Politics – Page 12 – The Daily Brief

Popcorn

02. June 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, sarcasm, World

Oh, but to have the popcorn concession, as we observe the latest developments in this 2008 political season, as the elementals of ebony and ovary collide. Really, it’s like the clash between the gingham cat and the calico dog – they’ll be nothing but little shreds left. Or might it be like matter and anti-matter – nothing left but a little smoking hole in the ground. How the various partisan factions of the Democrat party will ever be able to work together after all the free-flowing animus is beyond me. And I’ll have my popcorn with a teensy bit of salt, please.

What to say about Her Perhaps Not Quite So Inevitableness? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There will be a female President of this US of A in the near future, but I never invested any of my faith that she would be the one. It has annoyed me no end over the last couple of years, the blanket assumption that because she is a woman of certain age, as I am, that of course I would vote for her, strike a blow against the patriarchy, and for equal rights and anyway aren’t we entitled to have one of our own elected to the highest office in the land? Er… no.

I might have, once. Say, if she had divorced that two-timer she was married to, as soon as they moved out of the White House, and build a political career on her own, and on her own accomplishments. And if I had a lobotomy, or spent the last thirty years in a patchouli scented haze, re-living the glory days of the 60s. But I didn’t. I don’t do entitlement politics. I do accomplishments; Real accomplishments, not something jiggered up in an attempt to meet some vague ideological component or for a crowd to cheer at.

About the one positive thing you can say about Her Perhaps Maybe Inevitableness is that just about all the dirt ever on her has been out there for decades, and pretty carefully sifted through. If she is to be the Democratic nominee, AKA The Last One Standing after the convention, we can be pretty certain of there being no startling new developments. All the existing well-known dirt would be pretty well sifted again over the next five months, but I can’t visualize anything new and startling emerging.

This cannot be said of The Fresh Prince of Illinois. B. Obama, he of the middle name which can’t be mentioned, he of the thin resume and even thinner skin, nourished and groomed by the Chicago political machine and led before us, the Chosen One himself, hailed by the hosannas of the elite, the trendy, the daring… and also the Europeans. (Note to Euro political thinkers – umm, many of us have ancestors who left Europe to get away from people like you. Your recommendation in this respect is kind of a kiss of death. It’s like that letter-writing campaign during the last election, where Guardian readers were encouraged to write personal letters to American voters encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. )

As of this weekend, Sen. Obama has done a U-turn and departed his church of twenty years; that very trendy, large Chicago church with the charismatic and very popular black liberation theologist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright… whose fulminations from the pulpit (handily recorded and originally distributed by the church itself !) did not strike quite the same note with the larger public. Observers of the current election scene had wondered for weeks if Obama really believed various of the Reverend Wrights’s racist fantasies – in which case he is belying his own words about racial healing – or did he just go along with it all because it was politically useful – in which case he is just another cynical, grubby politician, whoring after votes and influence. Guess that question has been answered.

Considering all the people who have now been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign – the Fresh Prince’s white grandmother, various staff members, the Reverend Wright and now his church – one hopes that sucker has wheels on it like a monster truck. I am sure there will be more, even without the rumored recording of Mrs. Obama saying quite unfortunate and impolitic things. I have the impression that the Obamas and their circle live very circumscribed lives, an echo chamber of their own making. They appear to have no notion of how appalling, ham-fisted or just dim-witted some of their off-the-cuff remarks sound to the larger world outside their little bubble.

I rather miss Teresa Kerry, as the campaign season gets into full swing! I despised her husband, but at least she seemed to be a quirky, intelligent, interesting woman and a fairly experienced political wife. Michelle Obama just appears as a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement. I can imagine her behaving appallingly and when called on it, blaming it all on teh racism! Straw-person argument, I know. But I have run into women like that in real life. In interviews and speeches she comes off as just that sort of woman.

Oh, yeah – interesting convention coming up. Interesting election season too. Pass the popcorn.

(Later – Additional thoughts from Cassandra at Villanous Company)

SNIRK!

30. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun With Islam, General Nonsense, Iran, Politics

Robert Ferrigno on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Usually I hope that Robert is just kidding. In this case, I hope he’s not.

MCain on SNL

20. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics, That's Entertainment!

Senator McCain showed up on SNL this weekend, dropping by Weekend Update and spoofing a political ad. Apparently, some on the far right have determined that “it’s beneath the dignity of the office he aspires to.” He’s pissed off Ingraham? Point John McCain.

This is just me, and I don’t claim to be a conservative, other than I’m more conservative than most in the “mainstream” left, but I think that appearance can’t do anything but help and I’ll tell you why.

Back in the fall of 1996, AFTER the general election, Bob Dole appeared on SNL. I remember looking over at Beautiful Wife and asking, “Where the HELL was THAT guy when the election was going on?” Bob Dole on the campaign trail, wooden and lifeless. Bob Dole on SNL, relaxed, smiling, having a good time, with a vibrant personality. McCain on the Campaign trail; not able to tell the difference between Iraq and Iran, kind of stuffy, taking shots at Obama’s war policy, not paying a lot of attention to Clinton. McCain on SNL; Giving “advice” to the democrats, urging them to not pick a nominee until the last possible second, relatively good timing, sporting something resembling a genuine grin.

Like it or not, the Presidential race is mostly a personality contest. And yes, I hate agreeing with Bill O’Reilly but even a broken clock etc.. How else do you explain eight years of Bill Clinton? How do you begin to explain Jimmy Carter? How did George W. Bush defeat Al Gore? Actually, Al Gore defeated himself by being such a condescending shmuck during the debates…as spoofed by…you guessed it…Saturday Night Live. John Kerry? Well, he’s John Kerry and I think I would have voted for Bill Clinton again before I voted for John Kerry, but that just proves my point.

