Elizabeth Warren: “Who I am”

With a big assist from the media – always eager to make something out of nothing – Sen. Scott Brown (R) and company have been doing their best to sabotage Elizabeth Warren’s campaign in the Mass. Senate race. The race is close, so apparently anything goes from the Republican side. 

The letter from Warren pasted below should put an end to the nonsense regarding her Native American heritage, but then she’s instilled a lot of fear in the 1 percent, so we can only hope. Clearly, Warren needs our help to overcome the Rovian tactics and monetary support that she’s up against. Let’s give her a hand:

Virginia,

When I was a little girl, I learned about my family's heritage the same way everyone else does -- from my parents and grandparents.

My mother, grandmother, and aunts were open about my family's Native American heritage, and I never had any reason to doubt them. 

What kid asks their grandparents for legal documentation to go along with their family stories? What kid asks their mother for proof in how she describes herself?

My heritage is a part of who I am -- and I am proud of it.

But that's not good enough for Scott Brown and the Republican Party. For several weeks now, they have orchestrated an attack against my family, my job qualifications, and my character. Earlier today, Scott Brown even questioned the honesty of my parents -- even though they are not fair game and are not here to defend themselves.

Scott Brown wants me to give up my family and forget where I came from. I'm not doing that -- not for politics and not for anything else. I'll hold on to every memory I can. My family is part of who I am, and they will be part of who I am until I die.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Scott Brown also claims I got special breaks because of my background. That's not true, and I need your help to fight back:

• The people involved in recruiting and hiring me for my teaching jobs, including Harvard professor Charles Fried -- the solicitor-general under Ronald Reagan and a Scott Brown voter in 2010 -- have said unequivocally they were not aware of my heritage and that it played no role in my hiring.
• I did not benefit from my heritage when applying to college or law school, and documents reporters have examined prove it.
• I let people know about my Native American heritage in a national directory of law school personnel. At some point after they hired me, I also provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.

I decided to run for the U.S. Senate because the middle class in this country has been hacked at and hammered at and because Washington doesn't get it.

Scott Brown has a very different vision about who we are as a people, and he votes to make sure the levers of power in Washington continue to work for the big, the powerful and the wealthy.

If everyone in Massachusetts knew where Scott Brown stands on the important issues, voters wouldn't give him a second term in the U.S. Senate. You know that, I know that, and he knows that, too.

That's why he has worked so hard to make this campaign about anything else -- even my heritage. It's why his campaign spends so little time on what Massachusetts voters are really concerned about.

On Election Day, we will prevail because our vision is clearer and our ideas are stronger. We are focused on the issues important to middle class families, and our grassroots team will make sure everyone knows about those issues. I need your help to keep fighting the smears, spread the truth, and help us organize to win.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

DONATE

Help protect Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve

 

Even in urban areas, a glimpse of wildlife enriches our oftentimes over-scheduled lives. While doing errands several days ago, I caught sight of a full-grown male mallard strolling around in a busy shopping center. I paused to marvel at his unexpected appearance and took a few pictures of him before he wisely flapped his wings and soared aloft.

That mallard reminded me of the importance of protecting wildlife wherever we can in our shrinking world. Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve needs all the help we can muster, so please read and heed the message below:

Dear Virginia,

Alaska's Western Arctic Reserve is home to the nation's largest caribou herd, millions of migratory birds and America's remaining polar bears.

It's an amazing place with vast complexes of lakes, rivers and streams that empty into the Arctic Ocean -- and we need your help to protect the magnificent wildlife found there.

Take action now. Urge the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to provide maximum protection for the homes of polar bears, migratory birds and other wildlife living in the Western Arctic Reserve.

In 1923, the Western Arctic Reserve was set aside as an oil and gas reserve. Since that time, however, no oil development has occurred in the reserve and only sporadic exploration activity has affected the region.

Since the 1970s, the reserve -- the largest single unit of public lands in the U.S. -- has also been managed to protect the exceptional wildlife and habitat it contains.

