No Kay Blog

Well, they're Democrats, so whaddya expect? But still, more names, more fame, more mojo, it's all good: Radnofsky gets high-profile Senate backing.

Radnofsky had some high-powered help at the fundraiser and may be getting more. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the assistant Democratic leader in the Senate, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin attended the fundraiser and endorsed her.

Others who signed on as supporters included Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Sens Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Chuck Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton, both of New York. Schumer is chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

...Hutchison, commenting earlier after a hearing, said her re-election would not come down to money. "I'll be running on what I've done," she said.

I'm glad she's running on that, because once people know what she's done, they'll say, No Kay.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that oil-hungry Republicans like Sen. Hutchison would try to use the current spike in gas prices as another excuse to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Among some Republican lawmakers, such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, there is sentiment to renew the push for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and expand exploration off the Gulf Coast.

And if the response of President "Every Little Bit Helps" Bush is to hold a press conference about providing the nation 2 hours of fuel, then they may just be dumb enough to squander a majestic, pristine wilderness for a the tiny bit of oil under it.

Just one more reason to say, No Kay.

An interesting contrast comes to my inbox today courtesy of Google Alerts, pointing to two articles on San Antonio's MySA.com. They both have to do with Kay Bailey Hutchison, and they both have to do with Africa.


The first story, Then & Now: Fiesta serves royally, is about Fiest San Antonio. It mentions that Senator Hutchison, long before going off to Washington, was a participant in this formal affair. In fact, she "represented the University of Texas at Austin as Duchess of the Pharaohs during Fiesta in 1964."


The second story isn't quite so light. Called American shares horrific images he saw in Darfur, it's about a young man named Brian Steidle:

The former Marine Corps captain was an American monitor for the African Union from September 2004 to February 2005. Instead of a weapon, he carried a camera and captured almost 1,000 images of burned and looted villages, starving refugees and the bloody bodies of people who had been tortured and executed.

Steidle, 29, was in San Antonio on Saturday to share his photos and his experiences as part of the "Tour for Darfur: Eyewitness to Genocide," sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition.

...Steidle saw villages of 20,000 people burned to the ground, civilians whose ears were cut off and eyes plugged out, and women who had been gang raped. And half a world away in the United States, there was apathy.

"On the worst day, I saw 37 villages burned in the same day," he told a group of about 35 at UTSA. "It's a large-scale military operation to drive out or kill all the black Africans in Darfur. I believe we can stop this."

Okay, so you see the (somewhat tenuous, perhaps) Africa connection with the Eqyptian Duchess of Pharoahs, but you're probably wondering: What's this have to do with Sen. Hutchison? This:

John De Mott, a senior at UTSA who attended the talk, said he's already called U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. Her office sent him a form letter thanking him for his concern about health care.