Once the dems finally get around to picking their candidate, which I’m assuming will be Senator Obama once Senator Clinton gets dragged away kicking and screaming and trying to gnaw through her leather straps, Senator McCain is going to need all the personal goodwill he can get. Senator Obama is like-able, he’s a superior speaker, he looks young and relaxed on television, and I’m guessing he’s going to slaughter Senator McCain in any debates. Senator Obama may very well be wrong on every important issue that this country is facing, and I don’t concede that sweeping of a statement but he’s going to look and sound magnificent. Senator McCain needs to have something in his personality account. Is SNL enough? Nope. Is it a good start? Yep. Do I think he’s going to be our next President? I don’t know…which makes this all the more fun.

Political Blood Sports

06. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, Rant, sarcasm

Well, really, isn’t that what it is turning into, what with Her Inevitableness and The Fresh Prince of Chicago locked in a knock-down, drag-out grudge-match to the death. I can hardly wait for the showdown at the convention – this is going to get really interesting, in the sense of slow down and look at the carnage on the highway sort of interesting.

There is so much to dislike about both of them – who would have thought that a young and doe-eyed political neophyte, fresh from the mills of the Chicago political-machine could exhibit a collection of such embarrassing associates, unfortunate missteps and evidence of obvious wheeling and dealing. It’s a fascinating – in the forensic sense – collection of soiled laundry. And Her (perhaps) Inevitableness has been assembling her own vast collection for twenty years, so all hail the ambitious newcomer! Each has a spouse which may prove to be just as much of a millstone – the serial sexual harasser against the BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement and injury. Yep, the convention is going to be a cage match. I predict blood, inside and out, before and especially after the fans of whoever doesn’t get The Big Nod will be extremely resentful.

It’s too much to hope for, that the delegates wander in the way of a ration of sense and nominate a compromise third candidate. Nope, never happen, although it’s been suggested – laughingly I am sure – that the Goricle himself would nobly put himself in the way of such an effort.

All kidding aside, I don’t think that Obama himself had any idea of how swiftly and how completely the Reverend Wrights’ inflammatory sermons would percolate through the national media and the body politic, or how absolutely offensive that ordinary people outside the holy environs of his immediate circle would find them. And they are offensive; I don’t care how many ways you slice and dice it. I am a fairly devout and intermittently observant mainstream Christian; any white minister preaching the Reverend Wrights’ line from the pulpit would have been disowned from a mainstream church so fast his clerical collar would have spun around his neck like a horseshoe flung towards a stake. There’s a lot to be said for the “flip” theory – that is, reverse the colors (or the genders) involved in any controversy and see if it still seems fair to you. The Fresh Prince worshipped for twenty years and took as his mentor a racist and demagogic nut-case. Deal, ‘kay? So we’ve started a dialogue about race in America in the 21st century – not quite the one expected, but as I said – deal.

I’m not even getting into the question of Obama’s association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers, except to note that damn-it, wonï¿½t the Sixties ever die? What do we have to do, bury that low dishonest decade at the crossroads with an ash stake through its heart? This picture says about all that you have to know about Bill Ayers, except to note that the advance publicity about his memoir – from which this local story derives – got lost in all the news coverage about 9-11. Bet he cried into his Chablis for months; how dare a bunch of Islamic fundies ruin his carefully laid publicity campaign about the golden days of ‘fighting the power”?!

Yep, it’s going to be an interesting couple of months. I’m going to need a couple of hundred pounds of popcorn just to be able to deal with it all.

(Link courtesy of Rantburg, my source for all that is sarky and cynical)

May Day

01. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Politics

An essay from Gerard Vanderleun, for the first day of May. “The Banality of Sedition”. (Link courtesy of da Blogfaddah)

In all of my life, I only met people who had run away from communism and I met them by the score, starting in kindergarden. I never met anyone who packed up their bags and their copy of ‘Das Kapital’ and ran deliberatly towards it. And that counts the handful of college Marxists that I knew.

Obamania Part Two

29. March 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics

(Part one is here)
As was noted by a number of other bloggers and commenters, one doesn’t usually have a choice about your relations. Parents, cousins, grandparents and all; you’re stuck with them, as embarrassing as they are. Friends or spouses, business partners or clergy — those we choose — and we are known for good or ill by the company that we keep. Barack Obama’s chosen clergyman and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has been shouting pernicious and venomous nonsense from the pulpit, apparently to great applause, every Sunday for twenty years. From this distance, he sounds too much like a black version of Fred Phelps for my taste. Black racism ought to be just as much the political kiss of death as white racism.

And perhaps it is – since well-meaning people of pallor seem to be fed to their back teeth with having “you racist!” screamed at them, every time they voice a mild criticism of controversial mayors like Ray Nagin and Marion Barry, or buffoons like Al Sharpton – or any one of those other race-card playing luminaries, who seem to have no more qualifications for the position they hold other than a whip-lash inducing swiftness in accusing critics of racism. Here we are in this year 2008; at least forty years since casual social racism was acceptable in most circles, more than that since racial segregation was the law of the land, sixty years since it was the common practice of the military, a hundred and forty since chattel slavery was outlawed utterly – well, really, what better time to have a conversation about race and racism in American society? Even if it is a rather academic discussion; most of the people who are not paid to care about racial relations simply don’t care all that much. They just get on with living and working.