The special areas within the reserve are key habitat for our struggling polar bears, important calving grounds for Alaska's largest herd of caribou and home to the largest concentration of brown bears in the Arctic.

Thousands of beluga whales feed and give birth off the shores of the Western Arctic Reserve. And its productive coastal wetlands provide millions of migrating birds with the habitat they need to survive.

The BLM is working on a new management plan for the entire reserve -- and we can help ensure that these amazing places are protected.

Urge federal officials to safeguard Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve’s special places from harmful oil and gas exploration.

Unique areas like the fragile Teshekpuk Lake, the Utukok River Uplands and the Coleville River -- and the diverse wildlife that depends on them -- are especially sensitive to harmful development and cannot be replaced.

Please take action today -- the deadline for comments is Friday, June 15th.

Together, we can ensure a lasting future for our wildlife and our most special wild places.

Sincerely,

Theresa Fiorino
Alaska Representative
Defenders of Wildlife

A chilling commentary on Obama’s secret ‘kill list’

President Obama with National Security Adviser Donilon, (L) and top counterterrorism adviser Brennan. Pete Souza,  White House.

This thoughtful, objective NY Times article describes President Obama’s ruthless, take no prisoners approach to fighting terrorism; whereas, Hillary Clinton emerges several times as the voice of reason. Authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane write:

WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.  

President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.

Becker and Shane continue:

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

Read more:

Why don’t male veterans support President Obama?

Gallup’s headline for its recent poll of military veterans is misleading. Not all veterans - only male veterans - support Romney 58% to 34%. 

As a veteran of the U.S. Air Force (WAF), I was annoyed at having to read down a couple of paragraphs in Gallup’s report to find that women veterans support Obama 47 to 42.

Full disclosure: I served in the military for primarily one reason: I came from a poor family and hoped to attend college on the GI bill. 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves on Memorial Day that it is usually the poor who fight our wars. 

It was peacetime when I served, and I tuned out the “kill or be killed” indoctrination in basic. And I later took advantage of the education benefits to earn a BA degree.

Conventional wisdom has it that military personnel and veterans of the armed forces typically cultivate a macho culture. In that light, it’s puzzling that such a large percentage of the guys pick Romney over Obama, neither of whom has served in the armed forces. 

Surely, the Obama Administration has been more ruthless than the Bush Administration in its prosecution of war, incessant drone attacks - irregardless of civilian deaths - and take no prisoners strategy in dealing with terrorists.

On the other hand, although Obama’s attitude toward women can be condescending at times, he is more progressive on matters affecting women’s rights than Romney and company. Even so, women vets in this poll don’t give him much of a lead.

Read Gallup’s full report here:

What you desperately need to know about Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren??!!

Yesterday I posted about the media’s classism and sexism in its coverage of the exalted Kennedy men while discounting lesser mortals like Bill Clinton and Mary Richardson Kennedy.

Today, Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast notes the media’s magnification of supposed sins of public figures like Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Warren as readers of esteemed journals, e.g., the Boston Globe, yawn while pitching their papers into recycling bins.

Tomasky writes:

So now Elizabeth Warren has to prove that she’s 1/32nd Cherokee? The temperature on the story is rising. There was a huge article in the Boston Globe on Friday written to raise a number of questions and suggest that Warren used the minority designation to get her job, or get ahead—exactly at the same time that a poll was released (PDF) showing that 69 percent of Bay State voters don’t consider her heritage to be a “significant” story. It reminds me of nothing so much as Monica Lewinsky, and of the media’s need sometimes to get a grip.

Why Lewinsky? The situations are in fact almost precisely the same. You had then a press pack that had decided that whether Bill Clinton was telling the truth about Monica was a question on which the fate of the republic hinged. The press became self-righteously consumed with its search for The Truth. Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, and outside of Wingnuttia (it existed then, just at about half of its current GDP), nobody cared what the truth was. The media kept producing revelations; surely, now, swore Maureen Dowd and Michael Kelly, America will see this man for the reprobate he is! America looked, yawned, told the press to start acting like grownups, and continued to approve of the job Clinton was doing as president at rates near 70 percent and to oppose impeachment at similar levels.

