Tag: Hillary Clinton

You know who is bitter in America? I am. Because shit-kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with, and everybody else had to suffer the consequences!

-Bill Maher

The bubba vote? What a fucking hoot! Newsweek magazine just continues to amaze in their increasingly successful quest to become America’s predominant tabloid shitrag. This week’s cover story is laughingly entitled Obama’s Bubba Gap and flogs the latest Clinton slime machine storyline that the magical mulatto empty suit is failing to attract the same dumb motherfucker demographic who were largely responsible for giving us the eight year running pox on western civilization that is the George W. Bush soft dictatorship.

I take Obama to task on a lot of issues, but it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t acknowledge that he does take some good positions in this campaign.  An example is illustrated in yesterday’s column by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, which states:

The impression that Mr. McCain’s tax talk is all about pandering is reinforced by his proposal for a summer gas tax holiday – a measure that would, in fact, do little to help consumers, although it would boost oil industry profits.

Obama opposes this silly and, ultimately, fairly useless measure.  Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, agrees with McCain.

From Obama’s Website April 27, 2008:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.

God may very well forsake us if we do not change our ways.

I was disturbed today by a comment that I read at dKos this morning. The comment contained a quote, attributed by the comment author ‘broui’ to the Paul Tsongus campaign for President. The quote:

Truth is what people are willing to believe.

This started out as a comment replying to Turkana’s essay, now nestled at the top of the rec list.  It grew so large that I’ve converted it to an essay instead.

Here’s how it began, when addressed to Turk:

As an Obama partisan, though not a Kool-Aid drinker, I have to take issue with some of what you say.  I will present my thoughts in a numbered list, to ease your refutation of them.

Instead, below the jump, I now address it to all of you.

It was inevitable. More than a million and a quarter people turned out yesterday to vote for Hillary Clinton, she won another large swing state by more than two hundred thousand votes, and those champions of democracy in the shrillosphere are again today begging someone to pull the plug on this race. Stop her before she wins again!

As Big Tent Democrat continues to try to get people to understand, demography is everything, in this race. After Clinton’s disastrous, and politically incompetent, final few weeks of February, she has been doing very well. She has been winning large states by mostly solid margins. She has been chipping away at Barack Obama’s popular vote lead. While Obama supporters continue to tout The Math, they continue to ignore the fact that Obama cannot win the nomination on pledged delegates. Once again, repeat after me: the superdelegates will decide the nomination. Obama cannot win without them. Clinton cannot win without them. The pledged delegate metric is only one, and because Clinton cannot catch Obama in that metric, her entire argument rests on the possibility of her ending up with the most popular votes. That’s a reasonable argument, and one that the uncommitted superdelegates are clearly willing to listen to. Of course, for that argument to even become part of the discussion is dependent upon Clinton’s prevailing in the popular vote, and that’s still very much an uphill climb, for her; but it is by no means impossible. And Obama supporters need to understand that.

Last night, Clinton once again denied Obama the knockout punch. Once again, she started with a large lead in the polls, he vastly outspent her, the polls showed him close, and possibly capable of winning, and she then held him off by a significant margin. Once again this took place in a state that was demographically favorable to her. North Carolina is next. For the first time in many weeks, Obama will be on his demographical home turf. In a large state, which could provide him with a large popular vote victory margin. On the same day, he can probably end this race by winning Indiana, which is more demographically favorable to Clinton, but which borders his home state of Illinois. He has, thus far, won every state that borders Illinois, and where Illinois’s friendly media markets have spillover influence. If Obama is going to end this race before June, it will be in two weeks. Win huge in North Carolina, and simply win in Indiana, and Clinton will have no chance of catching him in the popular vote, even including Florida. If Clinton wins Indiana, and somehow pulls off the upset in North Carolina, she will be the nominee. But barring a political disaster for Obama, she won’t win North Carolina. The demographics are too unfavorable. But if she holds down his victory margin, and wins Indiana, her popular vote possibility will remain alive. Once again, the dynamics are obvious. Once again, many will ignore them.

Everyone’s talking about Hillary Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania yesterday over rival Barack Obama.  Ten whole percentage points: may I make whoopee in my pants, now?  It’s still not enough to help the senator supposedly representing New York catch up to the one supposedly representing Illinois in terms of pledged delegates.

Clinton’s broke, trailing her Democratic rival by a small but undeniable margin, and now reduced to threatening to nuke Iran in the event it uses its non-existent nuclear weapons to attack Israel (let me reiterate: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, a finding held by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies–so the fact that Clinton and Obama keep acting as though the opposite is true means neither of them has a fucking clue on anything, and why we’re supposed to trust their judgment when they can’t even call bullshit on the lies being shat out by the Bush-Cheney regime is beyond my comprehension).  Meanwhile, John McCain gets to have the media give him another round of reportorial oral sex for his “decency” in choosing not to run a dirty ad against Obama.

As recently as last month Zogby and other polls were showing the senator pretending to represent Arizona narrowly ahead of either of his Democratic rivals for the dictatorship.  The Republican is using the time between now and the general election to win back his party’s crazed right-wing base, raise money, and plot out his general election strategy.  Do I even need to continue explaining what this all means?