So here’s the ultimate bottom line: give or take a couple of points either way, the percentage of Americans identified as ‘black’ lingers somewhere about in the low teens. A politician who has made a career about being ‘black’ and being the ‘great black hope’ just is not going to get much traction nationally, even if he or she can get all of that ‘black’ block to vote for them. They have to appeal to everyone else in the body politic, and a great many of them, too. Kicking a white, or Hispanic or Asian voter in the teeth in order to make points with the black constituency on Sunday, and then turning around and asking those white, or Hispanic or Asian voters to vote for you on Monday isn’t going to work all that well. It’s why Jesse Jackson never got vary far with any of his bids for national office. Considering his established track record, one really couldn’t picture him kissing Anglo babies or eating breakfast tacos on the South Side with much enthusiasm.

A serious candidate for higher office has to be able to do that – just like a woman seeking higher political office cannot be too closely identified as a radical feminist. You can’t make your initial appeal to the angry fringe, and then move smoothly on in appealing to the majority, not after spending months or years bashing the very people you are asking to vote for you. It just will not work, as Senator Obama probably already realized. His initial appeal was precisely because he appeared to be a skilled and polished mainstream politician who just happened to have the year-round permanent dark tan. Alas, the association with the Reverend Wright (not to mention his apprenticeship in Chicago machine politics) has revealed him as just another race-card player like Sharpton or Jackson, only with nicer suits and a more polished manner. Pity that. We will have a black president in the near future, but he or she won’t be one of those whose identity and appeal has been built exclusively as a ‘black’ candidate. They will be a candidate whose color is incidental to who they are and what their qualifications are; someone from the mainstream, someone like Colin Powell, or like the late mayor of Los Angeles, Ed Bradley.

(Later: amusing video from Conservativeintelligencer.com, “>here )

Obamania and Spike Lee

23. March 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Politics

(Part one of two)

An age ago when I had to keep closer track of what currently bubbled up to the top of popular culture and remained there as a sort of curdled froth, suitable for generating one-liners for whatever radio show I was doing for Armed Forces Radio, I read a long interview with Spike Lee. This would have been about the time that he floated into everyone’s cultural consciousness as a specifically black filmmaker, with She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing; a new fresh voice with a quirky and nuanced take on being black in America. It was a revealing interview which left me shaking my head, because it seemed to me that Mr. Lee was animated by a deeply held conviction that the American establishment and white people everywhere were coldly, malevolently and persistently dedicated with every fiber of their being and every hour of every day, to the sole objective of “keeping the black man down.” It was the top item on the agenda at every business meeting, every political gathering, and the topic of fevered discussion at every dinner table and whispered in every cloakroom, yea verily, wherever where white Americans gathered – there was the grand conspiracy to ruin the black American community. Or at least make them have a crappy day.

I couldn’t at that time say much about what went on at political and business meetings – unless it was anything like commanders’ calls or unit staff meetings. But I could speak rather frankly about what went around the dinner tables of white folk in America; being, to the best of my knowledge (and a look in the mirror confirms this) a person of decided pallor. Yep – as far as I can tell, even onto Granny Jessie’s farthest ancestral generation in this United States (which dated to 1670 something – all the other ancestors were comparatively recent arrivals) they were all white. Anglo. WASP. Whatever. Family was white, neighborhood mostly but not exclusively white working class (with lashings of Japanese, Hispanic, European Jewish), schools integrated but mostly white (ditto), churches mostly the white. Until I joined the Air Force, I swam in a pool of whiteness. After that point, I had quantities of friends, fellow barracks rats, NCOs, commanders, neighbors with, as one of them put it, a year-round very dark tan. But I could confidently say that white malevolence toward blacks – which Spike Lee took as a given as being ubiquitous and central to white life as Jello salads with crushed pineapple in them at Lutheran church pot-luck suppers – was an issue so far off the table that it wasn’t even in the same room.

It just never came up – well, except maybe at school, and in discussions of the civil rights movement; and in that venue I recall those others present rather mildly wished those black protestors well. Of course, segregation was not a good thing, racially-based poll taxes and tests, siccing police dogs on perfectly legitimate protest marches, or midnight lynchings; none of those things were approved of among those people I knew growing up. Separate drinking fountains, or separate but equal anything else were seen as pretty ridiculous. People ought to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin; an eminently reasonable proposition, then and now. I was left shaking my head thinking that Spike Lee would be terribly distressed to know that there wasn’t any grand, overarching institutional malevolence towards blacks on the part of whites.

How deflating it would be for him to learn that there were only varying degrees of disinterest. But if it filled something in his life to believe so, to paint up his fellow citizens as unrelenting and tireless persecutors; it’s a free country. You’re free to believe whatever idiocy you choose – in the full knowledge that such beliefs say more about the believer than it does about those he believes it of. If Spike Lee and other movie people want to go wandering in their own fantasy-land, god knows they have enough company. It’s not called Hollywierd for nothing. The political realm is another matter.

(Part Two – the Toxic Reverend Wright to follow)

Obamania Part One

21. March 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, World

Interesting link, here.
My own thoughts on this…later. Interesting week, in the sense of that Chinese proverb.

Ebony and Ovary

13. March 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, World

Oh, my goodness gracious me, the presidential-race politicking is just betting more and more engrossing, in that tacky drive-by on the high-way and slow down to take a look at the interestingly arrayed wreckage sort of way. Honestly, as an independent-tending-to-the-Republican side of the political side of the scale for the purposes of this particular race, I am a mere interested spectator to the machinations of the Democratic Party side of the houseï¿½ rather in the sense of a spectator in the seats of the ancient Roman Coliseum was to a show on the sands down below to a match pitting a team with nets and tridents against a team with swords. There will be blood. Just not sure at this point who will be left standing, to receive the thumb-up or thumbs-down at the end of it all. Or how many corpses will be left strewn across the sand.

