Liberal Times

While the post menopausal feminists scream about sexism derailing the Hillary Clinton campaign it has just ocurred to me that this is the dream come true for the Democratic party.   In the past few years the Democrats have been losing the white working class male voter to the Republican party because of a perceived (imagined) anti-masculine stance of the Democratic party.  The baby boomer females of the Clinton brigade have been very publicly screaming, crying, and gnashing their teeth about (completely imagined) sexism of the Democrats for having the audacity to choose a man over a woman.

Meanwhile the media cameras roll, and the 24 hour news networks drool at the footage of these crazies.  But how does this play out to working class white men?  Undoubtedly, having been beaten over the head for years by the same ironically sexist women of the second wave feminists, are taking not that the Democratic party is the party of manly sexism.  These under informed men are seeing Obama as one of the guys, a hero to the preservation of masculinity in the face of a shrill oponent. 

Keep it up baby boomin’ harpies.  You’re going to put Obama in office by giving Democrats the ability to recapture the “NASCAR dad.”

Meanwhile those of us who use our brains…

Both of the candidates fought hard to win. Hillary lost a FAIR fight to a better oponnent. Perhaps if Hillary had done her DUE DILIGENCE on the IRAQ vote (among others) she would be our nominee today. While many women scream “this is sexism” I’m left rolling my eyes at their sophmoric sprint to victimhood. It isn’t sexism, it’s a prinicpled stand against those who got us into this war. Hillary Clinton had the chance to vote against the Iraq resolution, she didn’t. In what is arguably the single most important vote a senator can make (whether or not to give the president war powers) she failed utterly and completely. The same day that Bush first surfaced the WMD claim, linked to the Nigerian yellow cake documents, those same documents were completely discredited in the liberal blogs used verifiable sources. If the liberal blogs knew it, the DNC knew it, and the Senators undoubtedly had that information available to them too.

So what you say? “Due Diligence, smiligence, she was being smart politically!” Smart… politically… with human lives, both our own, and our imagined enemies, to be destroyed by such a vote. Political expedience is NOT a reason to agree to the murder, death, and pillaging of an entire nation. As we saw all too many times in this campaign, political expedience trumped well thought out policies and prinicipled stands.

To vote for Clinton simply because she is female would have betrayed the cause of feminism by placing an incompetent, decietful, liar as the head of the movement. I wouldn’t wish that on any group, and certainly not on our country as a whole.

Is blaming Hillary for a damaged Obama sexist?

I think Obama supporters would be correct to point a finger at Hillary if he wins in the election.

How so?  How could I possibly think this?

Here in California we had a gubernatorial primary season that wasn’t all too different from what just played out nationally for the Democratic presidential primary.

Here we had a Republican nominee, and then we had a Democratic front runner who was dogged to death by the second place man.  The Democratic front runner was run down with negative ads, and had his coffers empty trying to put up an adequate defense.  After the gubernatorial primary we had a wounded Democrat against Arnold (who had ABYSMAL polls at this point.)  Arnold had a war chest that the Dem no longer had because of the primary fighting.  By the time election day came around the Democrat was being pummeled daily by ads paid for by Arnold, with the Democrat broke and unable to pay for his own set of ads.

So yes, I’ll be pointing a finger at Hillary if Obama loses.  It won’t be because she is female, it’ll be because she went whole cloth negative against a fellow Democrat.  The republicans dream of having that much time to stick a “meme” into the minds of middle America and HRC’s campaign laid the ground work.

Obama is the nominee!

Last night I watched Hillary Clinton’s adviser Terry McAuliffe make an ass of himself on the daily show. Since the show is taped at 6pm Terry wasn’t yet free to talk the way he would at 11pm (when the show airs) after Hillary would give her “soft comedown” speech. At one point Stewart asks Terry “what would 6 o’clock Terry say to 11 o’clock Terry?”

Terry responds: “Congratulations nominee Hillary Clinton.”

To which there is a silence from the audience, followed by gasps of disbelief, followed by boos. It was one of those precious moments I watched over and over, and you get to see it too!!! Hooray:

Wasn’t that awkward?! After Terry had left the stage and the show had come back from commercial Jon stated he was still recovering from that one.

Hillary to announce suspension on Friday.

Hillary the clueless has finally decided to drop out of the race it seems. The media is claiming she’ll be “suspending” her campaign on Saturday.

