Senator Dianne Feinstein wants to hear from you — or does she?

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D/R California) wants to hear from her constituents.  She has boldly stepped into the 20th century by including an “email contact” page on her ultra modern web site (see screenshots below). If you are surprised at how high tech it is, remember that she represents Silicon Valley. Her web site can be nothing less than hot.

She considerately adds modern internet “radio buttons” so the constituent communicator can easily select their area of concern.  Brilliant if I say so Miss Dianne and brava!

The text at her site says

Every e-mail I receive is read, and your opinions are carefully considered.

but there is no “OTHER” radio button. 

If you have an “OTHER” question not addressed by the site’s radio button selection, you will be forced to select an unrelated radio button topic.  That selection will get you a warm fuzzy squirmy non-response.  Ask about FISA and click the GAY ISSUES radio button and you will quickly receive an automatic GAY ISSUES vague non-response that has nothing to do with your FISA question.

Huh!?  It’s as if she is not truly carefully considering the opinions of her constituents.

Senator Feinstein has made a few odd, almost Liebermanish moves in the past months.

She strangely supported an extension of the odious FISA Act and recently inexplicably supported the Bush Administration’s circle jerk about MoveOn.org’s NYT howl during the run up to Petreaus.

None of the “radio buttons” has anything to do with her anti MoveOn.org vote nor her support of FISA.  She doesn’t  offer any explanation nor even a mention of her two votes supporting the Bush administration on her modern web site.

Hmmm!

What’s a constituent to do?

Aha!  Her site offers what is called “Dianne’s Journal”.  Surely she would have journaled about those controversial votes but…

no, she hasn’t journaled for her constituents since April 2007.  Wake up Dianne!

If you don’t make more of an effort to at least appear to be somewhat interested in carefully considering the opinions of your constituents, you may be doing K Street work for hubby’s interests after 2012.

But before that happens, Diane, please fix your web site.  It is an embarrassment.  It is shameful for the goyim to see such drek.

Please be gentle as this is my first post on Calitics.com.

Beth Caskie, a member of the Democrats of the Desert and a diarist on Calitics.com, with the assistance of George Zander, President of the Desert Stonewall Democrats organized a fascinating meeting re blogging in the Coachella Valley.  Well-attended, this meeting raised awareness of the importance of blogging in turning the Coachella Valley blue.

Recent history shows that the Coachella Valley is already well on the way to becoming Blue Coachella Valley.  Zander noted that the Coachella Valley is already blue on both ends with five cities giving John Kerry their majority vote in 2004 (Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, and Cathedral City in the West Valley and Indio and Coachella in the East).

Greg Pettis reports that in 1995, Ron Oden was elected to the Palm Springs City Council as its sole Democrat.  Simultaneously, Pettis was voted to the Cathedral City City Council as its lone Democrat.  In 2003, Oden became the first African-American and first openly-gay mayor of Palm Springs.  Simultaneously, Ginny Foat and Steve Pougnet each won City Council seats as Democrats, giving the Palm Springs City Council three Democrats on the five member council!!!  Likewise, in 2004, Cathedral City elected a majority of Democrats including Pettis and Paul Marchand to its City Council.

In 2005, Foat was by far the biggest vote getter in the Palm Springs council race for a complete term and John Williams just barely lost to the Republican incumbent after a last-minute yellow journalistic assault by the local so-called newspaper (aka the Desert Scum).

For your information, in 2007, Pougnet is running to succeed Oden as mayor of Palm Springs when Oden elected to not run for re-election.  Pougnet is highly favored to become the second consecutive openly gay Democrat mayor in Palm Springs.

In addition, Rick Hutcheson, Planning Commission member, has received the endorsement of all three Palm Springs Democratic clubs including Democrats of the Desert, Desert Stonewall Democrats, and Palm Springs Democrats.  In turn, Williams has received endorsements from Desert Stonewall Democrats and Palm Springs Democrats.  On the downside, rather than endorse Williams, the Democrats of the Desert endorsed Bob Mahlowitz.  According to some this action resulted in the recent decision of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee to withhold formal endorsements for any Democrats in the Palm Springs City Council race.  However, with 40% of the Palm Springs electorate identified as members of the GLBT community, with the increasing Latino voter registration, and with Democrats far outdistancing Republicans in voter registrations in the past few years, Palm Springs is poised to have four Democrats on City Council!

Cathedral City with its two Democratic City Councilmen, Pettis and Marchand, means that Cat City will shortly follow Palm Springs into the Blue Coachella Valley.  Also, prior to his unexpected death, Gary Bosworth was the biggest vote-getter in the Desert Hot Springs city council race in 2005.  Desert Hot Springs Democrats hope to regain this seat during the current election cycle.  Residents of both Indio and Coachella in ‘Down Valley’ regularly elect progressive Democrats for mayor and city council.

So, the idea of a Blue Coachella Valley is no longer a fanciful dream, but should with the ongoing presence of strong local Democratic clubs and demonstrated Democratic unity become reality!

Thanks to soyinkafan for helping me to learn how to incorporate hypertext links into my text.  You obviously have great kharma!

Got a tip that sometime in the very near future, Francine Busby will be announcing her endorsement of Nick Leibham for the Democratic nomination in the 50th district.  The field has been slowly clearing for a while now, with Michael Wray opting against a run and John Lee Evans running for School Board.  Steve Schechter has also filed FEC paperwork to run in the district, but this endorsement would line up the one major recognizable Democratic face in the district behind Leibham.  Putting to rest any remaining speculation that she might run again, much of the drama is likely over in the primary, leaving now more than a year of Bilbray-hunting.  The district has a Partisan Voter Index of R+5, but Charlie Cook considers the district competitive more than 13 months out, rating it yesterday as Likely Republican in his new Competitive House Race Chart.

Cross posted from San Diego Politico