You know, I've failed to take this matter to the next level. We've all focused on how HRC energizes the R base for the 2008 Presidential race. We've focused on how HRC is an organ of the DLC, a group that has devastated the Democratic Party at the national level for the last 14 years, is deeply tied to corporate interests, and has attracted the allegiance of many Congressional candidates only to crush them with ignorant, incompetent advice/assistance. We've talked about how she is the least capable of the top 5 Dems currently in the race to actually win the White House in 2008.
But there's more to it.
To put it coyly, HRC is the "uniter" that dubya has wanted to be for the Rs.
The minute HRC is declared the Democratic nominee, the Republican National Committee will experience the equivalent of a $500 million contribution. All those folks that the fund raising groups had to recently let go because the phone lines have been dead will be working double shifts to keep up. More importantly, they will be able to shift from the traditional strategy of simultaneously managing races for Congress and race for the White House. The Republican machine feeds on hate and fear. Any informal polling - and even the "scientific" ones that ask the right questions - of people who are not dittoheads for HRC shows that HRC is despised by anywhere from 45-55% of the voting population (most recent Aug. Gallup Poll).
Sadly, too many people who so desperately want to see a woman as president or are still in love with Bubba are blinded to this and will say things like, "well, once they get to know the real Hillary, they'll change their mind." When the hell was the last time you found a Republican willing to change their minds on a political topic? You have to believe in miracles to expect her image to shift - go play the lottery, you have better odds.
The RNC will cash in on that and stoke the fires of that unified opposition. She is the fuel their lame little flickering chances need to turn the political tide.
Which is where the reason for Rupert Murdoch, big pharma, the military-industrial complex, and medical insurers are so shockingly willing to raise money for her becomes clearer. Besides hedging their bets (knowing that HRC won't betray their interests in perma-war, usurous prescription charges, etc.), they are magnifying the capabilities of their true partners, the neocon-led RNC.
HRC's very existence will save them millions that they'd otherwise have to spend to attack the Dem's prez candidate. Why spend money to pummel someone who is already loathed by so many? Just keep the subtle innuendo that her new pal Rupert Murdoch has been making sure is hammered home over the last 12 years. The RNC strategy is then able to shift its full attention to recapturing the House and Senate. Their persistent theme will be, "Can you imagine what will happen to this country with HER in charge and a Democratic Congress that won't stand up to her insanity?!" They will boldly demand what the DLC and DNC have been too fearful to demand - a veto-proof Congress.
And it will work.
They will take it all back. Maybe not veto-proof, but they will take back all the closely contested seats they lost in 2006. The tight ones the Rs won in 2006 will be firmly retained. And just when you thought things couldn't get worse, they will be worse.
It will work because the DLC has it's pathetic claws into the base of so many candidates who will continue the Rahm Emmanual formula for guaranteed election losses. And the unrelenting rovian attacks will churn the Republican party and make them forget all about the current, real national nightmare and focus on the frightening fake one projected by the RNC. The anti-Hillary crowds will swarm the polls.
HRC is either as arrogant as her neocon brethren, so insufferably full of herself that she knows she's being played but still thinks that she can beat scumbags at their own game - or she is dumb as a bag of hammers. I guess another option is that she is doing this deliberately to kill off the DNC and serve her corporate masters by sealing their ownership of both political parties. But my money is on option one. She doesn't care what happens to anyone else - she wants to be president and anyone who gets hurt along the way is acceptable collateral damage.
At this point, it's still too early to tell if she can get the nomination. But if she does, the only hope for our nation is for a strong, Progressive duo to run as Independents. Dems not affiliated with DLC can insulate themselves from RNC attacks by allying themselves with the Independent team. Dem Senate candidates will be forced by the RNC strategy to choose between HRC or the Independent candidates, which can either tear the DNC apart (yielding option 3) - or it will strengthen the DNC more than it has before, driving a firm, unambiguous wedge between the neocons in the DLC and the DNC. In a 3-way race between Romney or Huckleberry, HRC, and an Al Gore or Richard Clarke - HRC finishes in 3rd place. And in a perverted way that I'm a little ashamed to admit, I think it would be good for that to happen because I think it would go a long way to kill off the DLC.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Apologists for Hillary Clinton II
Apology #x: People hate her "ambition" because she's a woman and because the media has been bashing her unfairly for years!"