Hillary Clinton wants the presidency so bad she is willing to tear the Democratic Party asunder in order to get it, leaving it too battered and weak to win in November.  She absolutely cannot let it go, cannot allow an upstart like Barack Obama to “steal” what she thinks is hers by inheritance.  And it sure as hell doesn’t help that Obama is too big a pandering, hard-headed phony to be able to seal the deal and win a clear mandate from Democratic voters by embracing the Edwards-Kucinich bloc.  No, he’d rather use them and dump them to the curb, and his piss-poor performance at the last debate proved he, too, is running out of steam.  Like Clinton, he never expected to have to compete this long for the Democratic nomination, and he is becoming dangerously low on ideas.

So no matter how the remaining primaries play out, this fight is going all the way to the convention in August.  All because Hillary Clinton won’t let go of the illusion that the presidency is somehow hers.  If 2008 accomplishes anything, it may be to finally rid Ralph Nader of the blame (wholly undeserved) for destroying any chance Democrats might have had of winning back the White House this century.

Somebody pass me a brick, so I can throw it at my television set the next time I have news coverage of the campaign on.  Oh, wait, I have my steel mace for that.  Never mind.  At any rate, I’d be really grateful for some ideas for how we might avoid this fiasco–because if we can’t, the massive ego of Hillary Clinton is going to rain shit down on all of America.

Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.

Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:

Somebody once told me that yawning was a sign of contempt.  So pardon me while I yawn about the Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana primaries and any other ones that might be coming.  And pardon me while I yawn about those anti-democratic superdelegates and their views  And the polling.  And the delegate counts.  And the diaries about people who won’t vote for Obama.  Or Hillary.  And the diaries about how wonderful Hillary is.  And Obama.  And the speculation about the remaining endorsements (Al Gore, John Edwards, Mr. Magoo).  And the talk about the recent ABC “debate.”  And the talk about the brokered/open convention.  This stuff has turned into something stronger than Sominex^TM.  I’m yawning uncontrollably.  I’m amazed, however, that my yawn apparently isn’t triggering widespread yawns across the country, throughout left Blogsylvania, and beyond.

I have intense, incurable primary fatigue.  My span of attention expired weeks and weeks ago, when it was clear to me that Obama would and should be the nominee and that Hillary was too powerful with insiders and attachment just to stop campaigning.  I don’t care if it was clear to the candidates, because despite the obvious circumstances Hillary isn’t dropping out of anything.  And so, she slogs on.  Slogging tomorrow through Pennsylvania, and on to the next bog.  And those of us in the typing classes, what about us?  She can slog all she wants,but I’m done with this.  Done until there’s a nominee.  Finished until after the convention.  And I don’t want to hear anything more about it until the primary race is over.

I’m yawning so hard my jaw and my temples hurt.  And so I’m going on to the next things.  Of cours, I’m inviting you all to come with me.  In that way this is a Hello Cruel World Diary, a diary in which we step back from the screen and look around at the world outside it.

*Baseball season is underway.  When you watch or listen to the game, it’s about balls and strikes and mostly about making outs.  The strategy has been the same for a century.  Let’s play ball. Going to the ballpark is great.  Even sitting in front of the TV is fine.  Listening on the radio is old school.  And you know what?  They never mention the primaries.  Perfect.

*I’m returning to reading short stories by Jorge Luis Borges.  Two I love are The Zahir and its opposite, The Aleph.  These are particularly good now, because last week, unbeknownst to us in the US Buenos Aires was smothered in smoke.  We didn’t know about this, did we.  Why?  Well, it’s the primary season and our world view (like the Zahir) appears to have become locked on Pennsylvania to the exclusion of the rest of the Universe, especially Argentina, which we ignore even on a good day.

*I’m stepping away from the keyboard and going for a long walk.  With my dog.  Yesterday, I heard a bullfrog for the first time this Spring season.  If I had been sitting at the keyboard, as I am now, I would have missed this.  Or forgotten it.  Or assumed that it was just something else I wasn’t paying attention to.  Yesterday, I was wondering why my dog seemed slightly forlorn.  Maybe it was because she doesn’t give a damn about the primaries and would rather look for rabbits.  And to do that, she prefers to have me along to stir them up.  

*For now, I’m avoiding all essays and diaries about the candidates.  I’m going to go back to reading and writing about other stuff.  Latin America.  Torture.  The law.  Anything but the primaries.

I invite you all to join me.  Enough is certainly enough.  I know I can be a good an excellent Progressive by turning my attention elsewhere.  And I’m going to do just that.

There is still no word regarding the whereabouts of Jamyang Kyi, the Tibetan journalist, singer and author who has been detained by Chinese authorities according to her husband:

Her husband, Lamao Jia, told The Associated Press she was first detained on April 1 and has not been seen since April 7. He said he didn’t know who had taken his wife into custody.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

Described as “apolitical”, Jamyang Kyi focuses on the issues of Tibetan culture and women’s rights. This YouTube gives on a flavor of the type of creative work she produces:

Reporters Without Borders has issued a statement calling on the European Union to intercede on her behalf: http://www.rsf.org/article.php…

While Jamyang Kyi uses the language of song to try to build cultural understanding, Duke University student Grace Wang, from Qingdao, China, attempted to use the language of reconciliation and understanding to bridge the gap between pro-Tibet and pro-China groups on campus.

She is now the victim of a vicious online attack for speaking out.