Yeah, well – I’ve beaten that imagery into the ground – ooohh, now we have a comic interval, with the Spitzer-fest. A prominent crusading New York DA, who made his political bones (and strewed his path lavishly with the bones of others, through strategic leaks to a compliant media) on prosecuting crime! Prostitution Rings! Wall Street White Collar Insider! Hoist on his own petard, stewed in his own juice! Great heaping plates of just desserts, just entrees, just salad course! All the way to the governors mansion on his record (and his family money) but wow – usually my dread is that someone this spectacularly big of a hypocrite and all around a-hole is a Texan. Thanks, New York – this one is all yours! Is he any sort of relation to crusading DA Mike Nifong of infamous Duke University rape case memory? Pity the wife doesn’t have the nerve of some wronged Texas wives- she just appears to be too lady-like to kick him out of the house, loot the bank account and run him over a couple of times in the parking lot with her BMW.

Eh, well – the political season is young, yet. Iï¿½d have had a lot more respect for Her Inevitableness – er, Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton if she had done something along those lines to demonstrate her displeasure after The Big He had confessed to his extra-curricular antics in the Oval Office. Sorry, it’s not a shock to me to learn that big men in high political places might be tempted to play hide the salam with women not their legal spouse. I just wish that if they must, they would have better **$#^!#!!! judgment about who they do it with. And that perhaps their spouses might be just pissed off enough about being paraded out for the big ‘stand by your man’ finale. Sorry, I don’t mind sex – it’s the stupidity that I canï¿½t make allowances for.

So, the Fresh Prince of Illinois has for two decades attended a church and accepted the spiritual guidance of a minister who is given to saying things like this in the pulpit of a Sunday morning. Hooo-kay – is he some sort of weird kin to Fred Phelps? So much for the appearance of having moved beyond race in this happy shiny 21st century America. At this point, the great insert-whatever-here just looks like Al Sharpton with nicer suits and a bit more polish to him. Note to Sen. O-B.: the clue to being the first ‘black’ whatever in America, is not to be ‘black’. It’s to be – American. Any message, any person in your campaign that counters that impression does not play well, outside whatever bubble you may have been playing in heretofore.

Let the games begin. It’s gonna get very interesting, if this week has been any indication.

(link courtesy of Roger Simon, and practically everyone else who has been linking to the ABC report all day. Note â€“ this intelligence about Sen. Oâ€™Bamaâ€™s church has been kicking around for a bit in the conservative blogosphere, so it shouldnâ€™t be too much of a surprise)

Question of the Day (080307)

08. March 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Cry Wolf, Fun With Islam, Politics

Is it just me, or does the current news of Al Queda looking to attack America again seem just a little too convenient? I mean, I assume that they’re always looking for a way to hit us again, but to have it make “the news,” during an election year?

Maybe I’m being cynical, but this just seems to be a bit too convenient for the Republicans and it’s a bad idea if that’s what they’re thinking.

I know we’re facing an ongoing threat but let’s keep that perspective. Dragging out that threat when it’s politically convenient is even more cynical, and it’s insulting.

That Didn’t Take Long

21. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

For the past few weeks, I’ve been considering voting for Barack Obama. Thought it would be nice to have a President who could put a full paragraph together without making words up to express himself. Thought maybe four years of an inexperienced executive with a vision might be good for the country. Shake things up a bit. The problem is, I started paying attention to his campaign and started reading some off the political blogs again. Not many, just a few. In the past two days the folks on the right have jumped all over Michelle Obama for a couple of sound bites:

Tues, Feb 19:

What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.

Okay…I know that others have already beat this thing into the ground and some of the comments I’ve seen on blogs and heard on the news have been over the top when it comes to beating this lady up. Let’s just keep to the words she said. She’s most proud of us when we’re hungry for change. Hmmm. I’ve been proud of our country many times in my adult life, not so much when we’ve been hungry for change, but when we’ve faced adversity and come together to overcome it. I haven’t been excited about “change” since Boyo got out of diapers, and that was because I could stop changing. Regardless of what she was saying or trying to say, it was really a dumb thing to say if you’re trying to pull in the center or just right of center.

And then there’s this bit from a speech she gave at UCLA:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Again…I’m not going to go as far as the far right is taking this, but come ON. I admit, that on some level, especially talking to a college crowd, it’s inspiring. Give the kids some direction. However (comma) on another level, for someone who wants less government in their lives, it’s just plain creepy. This isn’t JFK having me ask myself what I can do for my country, this is our president “demanding” that I shed my cynicism and “never allow(ing)” me to go back to my life as usual? Really?! Ummm, with all due respect, now that I’m a civilian again, I’m not that interested in my president demanding anything of me, thanks though.

Senator Obama is right. Words are important. “Hope” and “change” are powerful words. They’ve taken him very far. The problem I think, is that the Senator’s wife is giving us a peek behind the curtain of hope and change and some of us aren’t as hopeful or eager for that kind of change.

Saw A Great Bumper Sticker

19. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

“Monica Lewinski’s ex-boyfriend’s wife for President!”

It’s just so wrong that it makes me giggle.

