If you’re going to try to run away from Bush, try not to embrace one of the most memorably pointless moments of his presidency. Also, it really does help not to compare your opponent to a losing candidate that no living American could have voted for.
Ten songs at random from your MP3s. Leave ‘em in comments.
1) “Do Your Love Me”—-Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers
2) “Gold Lion”—-The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3) “Who Cares”—-Gnarls Barkley
4) “Stop, Look, and Listen”—-Devo
5) “Never Gonna Give You Up”—-Cake
6) “No One Knows”—-Asa
7) “Brace Yourself”—-Les Savy Fay
8) “Crooked Cigarette”—-The Reverend Horton Heat
9) “Escape”—-Blitz
10) “Cold hands! Hot body!”—-You Say Party! We Say Die!
You Say Party! We Say Die!:
I’ve gotta agree with our esteemed media here: there’s just something deeply unsettling about a married couple that might still, you know, do it.
And like, happily.
Apparently within the last three hours:
“She is not seeking the vice presidency, and no one speaks for her but her,” communications director Howard Wolfson said. “The choice here is Senator Obama’s and his alone.”
In an e-mail to supporters, the New York senator said she “will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.”
Clinton expressed the same sentiment in a conference call with 40 members of her national finance committee, whom she urged to begin raising money for Obama and for the Democratic National Committee.
This isn’t really a surprise, although its quick arrival is probably a pleasant one.
You know what? We were proved fucking right. That’s what happened. People who disagreed with us were saying, ‘There they go again.’ But we were proved fucking right.
The thing that always bothered me about the overall idea of being lied to repeatedly by the leader of the free world in a manner so blatant that only the American press corps could overlook it was that they never really tried to obscure the lie in a way that actually reflected the magnitude of the enterprise.
Whenever a private company tries to repair or promote their image, they’ll generally do a variety of charitable activities (a 5K here, a day of litter pickup there) that create the impression, if not the reality, of them being a vitally beneficial part of the community. It can be better from a PR perspective to have fifty kids receiving fifty small scholarships than it is to have five kids receiving five large scholarships, because the generosity, although exactly the same financially, is spread out among many more people who in turn spread word of your generosity to an exponential number of others.
With Iraq, the Bush Administration decided that they’d give one kid one giant fucking scholarship, and that kid was going to be a Nobel winner when they were done with him. If you questioned them, it was because you didn’t believe the kid was smart enough to tie his own shoes, let alone finish college. If you pointed out that the scholarship was only good at Crazy Pete’s House of Mufflers and Molecular Biology, it was because you were against alternative forms of education. And if you dared - dared - point out that the case for giving the kid the scholarship was based on forged paperwork and a plagiarized essay, it was probably because you were secretly a pedophile who was sad the kid was going to be spirited away from the local NAMBLA meeting.
From the time we went into Iraq, and seeing the resulting mess five years later, I’ve always wondered - how much better would it have been had the Bush administration had made at least some token serious steps towards promoting freedom and democracy anywhere else, even if it was only as a mask for the Iraq debacle?
What comes chiefly to mind is Zimbabwe - a country that, for years, has been in a hideous downward spiral of blatant oppression. It’s gotten so bad that Mugabe simply can’t (and won’t) hide it anymore:
The American ambassador to Zimbabwe, James D. McGee, said the police tried to run the American diplomats off the road during a six-mile chase, then slashed the tires of their SUV at a roadblock. War veterans, the often-violent agents of the state, subsequently threatened to set fire to their vehicle with them inside, and tried to bash in the windows with their rifle butts. A Zimbabwean driver who brought the embassy’s security officer to the scene was hauled from the car, beaten and tossed in a ditch, Mr. McGee said.
This isn’t to say that a military invasion of Zimbabwe should have been tossed on the pile - exactly the opposite. But it is to say that the gross abuse of the world’s trust might have been ameliorated, ever so slightly, had Bush actually attempted to obscure the massive fuckup he was about to embark on by engaging other spots around the world where the direct intervention of an American president with what was, at that time, large-scale support and sympathy could have truly done some good.
Instead, he wasted that opportunity. And now, it just gets worse.
The list of targets for state-sponsored intimidation in Zimbabwe just keeps getting longer. First and foremost, it includes opposition officials and supporters, but also takes aim at civic leaders, trade unionists, election monitors, journalists, human rights lawyers, teachers, churchgoers — and now aid workers and diplomats.
[...]
Opposition officials have voiced deep disappointment that regional intervention to halt the violence before the runoff, now only three weeks away, has been weak and tardy.
