After conflicting media reports, The New York Times, citing a Cleveland Clinic spokesman, confirms the passing of Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, at 6:12 PM today.

The Congresswoman was most recently a startlingly effective advocate for the Presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton, though she endorsed Democratic nominee Barack Obama in June.

Tubbs Jones was one of those rare figures that combine instinctively compelling leadership abilities with the grace of true humility. She will be sorely missed, and the nation is poorer for her passing.

The New York Times:

Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” and NBC’s Washington bureau chief, has died. He was 58.

Mr. Russert was a towering figure in American journalism and moderated several debates during the recent presidential primary season.

Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News, came on the air at 3:39 p.m. and reported that Mr. Russert had collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work. He had just returned from Italy with his family.

“Our beloved colleague,” a grave Mr. Brokaw called him, one of the premier journalists of our time. He said this was one of the most important years in his life, with his deep engagement in the network’s political coverage, and that he “worked to the point of exhaustion.” Mr. Brokaw said Mr. Russert was a true child of Buffalo and always stayed in touch with his blue collar roots and “the ethos of that community.”

Our thoughts are with Mr. Russert's family.

Another great American story draws to a close with the passing today in the City of New York of Norman Mailer.

The New York Times:

Mr. Mailer burst on the scene in 1948 with “The Naked and the Dead,” a partly autobiographical novel about World War II, and for the next six decades he was rarely far from the center stage. He published more than 30 books, including novels, biographies and works of nonfiction, and twice won the Pulitzer Prize: for “The Armies of the Night” (1968), which also won the National Book Award, and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979).

Mr. Mailer belonged to the old literary school that regarded novel writing as a heroic enterprise undertaken by heroic characters with egos to match. He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Finis.

Back in 2004 I published this piece at culturekitchen as an elections post-mortem and a response to pieces written by Steve and Chris Bowers.

I have had people research my work for either papers or dissertations and so ... if there ever was an "it" blog post for my online political activism, this has to be the post. This post informs all my political activity and the issue that keep me up at night.

And I have to say that neither Steve nor I could have written had we were not only black but from socio-economically blended families with some rich, some in the middle, others working and some just poor. This is what makes us unique in the political blogosphere.

So without further ado, Secular Blue America.

November 11, 2004
Secular Blue America
by Liza Sabater

I got to Steve Gilliard's News Blog : They voted for this mess via another awesome post, written by Chris Bowers, at MyDD :: Yes, These Are Conservatives.

Gilliard's is one long-winded rant that starts out hitting liberals good but ends up really tearing appart the post-election appeasement façade of the extremists ruling the Republican party. I wish he had spent more time flogging the "Liberals". Here's why :

The Rude Pundit is responsible for my finally meeting Steve. Lee had just released the CD of his awesome one-man show and he threw a party to mark the event.

At he time I was a homeschooling mother of two and sometime consultant so I had barely any time to drop by. Lee said the magic words : Steve is coming.

O. M. G.

Having the opportunity to meet two of my superheroes in one night was too good to pass up and so I begged and implored the patriarchy at home to release me. As fast as I could, I oiled myself into a pair of jeans and scooted to the West Village.

When I got there once I gave a big hug to Lee I jumped all over Steve and to say he was a bit taken aback but loving it is not to be off the mark. I needed to let him know how much he meant to me as a writer, as an activist and as a blatina. I needed to cram as much in as little a time and thusly went to town.

Believe it or not, he blushed.

Steve was a muscular writer but in person he was could be quite unassuming. "Stop it!" He said it many times and so after the fangirlishness susbsided, we just shot the shit.

From the News Blog:

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog (www.thenewsblog.net), passed away early this morning. He was 41.

- the news blog team

Rest in Peace, Steve.

John Lavelle did not die in vain. A few hours before his death, while at Wednesday’s Council candidate Manny Inamorato's Beekman Pub fundraiser, I learned Lavelle donated his organs with one of his kidneys saving the recipient’s life.

Unless prohibited by religious belief or medical condition, it’s a no brainer to donate organs postmortem. The former Staten Island political boss and legislator positively impacted people, even in death. We all can do likewise by joining organ donor lists.

My favorite organ donor story is that of JJ Greenberg, the son of the former US Holocaust Memorial chair. He died after being hit by a car while bicycling in Israel. His organs saved six people including a Palestinian in need of a liver.

From an email by Bill de Blasio:

Dear Friends,

As many of you may know, my mother, Maria de Blasio Wilhelm passed away earlier this week. She would have been 90 years old in May. She was fighting up until the end and I was able to be there with her when she passed.

Thank you for all the support you all have given over the last few weeks. She always appreciated the commitment of people like you to helping others. She did a lot of that in her own life, and always wished she had done more.

Thank you again for your support during this difficult time for my family.

--- Bill

Our condolences to the Councilman and his family.

New York State Assemblyman and Staten Island Democratic Party chair John Lavelle died 10:20 pm in Richmond University Medical Center last night from stroke related complications . He would have turned 58 on Friday.

Lavelle suffered the stroke shortly after midnight last Friday morning in the bathroom of popular Staten Island Democrat hang out Jody's Club Forrest, just after addressing the Young Democrats of Richmond County.

Lavelle, a former Met Life executive, became party chair in 1999 and was elected to the Assembly in 2000. He is also a former president of the borough's most progressive Democratic political club, Staten Island Democratic Association (SIDA), which I belong to.

He is survived by sons, John, Christopher, and Daniel and three grandchildren.

The wake will be at Harmon's Funeral Home, 571 Forest Avenue, Saturday, 7:00 - 9:00 P.M., and Sunday, 2:00 - 4:00 and 7:00 - 9:00 P.M. The funeral will be Monday at 10:00 A.M. at St. Peter's Church, 53 St. Marks Place.

One of Lavelle’s kidney’s was used to save someone else’s life just before his death.

Concern about issues such as poverty and civil rights fueled his political activism.

John was a man of integrity and stood by Steve Harrison when the national Democratic Party began trying to promote Brooklyn Council member Bill de Blasio as a candidate to oppose Vito Fossella for a Congressional seat in a district he neither lived in nor represented a single person in, several weeks after the Island party executive committee unanimously endorsed Harrison. Lavelle would have none of this and successfully helped convince Bill not to challenge Steve.

In refreshing my memory about Gerald Ford's legacy, I reckoned what he in common with James Brown : They're both godfathers of two American cultural movements.

James Brown, the godfather of soul, funk and the African American pop culture revolution.

Gerald Ford, the godfather of soulless compassionate conservatism.

It's so clear to me now. Ford, called healer of the nation was the poster child for compassionate conservatism.

Yet, as Timothy Noah explains in Why Pardoning Nixon Was Wrong, Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon opened the doors for not only a "teflon president" with Ronald Reagan; but it created the unaccountable monster that is George W. Bush.

Gerald Ford should go down in history as the godfather of the GOP's soulless compassionate conservatism and neo-con corruption.