Emily Ramshaw of the Texas Tribune got a sit down with the elusive Laura Miller, Dallas’ former female mayor and the woman who seems to have disappeared off the radar except for a random story on a home makeover. You can read the full interview online and listen to audio but frankly it’s much to do about nothing. Most of the Q&A Miller discusses her new role as a clean energy ambassador and her Trinity River stance. She won’t talk about her successor Tom Leppert, “One of the things I really appreciated about [my predecessor] Ron Kirk was that he never talked about how I was doing. I’m sticking to that. You move on, and you don’t judge,” she told Ramshaw. And any political ambitions are now centered on her husband former state Rep. Steve Wolens. Bor-ing! Laura Miller used to piss people off just by walking in a room. Men and women and especially Jerry Jones. It takes a special talent to do that. Too bad she’s all suburban housewife now. She was fun. Disagreeable. Not a team player. Some might say two faced or worse but fun to watch.

The good times are over for Southlake’s Kwame Kilpatrick. At least for the next 1.5 to 5 years. ”Probation is no longer an option. The terms of your earlier probation no longer apply; that ship has sailed,” said Wayne Circuit Judge David Groner at Kilpatrick’s sentencing hearing this morning in Detroit reports the Detroit Free Press. “This is all because of the actions of you, Mr. Kilpatrick. You were convicted … all because you lied under oath. That lie … was part of a broader attempt to cover up your misdeeds while serving as mayor.” Groner said. “You challenged this court’s authority. You attempted to utilize semantics and exploit loopholes. The broader context of this issue is that your family living expenses — including living in a million-dollar home, driving a brand new Escalade and purchasing elective surgery for your wife — you have made it perfectly clear that it’s more important to pacify your wife than comply with my orders.” Ouch. Well, Kwame did cheat on his wife. Plastic surgery was the least he could due. Overall, that move to Southlake pissed the judge off royally (the Free Press describes it as a ”lavish” lifestyle). Did the Kilpatrick’s not think that Detroit judges read Dallas newspapers too? And it’s not like he tried to hide what the judge called “contemptible behavior” by moving to the one of the wealthiest suburbs in North Texas and granting interviews boasting about how great his new home is. For his part, Kilpatrick did apologize and tried to explain why his actions–especially those that benefitted his family– ”Whatever I did … I sincerely apologize,” Kilpatrick told the judge. “It’s hard to speak to some of the things that have been said about me. Let me start by saying I’m a human being, a real-life, flesh-and-blood person. Often when I hear about myself from the media, I’m extraordinarily confused because it’s not me. I’m not the mayor of the city; the city has a new mayor,” he said. “I accept responsibility for what I did. I spent a whole year feeling an enormous amount of guilt for what I did to my wife, my children and this city. And I still feel it.” But he told The Dallas Morning News Southlake helped heal him. Yes, when you stop paying restitution, move to Texas, live a bougie lifestyle away from all the people you hurt and screwed over in Detroit you do feel a new kind of warm and fuzzy. The Kilpatricks deserve a break–but not from justice!

Like most Americans, I got my Census a week or so ago and found the race question to be particularly interesting. For almost five years (three dating, two married), I swear I’ve been dating/married to an Arab man. He speaks Arabic. He’s spent years trying to get citizenship to this country. But the U.S. Census Bureau calls him a white man and/or “other race”. Freakin’ Laotian’s get a shout out on the Census forms but not Arabs? or Iranians? or Afghanis? Aren’t we supposed to be freaked out by “those people”? On the Census form under number eight, the long Hispanic question, allows you to put down Chicano because, “for this census, Hispanic origins are not races.” Why? Is it because so many, for lack of a better word, brown people self identify with country of origin (Cuba, Mexico etc.) and aren’t unified under one brown umbrella of Hispanic like African Americans/blacks are in this country? Arab-Americans in this country aren’t taking the white boxes lightly. They’ve started a national write-in effort to get included on the census. Omar Masry, co-chair of the Arab Complete Count Committee in Orange County, wants Arab Americans to fill the census form out in a different way: Check it right — you ain’t white. And it’s not just Arabs. Iranians are ticked too. “When I was applying for college, I actually looked for the box to mark Iranian,” said Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American comedian, best known as the Persian member of The Axis of Evil comedy tour, “and I went to my counselor and I said, ‘There’s no Iranian box.’ And they go, ‘Well, you’re white.’ I go, ‘What do you mean I’m white?’ I took all the insults growing up — camel jockey, towel head, all this other stuff — and all I had to say was, ‘Dude, I’m white!’ ” Don’t get me wrong, I love the Census. I actually look forward to filling out the forms every ten years and picking on the weird things inside–and I will be checking a couple of boxes on question number eight and nine, but I’m going to make sure members in our house ‘check it right’ we ain’t just white!