Argh, I’m done hiding my head and will be brave enough to talk about it, having been inspired by Sarah Seltzer. All these attacks on “Sex and the City” in light of the movie that has come out—-mostly from people who probably never watched a minute of the show—-are sexist. And they’re a particularly insidious form of sexism, one that feminists are prone to falling for, which suggests that women don’t deserve respect unless they distance themselves from unserious things. (Of course, if you adequately empty your life of humor and beauty to show how serious you are, you’ll get it for that, too.) As an audience member at one of my reading suggested, there’s something very fishy about the way the writers at Gawker and Jezebel bash the show for what? Doing pretty much the same stuff that they do at those websites, except at least “SATC” is fictional. And the sluttier-and-tougher-than-thou one-upmanship just made me embarrassed for the participants.
But the worst is the assumption that because it’s about four women and it’s funny and it’s about sex and there’s expensive clothes, then it is by definition stupid. Why? Because it’s feminine, admit it.
Meanwhile, you’ve got commentators like Best Week Ever’s Paul F. Tompkins and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. They’re both generally smart, enlightened folks, but last night Tompkins dropped by Olbermann’s show so they could snicker their way through a “Sex and the City survival guide for men.” (Check it out below.) The premise, of course, was that no so-called real man would ever want to see a movie about three-dimensional, adult female characters. (The TV show also featured plenty of well-rounded, interesting male characters over the years, by the by — Steve, Aidan, Trey — but we can ignore that inconvenient fact.) Quipped Tompkins: “If you’re with a woman who is insisting that you go see this movie, I think it’s time to maybe date someone else. Because men are not meant to see this movie with women.” Way to police those restrictive gender roles, bro!
Cara at Feministe links to a series of comic strips telling stories of the rescue work in Sichuan.
Don’t go to the site expecting to escape without tears.
Then head over here.
McCain is using Obama’s website.
McCain is looking to put Fauxbama on his ticket.
Word’s coming down that he’s trying to pay off his minister to put up a YouTube video of him saying “Fuck Jesus” to the beat of the Notorioius B.I.G.‘s “Get Money”. We’ll let you know how this progresses.
Once again, I have to exercise skepticism that there’s huge numbers of “angry white women” out there who will vote McCain instead of Obama out of spite. Spite feelings are running high right now, which is why Joan Walsh makes me cringe 15 separate times in her piece today. Threats that there’s going to be a white feminist stampede out the door to McCain (with a few racist potshots thrown out on the way) are highly overrated. I don’t doubt that Obama won’t get the vote of blatantly racist white people, but I suspect most of them decamped to the Republicans in 1964 with Strom Thurmond.
But for those who want a good reason to vote for Obama over McCain (I can’t believe I’m writing this) for feminist reasons, um, there’s the issues. Remember those? Again, I think 99.9% of feminists are smart enough to remember those, even those smarting because they were invested in the Clinton campaign. I think a lot better of feminists than those who point to Geraldine Ferraro and say, “See? They’re angry and bitter and need to be coddled.” It reinforces a negative and untrue stereotype of women that we’re emotional and irrational and can’t be reasoned with. But really, it’s only Ferraro who is being irrational and unreasonable. You can’t extrapolate from there about all women, all white feminists, or even most of either group. Remember how it works:
I’m going to give Larry Johnson a bone before he soils any more pants over the secret video jihad of Michelle Obama that he hasn’t seen but has it on good advice that other people have seen their cousins watch.
Here, for the first time ever, top secret video footage of a meeting between Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama:
THIS IS BREAKING NEWS. YOU MUST CREDIT PANDAGON.
(h/t Hughes for America for the idea)
Tom Maguire, commenting on this article:
“We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had,” Mr. Sam-Brew said. “I have new goals for my little girl. She can’t give me any excuses because she’s black.”
What a wonderful country, and I can almost hear Mr. Sam-Brew explaining it to his daughter: Littlest darling, because of the Obama Ascendancy, you will never have to endure the institutionalized racism in America that I never actually endured either, seeing as how I was born in a different country in 1970. But after I arrived from never-prosperous Ghana the race hustlers here in America assured me it was awful, and I have no reason to doubt them. But let’s not look backwards - let’s look towards a brighter future, in which you have a great shot at being accepted into a top school or getting preferential treatment in hiring because you, too, are a once-oppressed minority. It’s a wonderful world.
See, paragraphs like this are the reason why a better strategy for the Republican Party to gain votes in the black community would be to leave bags of flaming dog shit on doorsteps in Birmingham.
