While the Iowa farmers are busy having their crops flooded out, along comes this news from Texas.

.. many Williamson County farmers are still wondering if they'll break even due to soaring gas prices and the drought-like conditions wringing Central Texas dry.

Driving through eastern Williamson County, you can see miles and miles of brown corn stalks. ...      
...Farther south in areas like Seguin and Lockhart, extremely dry conditions have caused some farmers to pull their corn crops altogether.

The Texas State Democratic Convention is on June 6.

Here's one email from the Clinton campaign:

We need at least 160 volunteers to work as Convention Credentials Monitors!
These volunteer staffers will play an important role in making sure that the sign-in process at the Texas Democratic Convention is on the up and up as well as making sure that all of our delegates are getting in and that we are filling seats with alternate delegates.

Well, gee, that sounds harmless, right? and this one, too:

I received email today inviting me to a "Phone banking for Hillary" party. I think they got my email address a long time ago from when I used their site to get their contact information. They tried to entice me with free BBQ and even

We have Hillary buttons for callers

(ooooh, be still my beating heart!)

They seemed to have two reasons why people should be eager to be phonebanking now.

Interstate influence:

...let voters in Oregon know that Hillary is still a viable candidate, or why else would she win by so much in West Virginia and Kentucky?

and, more disturbing,
The Power of Pugilism:

Hillary has proved to us that she is a fighter, and will will show Hillary that we are also fighters!

I decided to reply because the return address appeared to be an individual (he even gave his tel#) rather than a generic Campaign address. Perhaps, thought I, he can answer "why the heck are you bothering", because I'm starting to be genuinely curious.

I think it's more about a virus than a conspiracy. I don't think we'll be kicked out of the convention, but it's hard to be sure.

The most interesting part of the Credentials Committee meeting was the presence of a major Clinton supporter (their delegation chairperson, I believe), who was absolutely furious at her fellow Clinton supporter for filing the silly challenge to our delegation. In committee, she delivered an icily accurate refutal of the complaint. In the hallway, she let fly with words to the effect of "What an idiot! Doesn't she realize she's trying to start World War III?"

This is as a followup to Wednesday's diary
http://www.dailykos.com/...

in which I reported that

a Clinton supporter is trying to have my vote and all the Obama votes overturned....

I am ripped. I am so ripped.
I went to my Texas precinct caucus and sat -- or rather stood -- through three hours of of suffocating heat to cast my vote for Obama. Now, three weeks later and right on the eve of the district convention a Clinton supporter is trying to have my vote and all the Obama votes overturned.

I have given up my family time for Saturday March 29 in order to attend as a delegate to the party convention. This Clinton supporter wants to kick me out of the party convention.

I am ripped.

Thanks to the   Rude Pundit for catching the delicious irony: the sleeping girl in the "red phone" ad is an Obama precinct captain.
Here's the  news story . . .

Dear Hillary:

Did you hear Obama's speeches? He's not shy about the part with "a war that never should have been authorized in the first place".
He's talking about you.

I wrote you this letter 2005. Oddly, you didn't answer.

Dear Hillary:
Democrats were cowards to authorize force in Iraq in the first place.

Trying to preserve his career by appearing tough, Kerry blew his career (and MY Supreme Court, damn him) by authorizing force in Iraq.

Now, trying to appear tough, you are a lead hawk.

Leave the hawkishness to the republicans.  Or, please do not run for president.

I've seen diaries here alerting us to Bush's fundraisers for one of his rubberstamp candidates. Well, here comes another. Our local loathesome zombie-of-obedience senator is apparently getting a cash infusion from both Bush and Cheney in separate events. So what do you think, netizens? Do you want to send another "Bush is a boat anchor" message by supporting Noriega? The ActBlue link is http://www.actblue.com/...

This started out as my note to my Congressman.

I is for Iraq
M is for Military Commissions
P is for Plame
E is for Enemy Combatant
A is for Attorneys
C is for Cronies
H is for Halliburton

And I figured, somewhere in cyberspace, there's a creative use for this (plus, of course, improvements on the format).

Okay, all you poets and songwriters: your turn. Give us some good variations on the theme.

Quoth I,

Dear Home Depot,

Looking at my personal financial records, I see the following breakdown for home repair and improvement expenses since 1/1/2004:

Lowes   $3500  
Home Depot  $450

Both stores have a wide variety of products at good prices, and they are equally convenient to my house.

The difference?

In 2004 it became obvious that Home Depot was a major contributor to the Republican party. I remember seeing George W. giving a campaign speech on a Home Depot parking lot, with the big orange sign carefully placed above him in the style of a Mission Accomplished banner, and thinking how crass it was to have a political candidate selling himself as a TV commercial actor.  

continued . .

It's sad that netroots candidate John Courage got a pathetic 24% of the vote. Here's what I found when I volunteered to do phone banking for him.

The campaign gave us printed lists of phone numbers. About a third of the numbers were disconnected or not in service at this time. Another third had the wrong name, which means they were disconnected so long ago that they had been reassigned to new owners. I reached a voter for whom we still had the right name/number, but she had moved to a different precinct years ago. She laughed when I tried to tell her where to vote.
I dutifully marked the "Bad Number" box on the paper, so the database can be updated – if there is a database at all – if there is any clerical help after the election. Instinct says that my marked-up list will sit in a box for a few years and then be discarded.

Every two years I go out and cast my pitiful ballot. Well, actually, I push a button on a paperless voting machine, so who the heck knows whether I voted at all. My good-guy congressman gets re-elected, my scumbag senators get re-elected, the state goes for Bush, anti-gay propositions pass, nothing changes. It feels completely futile.

This year, I spent election day telephoning Virginia. I and some thousands of others across the country: probably more than seven thousand of them, all turning out the vote for Webb.
This means, if each of us turned out one vote, IT MATTERED that we were there. IT MATTERED that I did something.

What a great feeling!

Thanks to MoveOn for letting me accomplish something.