SarahPac/Facebook

Getting pissed and letting out a curse on the House floor is one thing. But vandalism, threats and now an apology from Elisabeth Hasselbeck who called the ridiculousness over the last few weeks by Republican leaders and conservative supporters and commentators, “disappointing” to see coming from the party.”  The View hosts were discussing the appaling behavior over the last week or so where members of Congress have been spit at, had racial and homophobic epithets thrown at them. And it’s not just “baby killer” statements either.  Some have been subjected to vandalism and have had their home addresses posted on the Internet. ”I heard people saying things today I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus,”  said Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in the House.

 Threats are not only from protesters but from fellow members of Congress many of whom have encouraged the bad behavior of outsiders.  Sarah Palin’s Political Action Committee has posted a map on Facebook targeting the 20 Democrats who voted for the health care bill. The map shows the districts with a rifle scope pointed over their state. Palin also Tweeted, “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead — RELOAD!’ Pls see my Facebook page.” House Minority Leader John Boehner  denounced the fiery language and shooting and death innuendos but that’s not going far enough says Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post, “Sadly, said leaders are in short supply, as too many of them seem content to sow the seeds of anger and mistrust with wink-and-nod rhetoric that serves to foment the violent impulses they say they condemn.”  It’s too far out from the midterms to keep the anger momentum going, in my opinion. And anger often turns to bitter idiocy that is a big turn off for voters. This is supposed to be the House of Representatives not the Jersey Shore.

I’m so glad being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition. Despite Republican opposition to a bill overhauling health care in the United States, Democrats managed to pull the necessary votes last night and earned the right to say, in Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner’s words, “Hell” Yes They Did. As a woman who has spent most of her adult life without health insurance, I was eager for something–anything!–to be done to fix the health care system in this country where, as Democratic Majority leader Nancy Pelosi and others pointed out, being a woman is considered a pre-existing condition. How? “It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition,” writes Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post. Even having a c-section can be deemed by some insurance companies as a pre-existing condition as well as yeast infections. As an uninsured American, I’m very lucky that most of that time I’ve been healthy. I fear getting sick because I know I can’t afford a hospital bill. And it sickens me to hear Republican blustering about a waste of money when billions if not trillions of dollars are being sunk into the sands of Baghdad and for what? So that soldiers who come back to the US can be denied health care coverage or receive substandard care? Or their families? Their nieces? I’m not saying the bill is perfect. But when the alternative is not taking care of yourself because you’re too poor or your health care coverage sucks and you’re stuck in a crap job because the family needs some sort of coverage, something has to be done.

Boehner wanted a roll call vote to get Dems and Republicans on camera saying “Yes” or “No” on the bill for future campaign commercials. Well, do you really want to be the guy on the camera saying “No” to changing the health care system in America? Because a “No” to the health care bill in  my mind means yes, to screwing people out of their money, yes to continued discrimination of poor and underinsured Americans, yes to denying coverage to women and elderly and sick because of pre-existing conditions like the flu. I think Pelosi was right when she said all politics are personal.