Rock and Hard Place

18. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, World

The run-up to this presidential election has a horrid fascination about it, kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We have on one side, Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois, in the words of a recent blog commenter, vigorously throwing melanin and ovaries at each other. It would be funny, if not for the sure and certain knowledge that one of them will be the Democrat’s anointed by convention time. And also that our grandees of the conventional media establishment will have pulled themselves together by that time and tied a big best-of-show ribbon around the neck of one or the other. Never mind that half the MSM are at present going all wobbly-in-the-knees for Mr. Obama and the other half are indignantly insisting that there is nothing wrong, nothing the least bit wrong with the spouse of a two-term president waltzing into the White House for a term of her own, born up on a rising tide of her previous experience there.

Me, I am left relatively unmoved by the dreaminess, charisma, vision and whatever of Mr. Obana. Like P.O’Rourke, I consider the desire to adore a head of state, or any prospective applicants for that office, to be a grim transgression against republicanism (Small r there, meaning the system of government, not the actual political party). I am also left similarly unmoved by the notion that just because Her Inevitableness is a woman of certain age, with all that long memory of feminism in the last quarter of the last century, that OF COURSE I am going to vote for her. Fight the Patriarchy, the glass ceiling, sisterhood is powerful! Umm, no. Sorry; this is not Argentina and she is not Eva Bloody Peron. Frankly, the thought of Bill “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” Clinton prowling the corridors of the White House trolling for interns – yet again, sort of makes my skin crawl. I would have respected Her Inevitableness so much more if she had dumped his sorry ass, after L’Affaire Monica. And dumped it with vigor and sufficient force to achieve low orbit

On the other side; not much better, really; either Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani would have worked for me. I could have voted for either one without too much cringing – but alas, neither had the stamina to hold out long enough to be a serious contender. Which leaves me with John McCain; and I keep thinking I ought to be more enthusiastic about that. Way back in the primordial dark of the 2000 primary season, I had rather liked his candidacy, and held considerable of a grudge against GWB for certain dirty tricks pulled against McCain in the South Carolina primary. So, the man has a good shot at the Republican nomination now – and I ought to feel better about that. But he has a long record in public life, he is a cranky maverick with a bad temper and has gotten into political bed with some pretty unsavory people…so, who knows?

God knows, I don’t. All I can do come this November is to walk into the voting booth and vote for the one that I think is the least worst.

And then I remember – and hope! Even given that the worst of the three takes the oath of office next January. It’s only four years. God knows, we should be able to survive. I mean, we got through the presidency of that blob of vacuous sanctimony known as Jimmy Carter, even if we are still cleaning up some of the mess from his term.

YES WE CAN

11. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as divided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, that we are one nation, and together we will begin the next chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea; Yes we can.

Yes, I know it’s hyperbole. There are some that scoff at a music video carrying a campaign message. I know that many people that I respect have called Obama’s campaign a cult of personality. All that being said, the more I read about his platform, and the more I listen to him speak, the more I would prefer this man to anyone else that’s currently in the running.

Hope is not a plan. I know this. After the past six and a half years since 9/11, hope sounds very good. Hope sounds much better than the “realists” and the “pragmatists” who want me to fall back in line every time “GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR” or “ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTAL JIHADISTS” are thrown in my face. Yes, I still believe they’re a threat. Based on what I’ve seen however, I don’t believe we’ve done enough to protect OUR country from those threats. I’m not convinced that stabilizing Iraq and/or Afghanistan is more important than stabilizing US. Hope is not a plan, but striking out in fear is not a strategy.

I haven’t decided who I’m voting for yet. There’s too much time between now and then. If you had told me six months ago that I’d be considering a Democrat who is for universal health care and a scheduled pull out of Iraq to get the Iraqis to start pulling their own crap together, I would have laughed at you. I’m not laughing, I’m thinking.

This is Weird

07. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

The more John McCain talks, the better Barack Obama sounds.

My friends, I know…kind of freaks me out too.

The Irony, Election 2008

05. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

What I love about the current popular wingnuts who are saying they won’t vote, or that they’ll for Clinton before they vote for McCain is that these are the same people who have accused the Dems for years of voting for political gain vs for the good of the country. It just makes me giggle.

VOTE DAMMIT!

05. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Politics

That’s for all the idjits who have decided that they’d rather let someone else make their decisions for them. For all the wingnuts who have decided to not vote at all rather than to vote for McCain. For all the moonbats who are pouting because Kucinich has left the race.

VOTE.

As Heinlein once wrote, “There may not be someone to vote for, but there’s always someone to vote against.”

Dear Fox News,

28. November 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics

Is it really that slow of a news day that your lead story at the top of every hour involves dissecting a speech by Bill Clinton? Is it really news that Bill Clinton did one thing in the 90s and then has changed his story today? This surprises…hands…anyone? It’s like slapping your forehead realizing the Donald Rumsfeld may not have been a strategic genius after all. It’s like thinking, “Hmmm, I think that Fox may not be “fair and balanced.”

A Plague of Politicians

26. November 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

Not even in the election season yet and I am tired of it already. God give me strength to endure. I think I’ll go hide out in the 19th century and review the build-up to the Civil War for a while, refresh my memory of what bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred, knock-down-and-drag out national politics really was like. Puts it all into proper proportion, I guess.

I’ll come out of my burrow in about eight months. I can always hope that there has been a vicious caning, or a duel on the Capitol lawn, something to break up the monotony of leaks and counter-leaks and he-said-she-said gabfests on the Sunday morning political affairs TV shows, and of political pundits knitting their brows and talking through their hats about who is ahead in the polls and why. Newsflash – they’ve got about as much chance of being right as any fool with a Magic 8-Ball.

