Either of us can pretty much blanket vouch anything Sadly, No! does (in my case, the only exceptions have mostly to do with China), but this is a particularly magnificent study in presidential shitheadedry and worth reading and savoring, like a fine wine - woody, with a faint savor of maize.

Dear whatever the fuck you Clinton holdouts call yourselves now:

What the fuck are you thinking?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we agree on a number of crucial points - which might well not be true at all, but I feel like being charitable. You agree that the craven effort to slash public services and progressive taxation to the bone are horrific and irresponsible; you agree that the mainstream policy establishment within both parties are essentially an interchangeable set of imperial apologists, and you agree that both the ‘culture war’ and for the most part the war on terror has been a protracted excuse for rolling back the 20th century. (To say nothing of, say, the war on drugs - which seems to be aiming for the 17th.)

Why in the fuck are you expecting this out of Hillary Clinton? Clinton was a life-long conservative until she got into the Oval Office and, as part of the notional role of the First Lady, became a political cipher. The one assignment she was given to fulfill the least ambitious of the fairly few progressive promises her husband made was a miserable failure. (And, for the record, she left the race with a more insurance-oriented healthcare plan than Obama’s.) Her career can be summed up as ‘typical corporate lawyer’ until the point at which she became a Democratic politico out of tribal alignment.

If you’re new to Democratic electoral politics, this is kind of how it happens - unlike the Republicans, open pandering to the hard left is treated mercilessly by the national media and as a result Democrats are pretty reasonably expected to run to the right of how they govern. If you’re not, and you supported Clinton for the same reason I did Obama - that is, looking for a charismatic and effective President to repair the unprecedented damage done to the American government, reputation, and very national psyche by Bush (and avert the possibility of further such damage by McCain) - well, it’s exactly why most of us are voting for him, and I really can’t imagine you falling permanently away from the man over a simple electoral defeat.

And if you supported Clinton in spite of all of that, if you supported a woman whose campaign was run by reactionary FUD-mongers - the same horrible, race-baiting bunch who ran Clinton’s stable in ‘92 - and Mark fucking Penn, don’t lecture us about Zbignew Brzezinski. I’m not prepared to say that Obama accepting the man’s support makes me comfortable, but if you actually read Obama’s (admittedly slim, but fairly consistent) policy output, in focusing pretty heavily on promotion of the general welfare of man rather than the narrow interests of American capital, it alienates him completely from the people you’ve been insisting he’s gonna put in power.

Clinton was a mediocre candidate, she ran a horrible race (contrast Edwards, who was a generally middling candidate whose excellent race forced the campaign, however briefly, to focus on crucial issues rather than idiot scandals and probably saved the entire primary from complete political irrelevance), and now she’s finished. If you really wanted what you’re freaking out on Obama for lacking, you’d have backed Kucinich. The very fact that people out there have somehow decided that it’s useful to have opinions farther to the right during the primary than during the general election is fucking infuriating. If you ever believed in any of this, and I really doubt you do, you’d have done better to, you know, fucking put it out there while everyone else in your campaign was speculating on whether Obama was an inexperienced, unelectable secret Muslim.

Jesus Christ.

On the June 18 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of ABC’s The View, asserted of Sen. Barack Obama: “[I]t bothered me that he seemed for a while more willing to give the fist bump to [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad than our own General [David] Petraeus.” Hasselbeck continued: “It bothers me. It bothers me as a mom. It bothers me as a working woman. It bothers me as a citizen of this country.”

(Via MMFA.)

When the sun rises again today, it’s certain to shine a little bit less brightly - for we have lost not just its worthiest follower but a man who pierced the darkness of vanity and self-righteousness like no other. A world without him to balance out the evil, self-important assholes - the ones who took ‘politically incorrect’ from him, back when it meant something noble, and twisted it into a badge to crown their shameful, petty tribal hate - is going to be just a little bit darker for it.