And personally, my health matters more to me than Republican opposition to what they see as unnecessary spending. I’ve seen too many people unnecessarily get sick because they couldn’t get treatment, or unnecessarily go into debt because they couldn’t afford the hospital bill to remove a tumor in their uterus. I saw my parents–who had health care coverage–do phone surveys every other week to earn a discount on a drug my dad needed for cancer treatment because they couldn’t afford to pay the full price and there was no generic alternative. I’m tired of using my PPO–Please, Please Oh God I can’t get sick! You can read details of the bill here and get information here. And while you may fall into the line of believers who buy the “back door deals” talk and wasteful spending on Obamacare think about the Congressmen and women who are saying that stuff. Remember, they have the best health care coverage in the country!

Bill White and the fam.

Yawn. Looks like the primary votes have been tallied and once again Texans have to choose between two caucasian males. And I was so hoping that at least someone interesting would pull ahead. Maybe tea party favorite and possible 9/11 conspiracy theorist Debra Medina or I’ll keep my Senate seat in case this governor thing doesn’t work out Kay Bailey Hutchison or my personal fav I’ll pay the state $10,000 million if I don’t create jobs Farouk Shami. Naaa. Texans get the same old same old in incumbent Rick Perry and former Houston mayor Bill White. But at least Bill White is a somewhat viable Democratic candidate. You can read a breakdown and analysis of last night’s primary election on The Dallas Morning News election page.

Rick Perry

Republicans made it very clear they’re divided on what they consider conservative/Republican/ Texan/anti-Obama enough in a three way split between Perry, Hutchison and Medina. But do enough people know White?  We all know “tax a toll road, superhighway through your homestead Rick Perry.” I think the challenge will be to see if Texans can bite the bullet and vote a Democrat for governor. We did in Dallas with District Attorney Craig Watkins. We did with Ann Richards two Perry’s and One Bush ago. And if Houstonians can elect a gay mayor, by God Texans can elect a Democrat!

Anne Mitchell, KWES

You’d think the protagonist in this story would be nurse Anne Mitchell who reported Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr.  to state regulators for practicing bad medicine at Winkler County Memorial Hospital. Instead,  Mitchell, a now out of work 52-year-old wife and mother, was indicted, finger printed and photographed and is now being threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what nurses are bound by oath to do. It’s absurd Mitchell told The New York Times, “You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.” Apparently, you can in West Texas where Winkler County Sherrif  Robert L. Roberts Jr.serves.  Roberts credits Dr. Arafiles with saving his life after a heart attack. And not long after the doctor found out about the ethics complaint that he calls harassment, Roberts obtained a search warrant and seized Mitchell’s and another nurse’s work computers where the letter was composed. Prosecutor Scott M. Tidwell said Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements against the good doctor. But the prosecutor dropped charges against the other nurse in the case, Vickilyn Galle, who helped draft the letter as well as another nurse who filed a separate complaint against the doctor.  Mitchell however is still on trial and is being charged with “misuse of official information”.  Galle told The Times, “We’re just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something you had been told your whole career was an obligation.”

