This is a call to action diary, and attempts to make the action, contacting superdelegates from your state, easy.

The disfunctional, damaging primary battle has got to stop before we tear ourselves apart. Tonight on NBC news the top story was the new poll, which was not good news for HRC, yet  the upshot of the story, according to Tim Russert, was that the race is a dead heat.

In fact, the race is over, with an insurmountable Obama lead.

Some big donors exerted their influence today (see Clinton Big Dollar Donors Pressure Pelosi and the DCCC). It's just further evidence that the party is being ripped in two from top to bottom and side to side.  At a time we should be more unified than ever before, we are becoming balkanized and hostile to half of our party. Meanwhile McCain is moving rapidly to the center and gathering voters all the way (geez, his speech today sounded downright reasonable: he really hates war, my friends).

Robocaller: Do you plan to vote in the Republican primary?

No

Do you consider yourself a Republican?

No

Do you consider yourself an Independent?

Yes

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Washington has both a primary (the 19th) and  a caucus (this coming Saturday). The democrats award delegates based on the caucus and the state convention; the primary is basically a beauty contest.

Caucuses are very lightly attended...remember this is Washington not Iowa: the nominee has usually been decided by the time we hold our caucuses.

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I'm in a quandry, as usual, about Christmas presents. Yes, I do have a Chanukah present to buy but I know what to get that friend.

Last year I posted a diary and got some great ideas so I thought I'd try again this year. My personal goal is to spend as little time as possible in stores, as shopping to me is torture.  

My quandry is my husband. After 15 years together I've used up every idea I had. Equipment and clothes for his favorite sport (tricky, b/c it's specialized and mostly he has to buy the stuff he knows is right for him) videos of his favorite sport, techy gadgets (hand-held GPS, weather station, iPod), clothes (yawn), slippers, etc. He likes rescue at sea books and WW-II planes and books like Shadow Divers, but no fiction. Help???

In exchange for your help, I'll give you some of my good ideas. If everyone posts their good ideas, we should end up with a helpful list! Follow.....

China Daily is holding a contest to select an expat to run a leg of the Olympic torch run.

There is an American woman in the running who not only deserves the honor, but more importantly would share the honor with 8 girls, from orphanages in 8 different provinces.

Please vote for her here.

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Dear Senators Cantwell and Murray,

You don’t know me. I’m a constituent but I’m not on your donor roll. While I didn’t contribute money to either of your campaigns, I did contribute to your being the majority party.

I contributed hundreds of dollars to close campaigns: to Tester, to Webb, to McCaskill and to 5 House Dems in razor-close races.

Why can't I just ignore dumb stuff from people whose opinions I don't value? Please, answer in the comments if you know.

Meanwhile, here's an email I received today and trashed, which then wormed its way back into my consciousness and demanded a reply.

I get tossed off more Christmas card lists this way.

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Her opponent, Stephen Johnson is a GOP partison who's never been a judge and who is bankrolled by the right.

Here's a great summary I received from Washington Network for Civil Justice & Accountability. Please pass it on to your like-minded friends who vote in WA state.

it's below

I could swear that last night, sleepy and brain drained after my Chinese class, while stopping for some milk for my kids, I saw facing me on the checkstand rack, Newsweek with the following cover:

Ford in a very credible, serious, even presidential full-length photo, dramatically lit, with the title: Not Your Father's Democratic Party.

Something underneath about moderate dems and would a Dem controlled house rule from the center.

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But if today's LTEs are any indication, Times readers aren't buying Frank's endorsement of Reichert.

The letters are great; I've pulled a few excerpts below but you might want to read them in their entirety.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...

I appreciate your effort. Now you need to listen for a moment, that is, if you want to understand what you are up against.

Being in Congress is about more than showing up and saying "aye" or "nay". (Although it appears JL's record of doing even that on the Iraq war is poor.)

We expect more than that: we expect leadership, especially from the purported party leaders.

You say that JL's cloture vote showed "intellectual honesty". Well bully for him and you! While JL and other disappointing dems showed the Republicans what intellectual honesty looks like, the GOP showed us what it looks like to win the battle to put an extreme right wing idealogue onto the highest court in the land for the rest of his life.

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Dick Cheney, lips puckered, leaning over to plant a kiss on Sleeping Beauty.

Belle dancing with a Beastly Rumsfeld.

Beauty with the face of Ann Coulter.

The Disney Princesses are a $3 Billion  business for Disney, an absolute goldmine, most of it generated since 2000 when they decided to bundle the princesses and market them together. I am sure Disney guards the Princesses' virtue like you'd guard your own daughter's.

Editiorial-style art using the princesses would be far more of  a slap in the face to Disney than that using Mickey.

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Disney needs to see that this controversy will be attached to its equities. Mickey is kind of the company equity, but the Disney Princesses, now THAT'S a business.

I don't get into this princess business yet it overruns even my house. The light up shoes (both kids), books, sticker books, constumes, the most expensive magazine subscription ever purchased from a door-to-door salesman from pure guilt, and God knows what else as they get older and learn to ask for this stuff.

Disney is dipping big time into Barbie's territory for generating cash from and unrealistic expectations for the little girls of America. The stores of America are flooded with this crap.

ap·pease·ment (-pzmnt)
n.
The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace.

No this is not a "Lieberman diary". This is a diary on the sorry slide our nation and world have taken since the ascendency of George Bush and the complete lack of any meaningful opposition to the rape of our Constitution.

To put a fine point on it.

Still not clear, lunkhead media pundits? Let me help you out...

Typical question: Tell me about a weakness of yours.

Typical answer: I just work too hard sometimes.

Bush's "mistake" was perfect: I am just too strong a president. I talk too tough. Appeals to his base, who want to bomb the ME till the rubble bounces, and to those who don't like his tough talk, because it sounds like he really gets it.

Here's what he didn't say:

So today I wondered: what are they gonna do for 3 days? I imagined a fun three days of armchair politics. (Hey, I love me my Daily Kos but sometimes and lately it seems like a whole lot of type (time) spilled and last time I checked, the Constitution is still circling the drain.)

Phillips -- a long-term, hard-core old-style Republican -- set my last nerve on edge throughout the Clinton years with his annoying and off-base criticisms in his NPR commentaries. But he's seeming a lot less annoying to me lately as he's turned his sights on the complete failure that is BushCo: first with American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush and now with American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.

Phillips seems to believe that Bush is suffering from "some odd form of megalomania" and that his religious delusions are driving American foreign policy. Pour yourself a drink and follow me....