Stop Hating on SENATOR CLINTON...NOW.

I am sick of hearing people trash talk SENATOR Hillary Clinton. And by people, I mean Democrats. The numerous slurs that Republicans, conservatives, chauvinists, sexists and others obviously afraid of her are to be expected.

As an (almost) immediate disclaimer, I'm not a supporter of SENATOR Clinton's. Aside from a $10 donation I made a few weeks ago, prompted only by Senator Barack Obama pissing me off, I'm not committed to her campaign in any way. I've been a staunch supporter of Governor Bill Richardson from day one. Knowing the Governor Richardson has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination at this point (though he is by far the most qualified and experienced) I've always known I'd have to pick another candidate eventually- and am almost ready to order a John Edwards bumper sticker. I'll keep holding out that my favorite Southwestern Governor will be a leader on the Veep shortlist- whoever wins the nomination.

Also, to be fair, I don't have any major problems with Barack Obama. I watched his DNC speech in '04, right alongside every other Democrat in America. "We play little league in the blue states and we've got some gay friends in the red states," may have even been one of my facebook quotes for awhile. I was inspired, I was pumped, I was excited. The party lost, Obama won and apparently became the de facto progressive leader of the the United States????

Whoa.

I'm not sure when, I'm not sure how, but I am sure he hasn't been in the Senate long enough to be the leader on much of anything. The man voted for the bankruptcy bill! And if I hear that he was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning one more time I might just scream. YOU WEREN'T IN CONGRESS!!! You don't get to set yourself apart from the others in the field when you didn't face the same circumstances.

Senator Clinton impresses me. I know that my most liberal friends reading this blog (oh wait, no one reads my blog.) will be calling me a sellout and a mod before I can "John Edwards for President," but she does.

Now, I'm sure people are commenting on the "I'm Your Girl!" statement, and have a wide variety of opinions. I, for one, think she's fucking fierce, and is clearly sick of every other candidate in the field talking about her, in part because they don't have enough substantive policy to talk about for themselves. Senator Edwards excluded, of course.

From Here to There...and Back Again.

For those of you who have noticed the existence of my (short, but adequate) list of things I don't like on the side of this page, you would have noticed that the Interstate 5 is on the list. Now, in short freeways are important and the 5 in particular provides a key route from Seattle to San Diego and Beyond. However, I've spent entirely too much time on it recently.

I *think* I've spent approximately 3 weekends at home in Sacramento since a work retreat the weekend of June 23rd. To be fair, I've spent a fair amount of time in much cooler and more pleasant places, including a fair amount of time in Santa Barbara, a place I generally prefer over anywhere else. This weekends trip was made down the 101 as I was coming from a meeting in the city (ie San Francisco for those outside of NorCal) which meant I exchanged Santa Nella and Los Banos for Salinas and Gilroy on the trip down.

For the record, of any of you think that this post will have a point soon it won't, so stop reading. I mean it. Stop it right now. I will, however, comment on my increasing hatred of traffic outside of rush hour. I AM FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. I am not bothered by traffic and have come to accept it as part of life in the civilized world- plus I love driving my car. In SoCal I generally hate the toll roads and would probably feel disdain for most of the people who drive on them. Oh, and Fastrak---don't EVEN get me started on Fastrak.

If, however, one is to make the trip from Northern to Southern California or vice versa on one of our lovely highways- please learn to drive without causing a traffic jam in Morgan Hill at 3pm. According to MapQuest.com (how did people get around before this creation?), it should have taken me 5 hours and 15 minutes to get from Daly City to Santa Barbara on Friday. Hmmm...try about 6 and a half. Granted I can't get away from gridlock in San Jose on a Friday afternoon, even at 2 o'clock, but I will not tolerate people who are so intent on keeping me from my destination that they must slow down to watch a minor fender bender as though it were legitimately something interesting. We've all seen a car accident before people-nothing new here, move along.

When I first moved to Santa Barbara from the Inland Empire for college, I thought the 3+ hour trip was too long of a drive for just a weekend. Now, I regularly make the 6+ hour drive from Sacramento- occasionally just to drink tequila and catch up on gossip. I flip through the radio static and daydream about the trip that I'll someday make in less than 6 hours.

As I don't anticipate Southwest Airlines offering a $49 flight from Sacramento to Santa Barbara anytime soon- I'll keep driving, and hopefully buy a hybrid car before all my friends move away from the central coast.

On another note- someday I'll be able to make it to the Inland Empire without worrying about Group A, B or C. (State map) Oh wait, the ballot initiative process is a mess.