 State and national nurses association have called the case an outrage and raised money for Mitchell’s legal defense. The Texas Nurses Association  is encouraging all nurses to pay attention to the “notorious” Winkler County Nurses trial, ”This trial is monumental for nursing and certainly worthy of scrutiny by every Texas citizen.  Its outcome could curtail a nurse’s willingness to report patient safety concerns even though a nurse’s duty to report is clearly identified in the Code of Ethics for Nurses and the Texas Nursing Practice Act.” And the Texas Medical Board is also warning caution in this case. A rule against Mitchell could have a significant “chilling effect” for nurses reporting bad behaving doctors. Mitchell accused Dr. Arafiles of improper prescribing and surgical procedures as well as contacting patients about an herbal supplement he was selling on the side. But Tidwell warns this case is not a witch hunt. In fact, it’s been moved to another county for trial. Local and national media are watching the case and local newspaper The Winkler Post has been following the trial closely adding updates and a reader forum for those interested in the case. The Post’s John Reed writes, “Why has this situation come to be?”  –and the only logical conclusion one can arrive at:  The other spotlighted person, at the heart of these proceedings, Dr. Rolando German Arafiles, Jr., should never have been hired by Memorial Hospital.” But prosecutor Tidwell is confident the truth of this case will emerge in trial, “ The only side of the story that the town has heard is that these are sisters of mercy, missionaries of peace,”  Tidwell told The Times. ”The town has not heard the whole story.” We certianly haven’t. But this smells like a good ol’ boy network and small town politics backfiring against what West Texas boys call a loud mouth woman. If indeed Arafiles violated procedures and misused his position, he should be found at fault and both he and the prosecutors office should also be held accountable (Mitchell does have a lawsuit filed). But nurses shouldn’t live in fear of reporting a bad doctor. I do wonder, however, if all other disciplinary measures had been exhausted. Perhaps a complaint to the doctors supervisors? I believe she did try but it went nowhere. In that case, a fiery letter corroborated by other nurses should be enough to call for an investigation. Good luck to Mitchell. She needs it.

Candidate Debra Medina is in trouble. She’s one of the three Belo beauties who’ll take the stage Friday for a Republican primary debate but the Trailblazers blog reports she spent $2,437 on clothes purchased from Dillards, The Limited, Nordstrom’s and a few other places. Is it legally wrong? No. “The state Ethics Commission has issued opinions, following the law that campaign contributions can’t be converted to personal use of a candidate. On clothing, the rule of thumb is that shoes, dresses, suits and whatnot would only be appropriate for a campaign appearance and couldn’t be converted to everyday wear,” writes reporter Christy Hoppe. The most famous fashion offender was Sarah Palin. The Repulican National Committee spent more than $150,000 outfitting their candidate from places like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. To be fair, Medina is no Palin and a higher office does demand a higher price wardrobe.

Locally, council member Angela Hunt was picked on for spending $200 for styling for campaign photos and another $70 for a press conference. The $200 expenditure also included a makeup session at the Warren Wilkes Salon in Uptown. She also used campaign funds on dry cleaning for $52. 32.

Here’s my take on the issue. Shows like “What Not to Wear” give normal people $5,000 to look better and none of them are running for office! Frankly, if I were nominated for anything my FIRST stop would be the mall and my next stops would include in no particular order: hair, makeup, nails, and skin. WHY? Because as a female looks matter! Hair matters. Clothes matter. John McCain can look like a puffy stiff-neck but slap a suit on him and no one will say anything. Gray hair and roots are distinguished looking in a man. Wrinkles show wisdom in a man and a need for Botox in a woman. 

As for Medina, that poor woman has to share the stage with Rick Perry who the late Molly Ivins dubbed “Governor Goodhair” and who is by many women’s standards a good looking guy. And she’s sharing space with Kay Bailey Hutchison a former cheerleader, prom queen and sorority sister. Hutchison is probably one of the most fashionable women in the Senate and is known in Texas for her iconic appearance. Give Deb’ a chance! She’s not exactly been welcome on gubernatorial stage and now that she’s gained some steam in the polls, she needs the wardrobe to compete. She’s cute but cute don’t cut it. You gotta maintain. I have no problem with a candidate spending campaign funds to look good. It’s a problem women get picked on for more because they spend more on appearance because they have to. We are voting for their ideas and because they look like a candidate we can trust. That “look” takes work. You go Deb. Spend away. Don’t let the unfashionable media bring ya’ down.