The appearance Thursday morning of this Suffolk University poll (linked to above) made me think: Well, this story line is about to wrap up. If more than two-thirds of voters don’t care, then that’s that. But no—still going strong! And now it’s not the loopy, right-wing, and pro-Brown Herald, which pushed the story first, but the Globe trying to play catch up. Yes, yes, it’s all in the public interest. What, you say, the public says it isn’t interested? Well, we’ll teach them what’s in their interest!

Read more:

The media’s cruel distortion of the life of Mary Richardson Kennedy

Mary Richardson Kennedy.

In its coverage of the Kennedy clan over the years, the mainstream media has been guilty of both classism and sexism.

One has to marvel at the free pass consistently awarded the philandering Kennedy men; whereas, lesser mortals, e.g., Bill Clinton, not blessed with the pseudo royal heritage of the Kennedys, are continuously vilified.

In the aftermath of Mary Richardson Kennedy’s death, Edee Lemonier discusses at the New Agenda the sexism in the media’s coverage of the women so unfortunate as to have been a part of the Kennedy clan at one time or another.

 Lemonier writes:

Mary Richardson Kennedy, environmentalist, architect, and mother, has passed away at age 52. Mary was a pioneer in the green architecture movement, was a co-founder of the Food Allergy Initiative, and was active with the Boys & Girls Club. She was also a highly intelligent, funny, fiercely loyal friend, and was naturally gifted at fundraising for good causes. She is survived by her estranged husband, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., their four children, ages eleven to seventeen, and six siblings. She was loved by many, and will be greatly missed.

What if that had been the announcement of Mary Kennedy’s death, instead of all the articles detailing some of the darker moments of her life? A lot has been written about her recently, and the information being disseminated immediately following her death seems intended to invite speculation both about how she lived and how she died. She has been painted as a drug-addled drunk who abused drugs and alcohol to cope first with being a Kennedy, then to cope with no longer being one. In true tabloid-style journalism, the writers are juxtaposing her depression with details of RFK, Jr.’s relationship with an actress, as if to fuel rumors that Mary Kennedy was unable realize her marriage was over, further causing the kind of mental instability that would lead to suicide.

Why did media outlets choose to highlight the sadness, instead of her accomplishments? And why did it take her siblings and her attorney coming forward to see a shift – albeit a very slight one – in what is being written about her?

Read more:

Barnard College colludes with Obama in his condescension toward women

CNN's Campbell Brown moderated an Obama-Clinton debate in 08.

Anita Finlay at the New Agenda offers a thoughtful response to Campbell Brown’s recent NY Times editorial on Barack Obama’s condescension toward women:

A surprising NY Times editorial from former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown entitled Obama: Stop Condescending to Women appeared on Sunday lamenting President Obama’s “paternalistic” demeanor while addressing Barnard’s all female graduating class. Ms. Brown is correct that in offering effusive and, she says, “fake praise,” it is no more than a cliché to state that ‘women are smarter than men’:

“[T]o suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.”

Later on, Finlay rightfully calls out Barnard College for its collusion with Obama in his attitude toward women:

It is both ironic and insulting that while the President tells women to “fight for a seat at the table,” he simultaneously nixed and replaced Barnard’s original female commencement speaker, Jill Abramson, the first female Executive Editor of the NY Times. He did so without so much as a backward glance. A woman who fought for and won a seat at the table, was at the last minute told to step aside so that the President could generate a photo op in front of a female audience in an attempt to firm up poll numbers that have somewhat sagged of late. We are not expected to dwell on this mixed message, but if we do not, we are merely abetting the problem.

Read Finlay’s entire piece here.