Parker and Stone and every other dour fascist who TV execs who still don’t get you signed to ride on your coattails are still around, metastasizing, bound for the Medal of Freedom and old-age home that eluded you, punishing us all for our horrible taste while you rot. I like to think you’d find it funny. You always were a motherfucker.

Rest in peace - and here’s to hoping if there’s anything after this life you’ll figure out how to freak ‘em out there, too.

Urgent news for right-wing negro-monitors: chocolate is delightful. It comes in many flavors, all of them delicious, and is appreciated by everyone.

I really never thought I would be in a political dispute over ‘chocolate is delightful’. God knows what else is upside down in that wacky universe of yours.

Djur adds: See this, and also this. The objection to “chocolate city,” in this case and when Ray Nagin referred to New Orleans as such after Hurricane Katrina, is usually justified by claiming the term amounts to reverse racism, but the real motivation is less rational. First, the idea that American cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Washington, and Atlanta could be majority black is terrifying for your average honky racist. Second, to ofays who resent losing the ability to freely use racial slurs in mixed company, a black man using jocular language to describe his brothers is an affront. “If James Brown can be black and proud,” quoth whitey, “why can’t I be white and proud? Why do we have a Black History Month but not a White History Month? If pro is the opposite of con, does that explain why my neighbor’s dogshit is so tangy? Did I just blow your mind or what?”

Of course, I hear this bullshit from professed liberals as well. The answer is simple: there is no white identity outside racism. There is a black identity because of racism. Community among the oppressed is admirable and necessary; community among oppressors is an abomination. As long as the term “chocolate city” has any meaning, it cannot be offensive. Whitey delenda est.

This list will remain relevant until approximately dawn, but as we see the Democratic contest (and, with it, more or less the general up-ticket election) wind to an end (and Clinton’s eternal optimism aside, it’d literally take someone gunning Obama down to prevent his victory now), I’d like to share how I want to see the ticket to look.

Presidential Platform - Primary issues are expanding social programs, funding every educational mandate, expanding access to higher education and progressivizing the tax code, and cutting down on the supply-side/theocratic red tape introduced to the bureaucracy by Bush. Secondary: an effective minimum wage; a strong effort to end the abuse of immigrant labor (legal and illegal); a large cut in pork-barrel spending in the defense sector. Things which should go without saying but which are not really necessarily campaign issues: major investments into and incentives for private development of sustainable growth and energy; an end to the hiring of mercenary contractors; an end to hiring discrimination among translators and other intelligence operatives; some kind of death ray to ward off Italian perfidy.

Oh, and Iraq: The Obama campaign not only needs to end the occupation immediately on winning the Presidency, but in fact should be smuggling individual soldiers out of the country now. Everyone likes a proactive candidate.

Clinton - Clinton’s powerful base of support means that she should play at least some role in the incoming Administration. The problem is that she seems pretty intent on making herself Someone Important - but her entire campaign has been devoted to suggesting that she’s an experienced, forceful national security / foreign policy candidate.

Vice-President would be a mistake - normal VPs are largely ceremonial representatives and the role of the VP on the campaign trail is (a) involuntary, so there are bound to be points scored off the heated primaries; and (b) servile, a sure shot to alienate Clinton’s ferocious supporters among wealthy middle-aged white skags.
While Richardson’s campaign has bent over backwards to emphasize his suitability in that regard (and he was an early Obama supporter), State would seem to be the proper mixture of important and low-profile to fit Clinton into the campaign, and its mandate is indeed national security and foreign relations. Failing that, Defense is a possibility (although it’d be an unorthodox fit); Attorney-General is also a possibility, but it’s also at odds with what I want to see done with the office.

Vice-President - The choice is essentially between Edwards and Richardson; besides those two, it’s anybody’s guess.
Edwards would produce a fairly balanced ticket; while it’s been suggested that ‘elitist’ has been lobbed at both men, it’s worth saying that Edwards struck a nerve of social populism in the South that many assumed to be dead - the media establishment alienates him at its own risk.
On the other hand, Richardson would balance the ticket in a much less conventional but much more meaningful sense: it’d produce a ticket with two ethnic minority members, balanced between the Mideast and Southwest. Richardson on the VP ticket would help offset the Latino community’s generally conservative politics and their strongly favoring Clinton in the primary - and it would provide the Obama campaign with an anchor in the Southwest, something that would help at least somewhat facing that fucking sun-belt lifer.