OK, so the media has bashed her over the years - boo-freaking-hoo. Some of it was unfair, probably an early edition of the "liberal media" revving up the post-Fairness Doctrine age. But you know, if she fought FOR something (anything!) that wasn't an unmitigated disaster, maybe she wouldn't be such easy prey for the MSM. Her meticulous diddling with words and overly-rehearsed, poll-driven answers that haven't a shred of spontaneity make her unlikeable - and her positions on issues like flag burning, Iraq, et. al. don't help (except to try to appeal to the extremist right wing).
I haven't done the homework to prove it, but I'm pretty comfortable suggesting that one of the leaders of the HRC bashing was Rupert Murdoch and his legion of jackals. So what does HRC do to confront this injustice? Sucks up to him, hangs out at Faux News HQ for a while, and begs for money! She's getting cash from the people who "bashed" her.... that either tells you that she's a complete, total, transparent sell-out whore, or she doesn't care at all about the bashing. My money is all on the former, of course.
But why did the bashing begin in earnest anyway? I recall the last BIG uproar to be the time she decided to move to New York - a place where I can't find any record of her ever living before (she was born in Illinois and schooled in Mass.). Every media outlet in the nation jumped right on the boldface, obvious, transparent plan - win a Senate seat in a near-term election in a safely liberal state, then make the move for Prez in 2008. People of every political stripe saw what she was doing. Sadly, too many Dems have conveniently forgotten this matter. It was like everything else she does, calculated, risk-averse, and hollow.
So in summary, 1). she has NOT, on the whole, been unfairly skewered in the media. She brought much of it on herself. And 2). her ambition is up for grabs in the media and elsewhere because few candidates for high office have gone so far as to move to snag a Senate seat in a state to which they really have no ties in a telegraphed move that everyone could see from a mile away. Your apology is crap.
OK, so the media has bashed her over the years - boo-freaking-hoo. Some of it was unfair, probably an early edition of the "liberal media" revving up the post-Fairness Doctrine age. But you know, if she fought FOR something (anything!) that wasn't an unmitigated disaster, maybe she wouldn't be such easy prey for the MSM. Her meticulous diddling with words and overly-rehearsed, poll-driven answers that haven't a shred of spontaneity make her unlikeable - and her positions on issues like flag burning, Iraq, et. al. don't help (except to try to appeal to the extremist right wing).
I haven't done the homework to prove it, but I'm pretty comfortable suggesting that one of the leaders of the HRC bashing was Rupert Murdoch and his legion of jackals. So what does HRC do to confront this injustice? Sucks up to him, hangs out at Faux News HQ for a while, and begs for money! She's getting cash from the people who "bashed" her.... that either tells you that she's a complete, total, transparent sell-out whore, or she doesn't care at all about the bashing. My money is all on the former, of course.
But why did the bashing begin in earnest anyway? I recall the last BIG uproar to be the time she decided to move to New York - a place where I can't find any record of her ever living before (she was born in Illinois and schooled in Mass.). Every media outlet in the nation jumped right on the boldface, obvious, transparent plan - win a Senate seat in a near-term election in a safely liberal state, then make the move for Prez in 2008. People of every political stripe saw what she was doing. Sadly, too many Dems have conveniently forgotten this matter. It was like everything else she does, calculated, risk-averse, and hollow.
So in summary, 1). she has NOT, on the whole, been unfairly skewered in the media. She brought much of it on herself. And 2). her ambition is up for grabs in the media and elsewhere because few candidates for high office have gone so far as to move to snag a Senate seat in a state to which they really have no ties in a telegraphed move that everyone could see from a mile away. Your apology is crap.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Pathetic
So now there's finally a big push to find out what candidates think about ways to address global warming and energy in general. The League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org) has released a scorecard with a few of their policy points.
Unsurprisingly, Clinton and Obama, the Democratic warriors for our suffering corporate elite, are the weakest (ok, so that is under the proviso that we exclude former Senator Gravel from the list as he is virtually incoherent on the matter). MoveOn has sponsored an odd town hall-type thing where the candidates can discuss their policies, the transcript of which can be found here.
