditions that Euro-socialists and even Jacobins used to emulate and even now, fall back on in times of crisis!

========================

And also this, in response to that, from my friend David Van Os:

========================

One of the new realizations I obtained from reading The Predator State is that the CEO class, the oligarchy, the plutocrats, the super-rich, the elite, whatever one may choose to call them, actually starve the corporations they work for by diverting what should be the corporations' resources to their own personal accounts, using the money for new mansions and other personal luxuries instead of new factories.

Furthermore, I agree with you about the ways in which the Democratic Party needs to re-establish its mission and reorganize itself in order to cease being complicit in the predation.

However I am unconvinced that it has the capacity to do so, or to be more precise, that any possibility exists for any number of intelligent and committed inside activists to be able to force the reorganization. The structure of the party in Texas, to use the nearest example, results from a Jim Crow Election Code; the problem remains, as always, that lawmakers who were elected under the existing party structure are not motivated to legislate root-level change in a system that got them elected and keeps them elected.

===================

How about a response from you in the comments, please.

A moderate Republick for Speaker of the Texas House?

I don't think so -- and not just because "moderate Republican" is an oxymoron:

A crusade by Republican lawmakers to depose House Speaker Tom Craddick accelerated in earnest Friday when they selected Rep. Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, as the candidate strong enough to oust the longtime incumbent.

The maverick group of 11 Republican state representatives met secretly Friday in an effort to unite behind a single candidate — one they believe also will appeal to Democratic lawmakers in what's expected to be a weekend showdown over the coveted House leadership position. ...

He and the other 10 Republicans represent a growing number of GOP representatives who have grown weary of the leadership style of Craddick, who also has lost the support of most of the chamber's 74 Democrats.


Straus has "impeccable credentials", according to someone at Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report (until HK brings his website into the 20th century, click on "Daily Buzz" and scroll down to the entry dated January 2nd and time-stamped 7:20 p.m.). It's postings like these that call into question Harvey's reputation as a non-partisan. Likely he pissed off Craddick and all of the radical right-wing that runs the Republican Party of Texas more than he did me, however.

So why wouldn't the most conservative powers-that-be not like Straus? Muse has the news:

Oh, my, my, my. Straus got a 100 rating from NARAL in 2007. That's the highest pro-choice rating they give. Only 5 Republican legislators got above zero in 2007. Bust out the popcorn, because this is going to get crazy!

He's already getting the scarlet letter from the crazies.

I just don't see how a guy this sensible (for a Republican) defeats Craddick. Color me the same shade of "shocked" as Burpa:

(I)f this goes south, and Craddick somehow survives, this will be one of the ghastliest mistakes I have ever seen in Texas politics.

I also agree with McB that Speaker Tom is going to slide back in. STXC has more and a good round-up.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Cornyn will filibuster Franken seating

Six more years of obstructionism from this sorry ass:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) threatened Friday to filibuster any attempt to seat Democratic Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken next week.

The newly minted National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman said he had not whipped votes in the GOP caucus, but added that he could not imagine any members defecting and seating Franken without a certificate of election.

Franken will not have that certificate as long as the election is challenged in the courts — a likely scenario, with Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) legal team already attacking the credibility of the recount process.

“This is a very, very serious matter,” Cornyn said. “I can assure you that there will be no way that people on our side of the aisle will agree to seat any senator without a valid certificate.”

To think that we could have had one decent Senator from this great state. Just one.

Yeah, we need more of it

I'd like to jack up a few conservatives to open the New Year.

The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism -- one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars -- or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke’s platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.

Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.


That's from Chris Hedges, it's entitled "Why I am a Socialist", and you really ought to go read the whole thing.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The TPA's 2008 Texan of the Year

Congratulations to Gerry Birnberg and Bill Kelly and all of the candidates, campaigns, volunteers who made the victories possible:

Harris County Coordinated Campaign Takes Top Honors; TexBlog PAC, Texans For Obama, Late Jim Mattox Named "Gold Stars" For 2008

AUSTIN, TEXAS—The Texas Progressive Alliance Tuesday announced that the Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign had been named its "Texan of the Year" for 2008.

Also earning recognition from the Alliance were Texans for Obama, TexBlog PAC, and the late Jim Mattox, who were each named "Gold Star Texans" for 2008.

Winning 27 of 34 countywide races in Texas' most populous county didn't happen overnight, and the Harris County Democratic Party's Coordinated Campaign managed not only to win seats with quality candidates, but to increase Democratic voter turnout and revive the Democratic Party in Harris County.

"The Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign is a shining example of what is possible with the help and support of thousands of grassroots Democrats and a well-run party infrastructure," said Texas Progressive Alliance Chair Vince Leibowitz. "Every person who knocked on doors, made phone calls, and volunteered in Harris County should be very proud of what they accomplished in 2008," he continued.

The Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign is the Alliance's fourth recipient of its "Texan of the Year Award." The campaign joins former State Rep. Carter Casteel of New Braunfels, who won the award in 2005; Carolyn Boyle of Texas Parent PAC, who was feted in 2006; and the trio of state reps. Garnet Coleman, Jim Dunnam, and Pete Gallego who shared the honor in 2007.

The Texan of the Year Award is voted on annually by the members of the Texas Progressive Alliance, the largest state-level organization of bloggers, blogs, and netroots activists in the United States.


Here's a bit about the runners-up:

GOLD STAR TEXAN: Texans For Obama

Texans for Obama highlights what a group of activists and politicos can do when they work together. Texans for Obama never was formally part of the Obama campaign, but its size and influence made it a force in Texas politics. In 2007, before Senator Barack Obama had even announced he was running for office, Texans for Obama organized the largest rally in Texas political history with over 20,000 in attendance. Its leadership and numbers grew from Auditorium Shores. Once Senator Obama announced his candidacy, Texans for Obama became the Texas campaign. In a bizarre twist, they become the most interesting campaign in the nation after Super Tuesday and leading into the March 5 Democratic primary. With little early help from a national infrastructure, Texans for Obama talked to hundreds of thousands of Democrats in Texas and beyond. It educated Texas primary voters about the "Texas Two Step" or primacaucus system and even sparked a debate on the future of how the Democratic primary system will proceed. Novice political activists turned into seasoned political consultants overnight and a new generation of Democrats were born. This grassroots campaign's impact is still its infancy, but its potential is limited only by the imagination of everyday Texans.

GOLD STAR TEXAN: TexBlog PAC

TexBlog PAC is a group of seven members of the Texas Progressive Alliance that worked to help Democrats win back the Texas House in 2008. TexBlog PAC raised over $65,000 this year for Texas Democrats. Four of five endorsed PAC candidates went on to win their election, with each candidate receiving support in the online community as well as at least $6,000 each in contributions. The PAC also worked on a GOTV program in Travis County. Run entirely through volunteer efforts, TexBlog PAC made a simple yet strong contribution to Texas politics in 2008, and will only grow as the power of the netroots is realized across the state of Texas.


GOLD STAR TEXAN
: Jim Mattox

Jim Mattox rose from a working class neighborhood in Dallas to the top of Texas politics, leaving an indelible mark on an entire era in state government and creating a legacy that continues to touch the lives of ordinary Texans every day. A luminary and a fighter, Jim Mattox was hailed in death as a man who, as "The People's Lawyer," helped shape Texas Government in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The son of a union sheet metal worker and a waitress, Mattox rose through the electoral ranks from the state legislature to Congress to the Attorney General's office, a post from which Mattox doggedly fought for the little guy. From taking on the airlines to the insurance industry on behalf of Texas consumers, his heart, always, was with the people. After unsuccessful runs for Texas Governor in 1990 and an attempt to regain the AG's post in the late 1990s, Mattox retired to a more private life, but continued to work for his party. Most recently, Mattox fought to change the complex and time consuming "primacaucus" system that plagued the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary in Texas, calling the system an embarrassment to the party. He spoke out on the issue about a week before his death in what would be his last public appearance. From taking on insurance companies to bringing a truckload of furniture to the Travis County Democratic Party Headquarters this summer after hearing the office was in need, Mattox was always helping the underdog.

Monday, December 29, 2008

End-of-2008 Wrangle

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind ... and if you remember the rest of the song, you're doing one better than we are. At any rate, it is the last Monday of the year and that means it is time for the Texas Progressive Alliance's End-Of-Year Round-Up for 2008.

This was a hell of a year for Texas progressives. The presidential primary came to Texas (for real); we caucused, conventioned, challenged, credentialed, voted, elected, counted and re-counted; we brought Netroots Nation to Texas, watched Tom Craddick fight for his life, said farewell to legends, got a head start on the race to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison and more. A lot more.

It is in that spirit that we bring you the final round-up of 2008, with most contributors offering their five best posts of the year by participating blogs. Enjoy.

(Coming shortly: the 2008 Texan of the Year.)

jobsanger has posted on a variety of subjects, including the popularity of George Bush in 11% Of Americans Are IDIOTS, the Ku Klux Klan in The Klan Is Still Stupid, a plan to steal water from the Panhandle in The Coming Rape Of The Ogallala Aquifer, the fall of a county sheriff in Potter County Sheriff Indicted On Felony Charges and Potter County Sheriff Convicted, and the 2010 governor's race in Who's The Dem In 2010 Governor Race?