If the Obama campaign doesn’t use Edwards as VP, it’d seem wise to make him Attorney-General; the office has spent the last two decades being dragged through the mud something horrible, and Edwards has been a consistently trustworthy character in the last two elections. (It’s worth saying, if he was used as VP, that any retrospectives would show him fighting Cheney - and only a McCain/Ahmadinejad ticket would make that look good for the GOP.)  Especially with the unfortunate rise in right-wing survivalists, a basically amiable Attorney General is going to be a must for the next few terms.
As for Richardson - State, probably.

I’ve also suggested that one of the Daily Show people be used as Press Secretary - given that a major prerequisite for the role now seems to be media presence, it’d almost seem fitting to bring a comedian in to do the job. Yes, it’d be terrible seeing progressive idols dragged through the political mud, but really - the office of Press Secretary wasn’t that nasty before Reagan turned the Presidency into a bullshit art.

Miscellaneous - Various other figures could be usefully employed by a Democratic president. Gore should play at least some role in the new administration; Interior would be worth filling with someone visible, and Gore would make a nice fit for the office.

In general, we needed to do this weeks ago - the Democrats need to have a solid base to lay their platform on. It’s worth emphasizing that the Republicans are so dry on ideas they pretty much dredge up interchangeable party flacks to fill vital roles. Just off the top of my head, I’ve filled four cabinet-level positions - and I’ve barely been watching the news.

It’s time to hammer home that the Democrats are the political future of the country, for better or worse. The Republicans have long since abandoned any pretense of loyalty beyond raw, crass avarice; the Democrats are hardly saints, but they occasionally have the desire to do anything that doesn’t involve making the rich richer.

If “momism” hadn’t been claimed already by Philip Wylie, I’d gladly snap it up for this modern cult of the mom. As I insufficiently described in IID’s first post, mom is rising up to replace wife as the default identity of women after feminism gouged away at the latter. This isn’t a critique of motherhood, or even of the slang term “mom” — but I’ve certainly noticed that being a mom implies far more in terms of lifestyle than old-fashioned motherhood.

Here, we see an ideal personification of the Mom — pregnant, young, white, chic yet modest, but with a sufficient dollop of pretended grrl power to keep one’s mom from crying in shame. “No men allowed” in this context doesn’t offer a safe space for women to be women — a goal I wholeheartedly support — but instead a way for women to cooperate in reinforcing their essential separation from but dependence on manhood.

For what it’s worth, this isn’t a comment on “CafeMom” or its members. I toil myself in the abattoir called marketing, and I’m keenly aware of the levels of separation involved. A cursory search of the site yields content ranging from the worst neo-momist trash to simple venting to enlightened commentary on identity on motherhood. I’ll end by linking this thread, which beautifully serves to demonstrate the worst in both male and female socialization — man as a domestically helpless penis-worm, and woman as a long-suffering eunuch for Christ. In this world, man is always doomed to be the pursuer, and woman the pursued; man fucks, and woman is fucked. There’s no place for men (straight, gay, or in between) who want to be fucked, or women (likewise) who want to fuck. As a man who sometimes struggles to keep up with the sexual demands of his partner, I am feminized; as a woman sometimes driven to fits of rage by a bout of abstinence, she is masculinized.

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I’ve a post on pie-throwing in the queue, and I hope to deliver it in a timely manner.

One of my favorite little hobbies is language usage as a sociological instrument, especially political. The topic of dog whistles is especially amusing and diverting to me - but not exactly what I primarily like to look at.

Some words, or some usages of words, are so unusual outside of the context of a political fringe that using them almost immediately identifies you as a member of it, or at least someone who spends time primarily around members of it. This occurs by one of two ways: either it is from popular literature in a certain circle or it is based on a shared ideology that doesn’t really exist outside of that circle. The closer one is to the fringe when learning English (be it as a child or, more prominently, in ESL), the more identifiable one’s politics are this way.