To me, on this issue, Obama is the biggest loser of the candidates. The cap system of which he speaks has been used from the 70s to deal with trading air pollutants within EPA-established regions in the US. Clearly, this system has been a complete and total failure, otherwise, we'd have much cleaner air and all metropolitan areas tracked by the EPA would be in Attainment. They're not. And when you realize how much of the pollution hasn't been moved around within metro areas - but over borders to China and Mexico (because it's easier to move your plants there than it is to figure out how to buy pollution credits), where they REALLY know how to belch filth into the sky - the global impact of the entire policy of which he bases his emissions shell game has been nearly cataclysmic. Not coincidentally, many plants have closed up in the US in order to move overseas. Some of them HAVE sold their pollution credits to other companies - which is a financial windfall/bonus - helping to subsidize the exportation of US jobs.
Wow, we gotta get us more of THAT, right?!
Does anyone actually believe that China will give a crap about caps? Are they gonna dump billions of dollars into that program? Will third world countries even be able to try to buy into it? Do you?!?! Bottom line, no one will globalize the control of their smokestacks - period.
Obama's concept doesn't only sound weak and feel impractical, it's the environmental equivalent of proposing in 2007 a new "trickle-down" economic policy. Been there, done that, f-d up everything! I don't know if it's stupid, misleading, the apex of borderline psychotic optimism, or some combination thereof.
I've been cold toward Clinton, mainly because she's as phony as Joan Rivers' cheeks (all 4 of them). She's in it to win it, as they say, and that's it. But Obama's energy and environmental policy - probably the two momentous issues of our age - are simply a recipe for total and complete disaster. The best he can hope to achieve is a few years of begging for everyone to buy into the plan and then after realizing that it's not going to work, give up and adopt a plan that actually might have a prayer of working.
Worse, I doubt he came up with this stupid plan on his own. I say this because I wouldn't know much at all about the topic of pollution credits if I had not been elected locally to help scuttle a plan to build another fossil-fuel burning power plant in a region that exports a massive amount of the power that its plant generate. Unless he's been personally involved in issues like that in Illinois, he can't have known how the system works. He asked someone to make it for him. And given how comfortably he trots this foolhardy idea to the public, he clearly has total faith... in fools.
Sound like anyone else we know in DC?
Unsurprisingly, Clinton and Obama, the Democratic warriors for our suffering corporate elite, are the weakest (ok, so that is under the proviso that we exclude former Senator Gravel from the list as he is virtually incoherent on the matter). MoveOn has sponsored an odd town hall-type thing where the candidates can discuss their policies, the transcript of which can be found here.
To me, on this issue, Obama is the biggest loser of the candidates. The cap system of which he speaks has been used from the 70s to deal with trading air pollutants within EPA-established regions in the US. Clearly, this system has been a complete and total failure, otherwise, we'd have much cleaner air and all metropolitan areas tracked by the EPA would be in Attainment. They're not. And when you realize how much of the pollution hasn't been moved around within metro areas - but over borders to China and Mexico (because it's easier to move your plants there than it is to figure out how to buy pollution credits), where they REALLY know how to belch filth into the sky - the global impact of the entire policy of which he bases his emissions shell game has been nearly cataclysmic. Not coincidentally, many plants have closed up in the US in order to move overseas. Some of them HAVE sold their pollution credits to other companies - which is a financial windfall/bonus - helping to subsidize the exportation of US jobs.
Wow, we gotta get us more of THAT, right?!
Does anyone actually believe that China will give a crap about caps? Are they gonna dump billions of dollars into that program? Will third world countries even be able to try to buy into it? Do you?!?! Bottom line, no one will globalize the control of their smokestacks - period.
Obama's concept doesn't only sound weak and feel impractical, it's the environmental equivalent of proposing in 2007 a new "trickle-down" economic policy. Been there, done that, f-d up everything! I don't know if it's stupid, misleading, the apex of borderline psychotic optimism, or some combination thereof.
I've been cold toward Clinton, mainly because she's as phony as Joan Rivers' cheeks (all 4 of them). She's in it to win it, as they say, and that's it. But Obama's energy and environmental policy - probably the two momentous issues of our age - are simply a recipe for total and complete disaster. The best he can hope to achieve is a few years of begging for everyone to buy into the plan and then after realizing that it's not going to work, give up and adopt a plan that actually might have a prayer of working.
Worse, I doubt he came up with this stupid plan on his own. I say this because I wouldn't know much at all about the topic of pollution credits if I had not been elected locally to help scuttle a plan to build another fossil-fuel burning power plant in a region that exports a massive amount of the power that its plant generate. Unless he's been personally involved in issues like that in Illinois, he can't have known how the system works. He asked someone to make it for him. And given how comfortably he trots this foolhardy idea to the public, he clearly has total faith... in fools.