Mr. Sam-Brew, incidentally, has a five year old American-born daughter, meaning that he’s been living in America for (wait for it…) at least five years. And those are American years, not those shitty Ghana years. Now, the fundamental question here is whether or not a man with black skin, living in America for any significant portion of time, would experience the same sort of racial prejudice that a man with black skin who was born in America would experience over the same amount of time.
If you can’t answer that question, then here’s another one: does the bouncy ball go bouncy bouncy? I think it does!
Leaving out the “black people get all the breaks” affirmative action knock, let’s move on, because pride is a stupid, stupid thing for people to have.
It was a difficult day on The Michelangelo Signorile Show yesterday, as Mike spoke with several angry callers who are ready to vote for John McCain before casting a ballot for Barack Obama. In the clip below, the caller cites a few reasons I’ve seen out there, including: 1) we know McCain, we don’t know Obama; 2) There’s just something about him (Obama) I don’t like. Watch it:
This whole call needs to be transcribed and circulated because we seriously need to have a discussion about the underlying issues here that are hitting on the third rail. Mike challenges the caller to explain these positions, given the huge political gulf between McCain and Obama on nearly every issue. The caller ends up admitting that his decision to vote for McCain is not based on logic.
Caller: My arguments aren’t logical…this is what my gut is telling me; I don’t consider myself a racist or bigoted…there’s just something about the man I don’t like and I’m not going to vote for him.”
Mike: It’s funny that you say your gut is telling you this and then you go on to say that you’re not a racist, funny how that works, right? Because maybe your gut is telling you something that you’re not wanting to admit…but listen, but you should be voting based on logic, based on rationality. What Republicans want is for you to vote on emotion. And you are a perfect example of how they get votes from people who are voting against their own self interest.
Obama’s and Clinton’s positions are far closer than Obama vs. McCain—it doesn’t make any sense to vote for McCain. For some, not all - there really is a deep-seated fear out there about being led by a black man, so much so that they’d vote for McCain. They think electing Barack Obama is somehow going to erase white privilege— as if it was possible—and then exact some sort of revenge for past wrongs perpetrated on minorities. Jesse and I blogged about this jokingly the other day, but this aspect of the rejection of Obama is not being honestly articulated—the caller in this case went out of his way to bring up how he’s not racist—when race had not come up in the conversation at all up until that point.
Another caller provided a comment on Mike’s blog. Read it below the fold.
I’ll admit - for a while, I even bought into the “Obama can’t win because he’s black” idea. It was disturbingly easy to believe, if for no other reason than what I call the Mike Alstott theorem.
Mike Alstott, for those of you who are unfamiliar with NFL fullbacks (and if this describes you, please fix this glaring personality flaw posthaste), played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for twelve seasons. The fullback is essentially a dying position in the NFL, with a backup running usually taking the same spot. The point of the fullback is to often serve as a miniature lineman on certain plays, providing another blocker for the quarterback or runningback. Other times (and far more rarely), the fullback serves as a ball carrier, using their superior mass and the unpredictability of their involvement to gain yardage in tough defensive situations.
Alstott was a fan favorite for the duration of his career in Tampa Bay, always drawing outsize cheers to what was, in the scope of football’s offensive positions, a relatively minor (but still key) role. There’s a certain breed of football fan who loves the tough guy, and between his position and his brutalizing style of play, he fit that to a tee.
I always wondered, though, how he became The Man in Tampa Bay, and how even outside of the team’s home market, he still drew cheers from fans who had no reason to particularly like a fullback who averaged 32 yards a game. Much of it was the tough guy aspect, a guy who hearkened back to an era when football players played in leather helmets and had to watch out for the goalpost every time they got near the endzone. For a small group of people, though, it was something else.
Ann Althouse pulls a Larry Johnson (or, as one of her commenters calls it, a Michelle Malkin) on Chris Matthews:
Except that, if you watch the video, he totally fucking doesn’t.
Advance work for the Michelle Obama non-video? Chris Matthews has a lot of errors to answer for. This is not one of them.
Broke-ass old age: the wave of the future.
Another report on the Social Security Web site tells us that the average Social Security benefit for a retired worker is now $1,082.30 a month. That’s before the Medicare part B premium of $96.40.
The solution here isn’t more money or another government program.
The solution is social. It is called sharing, having enough social skills to multiply your effective income to a level far greater than it could be made with ordinary cash.
Eating cat food to get by? Stop eating Friskies and start getting frisky!