Seriously, who the hell talks to people who call out of the clear blue and want to take up fifteen minutes of your life asking stupid-ass questions? I don’t – who the hell doesn’t have caller ID and an answering machine?

I will commit myself to two principles: one, I will try and refrain from using sarcastic names for the various hopeful pols parading their various qualifications or lack of same in the 2008 version of our national political game of “Survivor on the Potomic”. Her Thighness, the Silky Pony, Pretty Boy, or the Hildabeast – such derisive nicks shall not cross my keyboard after today. That is just too junior high, so very Maureen Dowd. I promise to stop it at once. Mom raised me with better manners. When someone made a disgraceful display of themselves in public, Mom said that nice people do their best not to notice – or at the very least least, to be gracious about it.

And two: I will most likely not vote for Hillary Clinton, AKA her Inevitableness. I am qualifying this, because you never know. An unforeseen political tectonic spasm in the next few months may throw to the surface some morally disgusting, totally unacceptable, completely charmless dreg with a murky background and apparently bottomless sources of funding… sorry, Senator Kerry, I wasn’t talking about you. Anyway, someone who makes Her Inevitableness appear to be the lesser of two evils. Hard to picture anything short of Cthulhu performing that feat; but so far one thing about her which disinclines me toward her how the legacy media has sort of crowned her in advance. Oh, and the way that some people blithely assume that just because I am a woman, and a small-f-feminist of many years standing that I will of course vote for here.

Think again. Frankly, I think Rudolph Guiliani might do. At least he looks better in a dress.

Questions of the Day (071126)

26. November 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

If you had to go to the polls today, who would you vote for in the primaries? Both of them. When Nov 08 rolls around, who are the two you want to see running against one another? Why?

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been paying a lot of attention. I know, shame on me. I was tuning it out mostly because it was too damn early and now that the primaries are coming up, I find myself playing catch-up. I don’t think I’m alone.

The Meme Pool

31. October 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Politics, Reader Mail, Veteran's Affairs, War

For no particular reason, over last weekend I was re-reading David McCullough’s account of the Johnston Flood, and was struck by the chapter which recounts the aftermath. Scores of reporters for American newspapers leaped upon the story – it wasn’t every day that a thriving industrial town gets wiped out in forty minutes flat by a sudden colossal rush of water from a catastrophic dam failure upstream, not even in the admittedly accident-prone 19th century. Among the first sensational stories reported from the wrecked city were lurid tales of gangs of Hungarian immigrants – the downtrodden and resentful minority du jour of that time and locality – looting the dead and raping the living, and of vigilante justice on the part of other survivors… all of which turned out to have been untrue. Even retractions and corrections afterwards wouldn’t squash those accounts dead in their tracks, and it reminded me of the stories of horrors in the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina; also lurid, also untrue… but widely disseminated, and even when debunked at length, with footnotes, forensic evidence and pictures… still passionately believed.

It all comes down to memes. They are a set of assumptions which have a life of their own through being repeated, especially by organs like the news media and beacons of popular culture like the entertainment industry. Thus propagated, memes are pernicious as nut-grass. No matter how many times they are debunked… still they exist, springing up sturdily in the cracks of public discourse and popular culture. Most of them do little harm, and even boost the subjects’ ego in a small way: Frenchmen are good lovers, New York is the center of American intellectual life, you get the best education at the most expensive college. Others exasperate experts by their persistence, in spite of being debunked, corrected or explained, over and over: Columbus was NOT the first European to believe the world was round, aliens from space did not build the pyramids- or any other monumental structure in the ancient world, and President Bush did not serve up a plastic turkey to the troops.

This morning the Blogfaddah linked to a discussion of l’affaire Beauchamp, which began with the lament “Isn’t it sort of disappointing that one has to spend this much time telling journalists, and journalist’s most ardent supporters, why it is important that journalists don’t lie?” Discussion immediately lurched away from examining what I thought was the point of the essay in question; why the milblog community landed on the New Republic’s fables with such energy and enthusiasm.

The answer is because it was another brick in the wall of meme under current construction, itself is an extension of the one constructed around Vietnam war veterans, which almost without exception painted them as tormented and drug-addled lost souls, riddled with guilt over having committed atrocities, and unable to make anything of their post-service lives. This meme had far more damaging results than just providing a handy stock character for movies, television and news documentaries; it impacted the lives of real veterans, essentially isolating and silencing them. Men and women who had satisfying, productive and well-adjusted lives did not particularly want to be identified as Vietnam war veterans, not if it meant being dismissed as a freaked-out looser.

That is why milboggers came unglued over Beauchamp’s and other fraudulent and malignant stories given credence by self-isolated specimens like Franklin Foer; because it’s being attempted, all over again with a new generation of veterans. Last time, it went unchallenged for decades. By my recollection it took about fifteen years for a TV show to feature a well-adjusted non-traumatized Vietnam veteran hero. It’s not going to happen again, not if we have the ability to forcefully question the individual meme-bricks before the mortar has set. Doesn’t matter that The New Republic is a small-circulation magazine or that some kind of truthiness about the brutalities of war -blah-blah-blah, or that our pop-cult gurus are too damn lazy to work up another set of clichés. This one we’re going to fight on the beach.

A more interesting line of thought is – is there something more than just intellectual laziness and the comfort of slipping into a well-worn track at work here, even if only subconsciously? Could there be something to be gained on one side of the debates about war, Islamic-inspired imperialism, the whole tar-baby of nuclear Iran, if military veterans whose service at the pointy-end-of-the-spear might have given them some particular interest or insight can be easily silenced and isolated… simply by being routinely characterized as ignorant, out-of-control redneck freaks?

Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself, lately. Discuss among yourselves.

Dan, Dan, Dan

20. September 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Stupidity, World

What is it they say; the first time tragedy, second time farce? What do they call it when it was a farce the first time around – only dressed up in the high seriousness of a Searing Sixty Minutes (dum-de-dum-dum!) Expose? Here it comes around again, with Mr. Rather’s suit against CBS News for making him the scapegoat in the whole “not only does the Emperor not have any new clothes he is as nekkid as a jaybird” imbroglio that was the 6o Minutes “scoop”, concerning the so-called finding of some 1973 Texas Air National Guard.

For those of you who spent 2004 in a coma, the memos appeared to give backing to the contention that President Bush spent part of his Air National Guard service AWOL, and that his then-commander (now deceased) was exceeding wroth about this. Unfortunately for CBS News, for 60 Minutes and all of Mr. Rathers’ minions, those documents appear to have been inexpertly forged; a fact that became fairly obvious early on. One can only assume that Mr. Rather and his team desperately wanted them to be authentic, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary. And that they desperately wanted to drop a just-before-Election-Day bomb on the Bush campaign, and didn’t care how thin the evidence was.

Quelle tacky, Mr. Rather, quelle tacky. Kind of makes one wonder about all the other documents uncovered by Sixty Minutes over the years, which made one or two flash appearances on camera and then were gone before anyone could say, “Hey, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!” Ah well, just another reason that legacy media is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her.

Anyway, enough of a stink was raised about this at the time… and now it looks like we are in for another round of slapstick. Dan Rather is going to sue CBS for mishandling the resulting s**tstorm. Cooler and more legally-oriented minds than mine are betting A) that it is just a means of squeezing some more retirement monies out of CBS and B) that if it continues, the process of discovery is going to be embarrassingly revealing and C) Pass the popcorn, it’s a pity they both can’t loose.

Myself, I keep imaging the hostage-taking scene from “Blazing Saddles”… only instead of Cleavon Little holding a gun to his own head and begging for mercy, I’m seeing Ted Baxter (the hamster-brained newscaster from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) holding himself hostage and squeaking “Lemme out of here or the newscaster gets it!”

Oh, yeah… pass the popcorn. I’ll take mine with melted butter, but hold the salt.

(Later: More here from Captain’s Quarters)
Even later: still more giggling and requests for popcorn, here

Memo: Another Bottle of That Whine?

02. September 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Iraq, Politics, War, World

To: Representatives Moran, Tauscher and Porter
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Slimed in the Green Zone

1. Well, my heart pumps pure piss for your pathetic predicament and your wounded sensibilities. Traveling all the way to Iraq, to demonstrate your tender consideration for the troops serving there at the whim of the Bushchimphitler and his eeeeevil war, only to find out that they had your number, short bios and an assortment of your previously reported remarks on the war. What a shocker, eh?

2. Yep, it sure was just another example of the deep-laid plots of the eeeeevil Bushchimphitler and his crafty minions… that troops assembled to meet ‘n greet should actually have read news reports. Really… how damn stupid do you really think the average military member is? Wasn’t it enough of a warning, when John Kerry’s adlibbed comment about dropping out of college and being stuck in Iraq rebounded within twenty-four hours with this priceless repost from troops in-theater?

3. Allow me to break it to you gently, lady and gentlemen; the military mind-set, like that of the Boy Scouts worships at the high altar of preparedness. It is an essential part of the culture to swiftly acquisition and disseminate necessary intelligence about whatever task they are ordered to accomplish. Doesn’t matter if its’ taking Omaha beach, Baghdad or providing the suitable background for a collection of globe-trotting pols burnishing their credentials; be assured that they will do their homework, and come to the party with all the angles covered.

4. Trust me on this also; while there a great many in the military today are apolitical, indifferent, or otherwise un-interested in the current political landscape, many more are intensely interested. They are betting their lives, in a manner of speaking, on their ability to transform Iraq and Afghanistan into something with a closer resemblance to a functioning and fairly democratic nation. Which may yet be possible: South Korea didn’t look like much of a good bet fifty years ago and look at the place now.

5. Finally, this is a wired and interconnected world these days; military bases overseas are not nearly as isolated as they were fifteen, or thirty years ago. That you could innocently assume that what you had said to your constituents or in the halls of power would not reach the ears of those serving in a garrison on the other side of the world indicates that you have not taken this to heart. You assumed that all the good little uniformed peasantry would trot obligingly up and tug their forelocks for their betters, and never mind in the least that your previous remarks could be construed as undermining their mission. I trust that you have been enlightened.

6. Military people do vote, you know. And sometimes their votes even get counted.

Sincerely,
Sgt Mom

Wow, I Really Hate Ted Rall

16. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics, Rant

There are very few people I allow myself to loathe. Loathing’s not good for me. It does them no harm and it takes up space in my already crowded head. I’m down to about a handful of people I can say I truly despise.

Ted Rall is one of them.

Interesting Thought

15. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front, Politics, World

Found at random, though Chicago Boyz…
All we need is time.

If we have time, of course.

