If only Harry Reid and Barack Obama had been around in 1945; we might have been able to get the real story out of them Nazis.

The phrase ‘axis of evil’ is stupid for so many reasons it’s difficult to get into all of them, but this one is my favorite:

It directly invites a comparison between three tinpot dictatorships and two of the most vicious regimes ever spawned by man - and, by seeing it fit to append ‘of evil’, adds just a little bit extra.

Long story short: Saddam Hussein’s aluminum tube purchase was a second Holocaust - but this time, it’s personal.

The main problem I can see with ‘hard’ as a political descriptor is that it conflates two seriously different phenomena. Especially when paired with ‘left’ or ‘right’, there’s a subtle tendency to confuse people with hardline political beliefs from people with a firm commitment to one party or cause or the other.

As a solution, I propose that we use ‘hard’ only to describe the politics, and as for the partisanship we use ‘firm’. It’s a distinction whose time has come, especially with the Republicans dissolving into firm holdouts, with both the hard and soft Right seeming to lose faith in the party organization after Bush and McCain.

Similarly, when the Obama knuckle-under on FISA happened, we saw an interesting divide along the same lines play itself out: firm Democrats generally accepted it, and even rationalized the idea. This includes commentators to the left of Obama himself - Olbermann, say - and excludes even commentators roughly in the political center.

Our tendency to mistake hardline politics for ideological fervor is one of many unfortunate products of domination by one party whose candidates can’t be hard-right enough and one party whose leadership treats hard politics as a sort of demonic possession. The American electoral system accepts the firm right and left, but only the hard right - the hard left shuffles from third party to third party, and it takes us threatening to riot to get the DNC to actually pay attention to us like they do the right-wing Southron idiots voting Democratic out of tribal allegiance.

Incidentally, and speaking only for myself, I endorse what Jeff Rowland said on the subject - that is, Obama pissed me off pretty bad, but he’s still a damned sight better than anyone else currently running. Here’s hoping it’s just an electoral gimmick.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re like me - and face it, you probably will be some day - you came from the 90s, but still have no idea exactly what the fuck it was on about. And for good reason: every time you encounter the decade, it’s through a weird haze of triumphalism, a story in which Zizek and Fukuyama (deservingly, but unrealistically) are reversed in relative respect and influence - and, importantly, the left conducted itself with a sort of flagging dignity, the bearers of a failing torch at last cruelly snuffed out in Seattle; the right chafed at the bit after the oppressive sleaziness of that terrible white Negro Slick Willy and his dancing Jewess Reno - and were time and time again let down by his refusal to carry the Big Stick they so dream of today - his neglect of our national drive to build great nations in the Middle East that would maintain our proud military presence in the world for years to come.

We forget that in those days we - not just the West generally but the left specifically - still indulged people like Stoppard when they put on big, lavish productions in which they pretended that the horrific rapine of Eastern Europe by a mixture of mob bosses and capitalist factota was somehow related to rock-and-roll and youth rebellion; we forget that the bug-fuck idiots who joyfully accept the dominion of Terra-Fightin’ Daddy in exchange for the odd glorious codpiece shots on carrier decks once honestly thought of themselves as some kind of revolutionaries. We remember Nirvana, not the utterly impenetrable and horribly related Rat Pack revival. And with the eXile evidently gone, we need more than ever a clear reminder of what the 90s were - before, like every decade before the development of a continuous news cycle to stamp down any deviations from the treacly Narrative, history itself is fully hijacked by nostalgia-peddlers and cod-Münchhausens.

In service to that high goal, when I have the time and the inclination I am going to share a few gems of the 1990s with you; the venal creatures that put our current regime in office strut about, gleefully exchanging favorite Heinlein quotes and meditating thoughtfully on whether the right side really won at Stalingrad. I will be fully honest with you: piercing the lefty idolatry of the day isn’t really my bailiwick - I’ll leave it to Djur, who has always been dissatisfied with their inexplicable hostility against triangulating a vital center between small-business, large-business, and shell-business interests.

The two particular gems I’ve collected in advance are representative of the whole. One is a trio of pulp book ads - two books with equal titles and evidently similar content about divorce, written from that horrible masculist perspective that we continue to hear paraded through high political and social circles as radical, politically-incorrect acts, set in an exciting alternative world where telling lies to the meek is a bold enterprise - and the weaker of the lot, one packed with idiot name-checking and evidently a bog-standard 90s gun-wank.

The better of the two, and one that I’ve been parading around for my personal amusement for some time now, is a suite of mods for Civilization II (of all the games I play for admittedly sentimental value, hands-down the best (that is Civ II itself, not the mod, which can’t be described unless there is in fact a set of words actual shit uses to refer to itself, in which case it’s whatever word refers to the kind of shit most other shit hates, a kind of intra-fecal ethnic slur, and in skywriting)) designed to portray the wild, hi-tech world of the distant future, 2010. No doubt used principally for this by most people who used it, it ever-so-subtly betrayed a certain Weltanschuung, if I may use the original National Socialist, with a clever system in which Monarchy became Klintonism (or, in one interesting case, KKKlintonism) and various no-doubt vital sound files were used in which some idiot used a horribly fake Southern accent to sound, I don’t know, gallant.

I generally hold kitsch in contempt - it’s usually a classic study in reactionary fuckwads with expensive and deeply ridiculous educations tittering at the common mistakes of the hilariously low-born, and has all the humor value of Nietzsche screaming at the no-good priest-crafting Jews for having a slave mentality spurned by the noble Apollonians. But these are a couple of instructive examples, which is the best kitsch-mongering can aspire to. I present to you the world that actually existed in the 1990s: one dominated by the shrill, second-hand sloganry of America’s simultaneously pitiful and contemptible white underclass - and the smug, wealthy pricks who fed them their preposterous jargon and stage-managed their canned Bunker rage for political and economic gain.

We live in a world where Larry the Cable Guy is supposed to be the contemptibly crass one. I’m simply trying to remind you that there was a time in some distant Camelot where you were allowed to think this of Jeff Foxworthy. Join me later this week as I continue the ambitious project I call I Love The [. . .] The 90s, and we’ll look over the book reviews - and, sooner or later, over that fucking majestic mod-pack. And we’ll win this time, John Rambo, or my name isn’t Bo Gritz.

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.