So Massachusetts went from Ted Kennedy of Camelot to a fella who once posed nude for Cosmo!  Those weren’t tremors being felt in Haiti this morning. It was the sound of  Ted Kennedy (and his brothers) turning in their graves. But I can’t say that I’m surprised by the outcome. Scott Brown ran on a populist platform–no more bailouts, this is not Ted Kennedy’s seat but the people’s seat, no more government takeover of health care, no more politics as usual, blah, blah, blah–and he campaigned in a pickup truck. He didn’t bring out the big GOP guns like Sarah Palin or Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to stump for him.  He campaigned with Boston Red Sox pitching legend Curt Schilling and John Ratzenberger, the mail carrier from “Cheers”. Brown calls himself  a “new breed of Republican” who just happens to vote the same way as the rest of the Republicans. Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, said Brown needs to remember he is a Massachusetts senator, “He is not a Mississippi Republican.” No offense Mississippi.

Last night Democrats were doing a lot of hand- wringing and many blamed Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for being  lackluster. In the last few days of the campaign, President Obama campaigned with her but even his appeal couldn’t carry her the four points it would have taken to tie Brown. So what does a loss like this mean for the health care bill? It’s their “Waterloo” said one Democrat and Rasmussen pole results from last night’s election said health care reform was the most important issue for Massacusetts voters–many of whom already receive benefits from universal health care in their state. ”In many ways, the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process,” said Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia in a statement. Does that mean health care is dead? No. The fundamental aspects of the bill are one many Americans agree on–no more denial for pre-existing conditions, affordable health care, cross state health care options etc. If anything, the health care bill was something for Republicans to latch onto. A piece of legistlation to pick apart. And the fact that parts of it were being put togther behind closed doors so to speak only added fuel to the fire of the discussion that Republicans have quite successfully managed to shift to a debate on socialism.  I’d like to see a Democrat in Dallas sit in Parkland hospital’s emergency room and campaign there. Do a commercial there and interview people WITH health insurance and those who are underinsured and uninsured. Hell, go to the billing offices at Baylor in Plano or Medical City and shoot a commercial there too. You’ll find Republicans and Democrats and Independents in agreement about a need for health care change when they see a $2,000 ER bill after a bad batch of burritos! That’s what health care reform really is. Not some socialist mumbo jumbo that fat bastards on talk radio whine about. But I’m not confident politicians won’t put partisan politics aside and really fix health care. If anything, I think the most we’ll get is health insurance reform.

Massachusetts is not so much a Republican win as a Democratic loss. And a wakeup call to the party. Voters wanted change but the President is the candidate who made us believe that change was possible. Unfortunately, many of our local, state and national reps aren’t the “Great Democratic Messiah” that Obama has been crowned.  They don’t have the charisma, that speaking ability, that presence that makes us believe change is possible. No, many Democratic candidates spent the summer sweating it out in town hall meeting getting screamed at by old ladies in walkers and middle aged women with puff paint t-shirts swinging purses and tea bags calling Democrats the devil and America the new Soviet Union. And you have to give props to the tea baggers. They are some fiery, get out the vote people. Unfortunately, they are as divided as everyone else–remember Dede Scozzafava of New York? The Republican problem child withdrew from the race after conservative party members mounted an effort to defeat her with a candidate of their choosing. Scozzafava withdrew from the race and threw her support behind Democrat Bill Owens who later won. In the GOP, there’s conservative and then there’s conservative and Republicans like Brown don’t want to be associated with the far right wack jobs in Mississippi or Collin County. That’s a benefit to Democrats. And Dems could learn a thing or two about grass roots, down with the people campaigning. A pickup truck and clear message goes a long way in tough times.

Sarah Palin is going to be a Fox News contributor adding to her long list of accomplishments: wife, mother, former governor, former VP nominee, author, grandmother, beauty pageant winner, athlete, huntress, and reporter. On paper, this seems like the qualities of a card carrying feminist (in her book Going Rogue she said she was a member of Feminists for Life, a group that does not oppose contraception). Momlogic bloggers Heather Robinson and Jennifer Ginsberg both of whom read Going Rogue “with pleasure” say the beef with Sarah is based largely on the abortion issue and our plain dislike of her that they say is influenced by left-wing media sources.