Meanwhile…

Hillary has begun fishing for the VP spot on the Obama ticket. While she’d obviously make a great attack dog, I’m not sure I want somebody with such terrible judgment anywhere near the white house. What’s that you say? You don’t know what terrible judgement I could be talking about?

This is the end… or is it?

California Gay Marriages To Take Place June 16, 5pm

Apparently city hall is looking for volunteers to begin deputize for officiating marriages! Right on!

Many thanks to Mayor Newsom and the city of San Francisco for starting this avalanche.

Last year at Burning Man sometime during the middle of the week there was an amazing drag show put on at the Center Camp Cafe. This was one of the highlights of Burning Man 2007 for me. This performer absolutely owned the stage and pulled the audience along with him, all while singing live!

Good old Texas Polygamists take on a bewigged Robin Roberts on Good Morning America.

The words “It’s our ranch, it’s our home” are going to be stuck in my head for days. The polygamist wives really could be a musical group.

From the SFgate in a story on how San Francisco got Obama into trouble:

Republican commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan huffed on Monday that Obama’s comments came “behind closed doors to the Chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.”

Chablis?! Why the fuck would the elite be drinking chablis?  SERIOUSLY.  Is it possible a cheap table wine like chablis is “elite” to gas bags like Pat Buchanan?   I bet he thinks boxed wine as an exotic wine reserved for the barons of the new gilded age. 

And… brie?!  Okay, brie is common.  It’s about as common as you can get without being swiss, jack or cheddar.  Camembert, maybe…

Emptywheel has caught the Big Scoop that ABC News forgot to notice in their own interview of President Bush.

So ABC News had an exclusive interview and got a pretty important scoop last night. You may have heard about it: George Bush, a man who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, admitted (with zero shame) that he approved of the meetings at which his top advisors discussed and approved the excruciating details of torture.

“And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” - GW Bush

Emptywheel then tries to locate any major news outlet’s mention of this shocking revelation that our President admitted to approving torture. Unsurprisingly the media is silent, preferring human interest stories about dogs finding their way to their master’s funeral to the story of the corruption of our democracy.

In this modern era of corporate media ownership and relaxed FCC rules our country’s major network news, and cable news stations are run by the entertainment divisions rather than independent news divisions. The result is that rather than reporting on the serious matters that a citizenry need to know about in order to make informed votes we are treated to stories of wayward dogs, Paris Hilton’s latest encounter with the justice system, and other completely unimportant garbage.

Our grand democracy is failing because the fat cats who run the corporations are more concerned about filling their pockets with cash than filling the heads of the citizens with facts. The sad thing is these companies have a mandate to inform and perform a act of public service in order to receive the licensing to broadcast. A republican run FCC though well never enforce such a mandate, it serves them too well to have an uninformed populace.

Watch the entire first episode of Season 4 BSG:

First: I am sympathetic to the Tibetan cause.

Now that I’ve stated that, I’d like to point out that the Olympics, with their 1000 year ancient history served as a place for humanity to celebrate the best of it’s own nature. The original games were a testament to the perfection of the human form as created by the Greek gods. Wars were stopped in honor of the Olympiad. Today the games are a world wide event where every nation puts forward their best and strongest. It serves as a competition and showcase of the fitness of the human form, and also an opportunity for good will between ALL people on this planet.

Sponsored, or not, paid or not, commercialized, or not, by the media corporations the event is a tradition in which we put aside our differences for a few weeks and come together as human beings.

As a liberal I’m saddened by the protests in Paris and London where it is obvious the protesters have lost sight of what their goals are.  The desire to violently protest the actions of China in Tibet over shadows the need to participate and celebrate in the ONE event our planet has that brings EVERY nation together in good will, friendship, and healthy sportsmanship.

The matters of China and Tibet are serious, too serious for the petty display of anger around an event that has nothing to do with Tibet, and everything to do with world peace.  It was with that in mind that I ask those of you who do participate tomorrow to refrain from disturbing those who carry the torch for this unique and wonderful tradition that places all of humanity on the same stage.  That torch is not the Chinese torch, it is the Olympic torch and should be treated with the same respect that the ideals of the original founders of the Olympics had when the games first came into existence.

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From Wikipedia:

The Olympic Flame is lit in Olympia and brought to the host city by runners carrying the torch in relay. There it plays an important role in the opening ceremonies. Though the torch fire has been around since 1928, the relay was introduced in 1936. On April 7, 2008, for the first time in history, the Olympic Flame was extinguished in Paris, due to protests against the host nation - China.[40]

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