Sound like anyone else we know in DC?
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Apologists for Hillary Clinton I
Please spare me, people. Hilary Clinton is a neocon. And I'm sick of the quickly decomposing apologies that the loyalist trolls fling around for her.
Wake up and smell the rancid lies and the unabashed pursuit of power for the sake of power. Anyone honking Rupert Murdoch is "on the team." Anyone spoiling for war with Iran is on board. Anyone who doesn't fight to move our troops out of Iraqi cities where they are just targets for guerrilla trainees is "with us."
For that matter, anyone affiliated with the DLC is a neocon. But I digress.... that's a subject for another day. I start with the first stale apology that I'm sick of.
Apology #1: "She's under more scrutiny than anyone because she's a woman. She has to be careful about what she says."
Moron apologists, most of the presidential candidates are under intense scrutiny. Sometimes that happens when you run for freaking president! What the hell do you expect?! Barrack Obama isn't under scrutiny? McCain's not under heavy scrutiny? Mitt Romney hasn't been in news stories every other day? Where do you people live!?!?
You can use this same vacuous "logic" to prove dozens of similarly stupid suggestions. "Kucinich is saying things because he's not getting enough scrutiny." "Gravel isn't being careful about what he says because he's trying to get a lot of scrutiny." "Biden isn't getting enough scrutiny because he's balding." All of these things have no more logical connection than saying, "timm0's not getting enough press because someone ate a bag of M&Ms."
So just stop this inane illogic - you're killing me! Carl Bernstein's book, A Woman in Charge, covers HC's incessant trail covering and obfuscation since she and Billy started their political adventures. If even just half the allegations are true (and all current and recent public behavior sure tends to support them), she is a pathological power seeking worm.
Which brings me back to calling her a neocon as power for the powerful is a shared trait. I don't know what's worse... a neocon, or a neocon that hides itself behind a shield of their gender.
Wake up and smell the rancid lies and the unabashed pursuit of power for the sake of power. Anyone honking Rupert Murdoch is "on the team." Anyone spoiling for war with Iran is on board. Anyone who doesn't fight to move our troops out of Iraqi cities where they are just targets for guerrilla trainees is "with us."
For that matter, anyone affiliated with the DLC is a neocon. But I digress.... that's a subject for another day. I start with the first stale apology that I'm sick of.
Apology #1: "She's under more scrutiny than anyone because she's a woman. She has to be careful about what she says."
Moron apologists, most of the presidential candidates are under intense scrutiny. Sometimes that happens when you run for freaking president! What the hell do you expect?! Barrack Obama isn't under scrutiny? McCain's not under heavy scrutiny? Mitt Romney hasn't been in news stories every other day? Where do you people live!?!?
You can use this same vacuous "logic" to prove dozens of similarly stupid suggestions. "Kucinich is saying things because he's not getting enough scrutiny." "Gravel isn't being careful about what he says because he's trying to get a lot of scrutiny." "Biden isn't getting enough scrutiny because he's balding." All of these things have no more logical connection than saying, "timm0's not getting enough press because someone ate a bag of M&Ms."
So just stop this inane illogic - you're killing me! Carl Bernstein's book, A Woman in Charge, covers HC's incessant trail covering and obfuscation since she and Billy started their political adventures. If even just half the allegations are true (and all current and recent public behavior sure tends to support them), she is a pathological power seeking worm.
Which brings me back to calling her a neocon as power for the powerful is a shared trait. I don't know what's worse... a neocon, or a neocon that hides itself behind a shield of their gender.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Where to Start?
Well, it sure is hard to know where to begin... I'm going to have to organize some thoughts that have been careening recklessly around my head and pick a thread! There are so many to choose from... the "surge," 2008 primaries, "War on Terror," Gonzales, energy policy, 'what the hell is a neocon,' and on and on and on....
Setting up the site was too easy. If I knew it'd be free and this fast, I'd have long been blithering across this site. A few more days, then we're off and running... maybe an intro post would be good? Hmmmmm.... yeah.... maybe!
Wow, sure would be nice to have a feature handy where I can delete a post like this...
Setting up the site was too easy. If I knew it'd be free and this fast, I'd have long been blithering across this site. A few more days, then we're off and running... maybe an intro post would be good? Hmmmmm.... yeah.... maybe!
Wow, sure would be nice to have a feature handy where I can delete a post like this...
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