John Coby at Bay Area Houston blogged issues concerning Bob Perry's home building industry, the Texas Ethics Commission, insurance deregulation, electricity deregulation, as well as some humorous posts. One of his favorite series is Spending Campaign Cash, which has resulted in a number of stories in the corporate media and contributed to a bill to be filed by state representative Senfronia Thompson.

South Texas Chisme covered entertaining South Texas stories, from the original DA Hissy Fit to his poor imitation, various ethics problems including a few felonies to helping Republicans recover and Democrats to prosper. And we never forget about that Republican monument to racism and fear otherwise known as that d*mn fence!

As he approaches his seventh anniversary as a blogger, Off the Kuff decided to look forward rather than back on the year. My thanks to my TPA colleagues for all they do, and my best wishes to all for a great 2009.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks back on 2008 as its first full year on the blog scene comes to a close. The DNC got things started by picking the Jewish-named donkey over the black one for its mascot, in what would become the ultimate irony of the political season. Adding to the ironies, cash-strapped TxDOT gave away $20 million for a Dallas park. We were introduced to GOP family values: 16 US Senators, including our own from Texas, voted against funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, leading to more deaths, and the Palin clan popped out more replacements as part of God's will. Don't forget to carve the backwards B on your face for posterity. 2008 was a whirlwind and couldn't have been more dramatic. Here's to a 2009 with the same kind of flair!

Neil at Texas Liberal wishes everyone good luck in the New Year. Here is his post on controversy regarding what may or may not be the world's largest potato.

Compelling circumstances have limited Refinish69's access to his own blog, Doing My Part For the Left. He's nonetheless written a compelling series hosted on various national and local blogs that shares what it is to be homeless in Austin. Homeless in Austin-An Insider's View is a four-part series so far and Refinish69 wants to thank all those who've helped him get this story more attention. Part 1 at Momocrats. Parts 2, 3, and 4 at Texas Kaos.

Texas Kaos front-pagers have covered a wide variety of issues both national and Texan. Krazypuppy wrote a cautionary tale of how far Republican hubris can go in All Southerner's Should Know Don Siegelman's False Imprisonment Story". Refinish69 shared one man's story of unexpected impact of the historic Democratic extended primary in A Trip to the Gas Station: No it's not a Curious George book. Lightseeker reported on the convention for SD-15 and the contrast between previous years. He also gave great pointers on political discourse with the neighbors. SCCS did a series on the congressional races all over Texas, and was our correspondent in the Big Tent at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Txsharon's contributions keeping us abreast of what Big Dirty Oil and Gas are up to are so valuable it's hard to pick only a few, but proving that a picture is worth a thousand words, Barnett Shale Sludge Pond Pictures is a must see (and read).

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees no other options ... Retirement or Exile, Show Bush The Exit.

At Eye On Williamson the election took up much of our time on the blog. From candidate filings, to the massive turnout for the Williamson County Democratic Party primary and convention, all the way through to electing the first Democratic state representative in Williamson County since 1992 -- Diana Maldonado. There were still the same local issues popping up like road projects that are bad deals for the taxpayers, the county landfill, and the T. Don Hutto family prison in Taylor.

It's been a year of excitement at McBlogger. We've looked deeply at medical tourism and James Dobson's fear of homos. We've also occasionally talked about the meltdown in the financial sector. And Mr. The Plumber.

WhosPlayin shared his experience working the Democratic Primary and then the Denton County Democratic Convention back in March. In May, the Earth opened up and swallowed part of Daisetta, TX. In September he suggested how a financial industry bailout could work and be transparent. Over the Christmas holiday, he rolled out a new Congressional Campaign Finance research website.

Over at Capitol Annex, Vince Leibowitz had a difficult time trying to select his favorites out of 2,470 posts published (so far) during 2008, but finally settled on a few. After a long prima-caucus season and hair-raising state convention, he posted some Random Thoughts on the 2008 TDP Convention. As the election cycle went on, he pondered why anyone would want to re-elect state rep. John Davis (R-Clear Lake), and told the world about a racist mailer that had been sent out against state rep. Allen Vaught. After the election season, he memorialized "The People's Lawyer," Jim Mattox, and noted that Tom DeLay's wife was trying to quash a subpoena in a civil lawsuit related to the now-defunct Americans for a Republican Majority.

Mean Rachel started off 2008 with An Open Letter to Who She Was in 2007, and proceeded to write open letters to just about everyone, including Mark Strama and Elliot Elliott Naishtat. She met Barack Obama, got Obama license plates, and subsequently had her tires slashed because of them. She also wrote for the Texas Observer in Denver and daydreamed about Republican pornography. Finally, in June Mean Rachel asked for serenity now, and wondered if Americans would ever have the wisdom to change. By November, she had her answer.