The New Aristocracy

03. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Politics, Rant, World

For a people that with a great deal of fanfare and self congratulation threw over a monarch and the accompanying aristocracy over two centuries ago, Americans have displayed an avid interest in the doings of such parties, and a dismaying tendency to genuflect before a patent of nobility and a decorative coat of arms, no matter how dubious. Mark Twain sent up this tendency very aptly, with the Duke and the Dauphin, at a time when fabulously but newly wealthy American families were busy marrying off their spare daughters to impoverished European aristocrats. As a small ‘d’ democrat, and amateur historian who is more often amused by ancestor-worship, I wondered why they would bother: forking over tons of cash for the privilege of being condescended to by the descendents of successful mercenary soldiers, social-climbing whores of both sexes and businessmen whose initial successes were made centuries previous just seemed like a pretty bad trade. But this sort of social game is at least consensual; and the families involved at least got their houses fixed up, or built new ones, and presumably injected a little hybrid vigor into their gene pool. Whatever floats the boat – or the familial pretensions, and it gave good materiel to the likes of Twain, Edith Wharton and Henry James.

The domestic variety of aristo-worship has been around nearly as long in our dear old republic. Or at least since the early days of mass communications, and a voracious and fairly literate readership, many of whom were interested in whatever celebrity tidbits a newspaper editor chose to throw in their direction. No, newspapers in the 19th century were not all the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, or portentous deliberations about this or that great political matter. Quite a lot of the newsprint pages were taken up with pretty much the same fleeting concerns as the newspapers today: horrific crime, dreadful accidents, bad weather, scandalous doings among people who were supposed to have known better, and the doings (scandalous and otherwise) of celebrities. Yes, indeed, Lilly Langtry and Lola Montez, and Sarah Bernhardt (among others) were followed just as avidly by 19th century fandom as Paris Hilton is today, although none of them seem to have been quite as witlessly air-headed, and Lola Montez might have been just as rotten an actress. None of them showed off their whoo-whoo in public anyway, although in private might have been another matter. No, an interest in the doings of silly and aimless celebrities is no more a hazard than an interest in the doings of silly and aimless aristocrats. Such interest meets some kind of human need, sells a great many magazines, and provides amusement to people standing in supermarket checkout lines reading the tab headlines.

I can’t be quite so indifferent and amused by the third sort of American aristocrat, even though one particular clan has a tiresome propensity to overlap with the celebrity class as far as the tabloid covers are concerned. I refer to the Kennedys, of John F. and his ilk, and all their various descendents; they are the most colorful but not the first and least of our political dynasties. Such a family as that of John Adams, the Rooseveldts, the Bushes and Gores and all the rest of them where generation after generation gravitated into elected office or public office have served the nation well – but still, the whole notion of political dynasties in America gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s one step away from a hereditary aristocracy and a bad precedent, operating on the assumption that a recognizable name constitutes entitlement to political office. This bothered me during the 2000 election; frankly I couldn’t see much to choose between either one of the candidates. But these political families have been around for a while, and on balance they’ve probably done us more good service than otherwise.

In one of Lois McMaster Bujould’s Vorkosigan books one of her characters remarks that an egalitarian has no trouble living in an aristocratic society – as long as they can be one of the aristocrats. It’s coming to me that we have become well-stocked around here lately with supposed egalitarians who nonetheless display an unseemly eagerness to secure themselves a high perch from which to lay down the rules for others. This would-be aristocracy runs the whole gamut from well-paid entertainers and journalists, active and retired politicians, to tenured academics and busybodies of every stripe and variety. They all have certain things in common; their personal lives are secure and comfortable, if not downright lavish – but they spent a lot of time in public venues of late urging the rest of us to eschew certain things which they themselves seem to have no intention of giving up.

These Marie Antoniette ‘Let them eat cake’ moments seem to be happening with more frequency. Cheryl Crow’s TP rationing, John Edwards humongous house, lavish travel arrangements and princely fees to make a speech about poverty, the high cost of Prius cars and other “green” accoutrements, intellectuals falling all over themselves rationalizing so-called national leaders like Hugo Chavez, and pricing the working class out of the labor market with docile work-gangs of illegal immigrants. Oh, it goes on and on, and I wonder sometimes in dark moments if such people are like the old Soviet revolutionaries, who overthrew the czar, and then lived in no less privilege and comfort, all the while giving lip service to the ideals of equality. I wonder if in their innermost hearts our would-be aristos wish to demoralize, impoverish and destroy the bumptious, unruly and independent middle class, the rock of any enduring republic. It is almost as if they would prefer a new and docile serf class, who would vote in easily controlled blocs as long as the bread and circuses kept coming – and never talk back to their betters. Who of course, know what is in their best interests. Lately, every time I hear someone sneer at flyover country, or the middle and working class, their taste and preferences in anything, I hear the ghost of Marie Antoniette, and I wonder anew about our new aristocrats.

I Kind of Admire Cindy Sheehan

30. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics

Didn’t expect that out of me did ya?

Let me explain…no…too long…let me sum up. I don’t agree with her views. I find her snuggling up to Chavez just plain disturbing.

What I admire is that when she was attacked by the right, she stuck to her beliefs. Then, when she went after the left and was attacked by the same people who wanted her nominated for sainthood, she still stuck to her beliefs.

What sickens me more than her anti-war views are the personal attacks the woman has had to endure from both sides of the political spectrum. They’ve both found something they can agree on, once she began holding both sides’ feet to the fire, both sides have taken to calling her “attention whore.”

To make things clear, a woman who’s anti war and who’s lost her son to that war and who did her best to end that war so other mothers don’t have to feel the pain of losing a child is now an attention whore.

Because you know, peace is just such a silly thing for anyone to work for. The Democrats want to just end the war by pulling out, but they won’t cut funding to it. The Republicans want to end the war by winning it but don’t seem to be doing anything to actually achieve that goal.

But some Mom who lost her kid in the war is the whore.

I guess I’m just getting more cynical…how exactly does that make sense?

Cross-Posted at Faster Than The World.

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