There are a few favorite examples of mine, and I’ll leave aside the growing collection of hobby-horses ridden by over-enthusiastic Slavic neoliberals (’communistic’ and such dated usages clearly denoting a steady diet of Voice of America) for now. My single favorite is the equation to suicide - it’s not a single usage so much as a chain of them (’philosophy/culture/etc. of self-destruction/suicide/etc.’), and it’s very popular among Randroids because Rand herself used it. One of her pithier little bits of nonsense attempts to prove it, and Rand being who she was, you know exactly how this ‘proof’ reads: written with the formal structure and pompous tone of the ancient Greeks the Randies love so much, intending an aura of intellect by cribbing obsessively from these gayest of history’s men and instead falling into ridicule.

To cut it short, she calls capitalism the stuff of man’s nature (invoking Darwin - albeit, and you’ve got to love these people’s relationship with ‘reason’, in a pretty confrontational tenor), considers self-interest vital to survival, and then poses that altruism is self-negation, ergo death.

There is a gaping hole in this argument so simple that only someone with a sexual fetish for the pretenses - that is, that capitalism is reasonable and reasonable self-interest is the only way to survive - could ignore or attempt to work around it. That is: everyone dies. Everyone. Carnegie? Dead, sure. But J.P. Morgan? Also dead. Rockefeller? Dead. The women who made his morning coffee? Dead, and probably later. Bill Gates? Not gonna see 2050.

If you’re religious, and also you have a really warped concept of righteousness, I guess there’s a way around that. But ‘rational’ argument, without recourse to an invisible man who loves the wealthy, fails decisively on this point. If they are cornered with it, they’ll generally gamely struggle for a few minutes before calling everyone else in the room a bunch of suicidal Marxists. And speaking of -ists, there’s another uniquely ideological usage: Day By Day’s brilliant ‘Kantian nihilism’, a phrase that would make any student of philosophy past his sophomore year laugh and which makes no sense outside of the deliciously absurd world of the Randroids - where Kant and nihilists, being mutual enemies of the purely rational St. Ayn, were clearly cut from the same collectivist cloth. (And don’t even get me started on Ayn Rand’s enemies. I’ve got a lot to disagree with Kant about, but her puerile squabble with his legacy over ontology is amazing in its brazen illiteracy - only a peasant who had by some cruelty of fate acquired letters would devote serious energy to slapping at Kant’s nebulous-where-not-banal ontological ramblings, and in doing so think she had given herself the air of a thinker.)

Ah, I could go on about Randroids all day, but that’s not what Djur is paying me for. (Evidently, he is paying me to fight high-powered insiders like Barack Obama and his discouraging lack of a tough foreign policy to fight our homeland’s enemies - probably why I haven’t gotten a check yet.) Allow me to share with you one of my favorite odd usages of the political right: ‘pimp’.

There’s no one specialized form of this, but - true to their hideous nature - the most common one one encounters from wingnuts is ‘welfare pimp’. (I guess some stereotypes die really hard - for instance, all of them if you’re a bigot.) This, which seems to be the horrible, racist ur-form, implies that any politically prominent member of the black community is simply finagling welfare payments for them to ride their lazy race’s decadent, leeching satiation to office. Never mind that in a literal reading of this the only person who could possibly be tarred as a welfare pimp would be history’s most crooked Welfare bureaucrat, for legislators have fairly limited street-level visibility and almost no power over the comings and goings of their local constituency. (Besides the power to get pork funneled - but pork typically being white as the driven snow, you never hear about pork pimps.) This term, which only really makes sense in the first place if one’s definition of ‘pimp’ is ‘cunning and/or exploitative black man’, slowly generalized to imply anyone in the black community doing anything (one heard of ‘disaster pimps’ after Katrina), and later to more general, less specifically racist ends.

I can get behind the usage of ‘pimp’ in a manner so as to imply the pimp to be an exploitative, destructive asshole. And in the Candyland the Republicans inhabit - where you can live like a king on less than $10,000 in a big city, tax cuts increase government revenue, and Party can always find you - anyone basing their political appeal on welfare could indeed be classified as that. But the more general use of the verb to imply any kind of exploitation has to keep in mind that it’s attached to a very, very ugly reality for men, women, and other; black, white, and Jewish; young, old, and fat alike.

You have to be inundated in a world where ‘pimp’ refers to uppity serviles using their limited resources in a shady, devious way to worm their way to the top for the word to completely lose its meaning. It is actively disgusting to refer to a woman pimping her own daughter, and all the more so because the image fixed in many people’s minds of the now-adult Chelsea Clinton is the gangly young girl noted pill enthusiast Rush Limbaugh referred to as a dog. (I remain convinced Oxy is the sort of drug you pop before a high school policy debate in eager anticipation of calling your opponent a statist for refusing to admit ’separation of church and state’ doesn’t appear in the Constitution, but I digress.)

David Shuster is not just an asshole. He’s a crazy, illiterate asshole who let his attachment to the worst political scene in the 20th century override his common sense. Only in the fevered imagination of such a cretin could the standard relationship between a 28-year-old woman and her politically ruthless presidential candidate mother be described using the word ‘pimp’.

Then again, only in that same imagination could the aforementioned mother be considered the same threat to the conservative order of things that the people 'welfare pimp' was shot at represented. I don't know if anyone is ever going to make the vapid beltway heads eat the shit they've been giving rave reviews of for the last eight years, but the optimist in me says they will. I like to think that the plain wrongness of everything they've had to say will eventually bite them in the ass - but then again, I always was a shameless reality pimp.

Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee sweep the Iowa caucuses. Exit polls cite the primary motivator as a desire for “change,” further cementing the nation’s awful stereotype of Iowans as easily-led hayseeds. Next up is New Hampshire, a state so blessedly deranged that John fucking McCain is the man to beat. Dodd and Biden have both apparently dropped out, feeling the change in the wind — no more is it the day of the merely bland honky with suspicious hair.

There’s going to be some entertainment in watching the bloody fight within the Republican party over “conservative” priorities. Obviously, they’d prefer a candidate who slashes taxes as readily as he kills Haji and praises Jesus, but what can be sacrificed? Will the squat little psychopath Giuliani’s white-hot desire to exterminate the Saracen be enough to make up for his crippling association with Jew York? Can a Smithite queer-lover like Romney adequately defend America from the looming threat of dhimmitude, even if his economic record in fell Taxachusetts is admirable? Could Thompson perhaps fit every Arab in the entire world into his baggy, Aqua Velva-scented jowls?

At this point, I’m just half-heartedly pulling for anyone who won’t bomb Iran, which in this post-NIE environment appears to be anyone but Clinton and the Republican war party. A federal subsidy for Oregon hops growers would probably buy my vote, or else I’ll have to switch to Budweiser.

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. I’ve been alternately busy, drunk, and unwell, and Alec has been fucking bears. I hope to get back to a more normal schedule shortly.

Djur was originally going to help me with this one, but when I told him I was writing in favor of more active far-left, beyond-the-base campaigning, he accused me of formenting partisan rancor and class warfare and urged that I refuse to vote for an ‘extremist’ like Clinton. So I’ll be doing this one alone, folks.

There’s a very interesting thesis put forward by libertarian (read: corporatist republican) think-tankers and activists, the Overton Window . Stop right now and read that link; it should be required reading for anyone who cares for the Republic and its future. Come back only once you’re done.

Good stuff, eh? I’m very sorry I had to resort to a link to Daily Kos - or, as some wits would have it, Dago Cossack Queeratorium - but there you go. The right and the left have, since Reagan, been pursuing different political models, and the results of that are pretty much self-evident. As I explored in my last post, there’s a definite influence by the President and how the people treat him, along with any other major political figures. But the wider strategy is still extremely important.
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