The attack on the devious Jane Hamsher by Riverdaughter and Alegre's Corner (H/T to Make Them Accountable) is a blast of clean spring air. Pacific John is particularly refreshing: "But I believe in redemption, and would welcome back everyone this side of Markos. All it takes is a simple admission - to themselves and to the base of the party - "We were wrong."
Emphasis mine. Anyone who has ever recovered from anything knows the first step is an admission of culpability and acceptance of responsibility. It does not matter how they go after Obama now if they do not see, admit to, and amend their psychotic behaviour in 2008 - which lead to the current state of affairs. The childish, misguided "creative class" acted as the willing mercenaries of the DNC, Donna Brazille, David Axelrod, and Goldman Sachs. Until they own their malfeasance, THEY REMAIN TOXIC.
This is not merely a matter of one candidate defeating another by any means necessary, or a group vilifying one of the most accomplished women in American life for the benefit of an unqualified, ninny of a man. What's on the table here is the studied, planned neutering and enfeeblement of an entire political party ( a process that is well underway.), the castration of the real Left, the end of the progressives for a generation, and the final seizure of the government by the most rapacious elements of the financial elite. That was the plan. That's what is happening. The infantile prog-o-sphere must be held to account for their part in it.
Not only would it be foolish for former Puma blogs to show support for Americablog, FDL, Huffington, or Kos now that they are coming to and questioning their former god - it's dangerous. The colossal lack of judgement can not and should not be papered over with a few sane (er) blog posts.
A real, public, apology is a start. But only a start.
A spirited discussion about Mrs. Palin erupted here a few posts down. After, having thought I'd write little about Palin going forward, that conversation got me stewing again. The reason my thoughts on Palin had run there course is simple: After resigning the governorship of Alaska it seemed to me that she had removed herself as a viable national player. If she intends to run for President one day it was, in my book, a mistake.
Now she's on a national book tour and making headlines again. For a moment she is as present as she was last Fall. Like the campaign, the critiques of her are rarely evenhanded - and often vicious.
For those who did not want Hillary Clinton to win last year - it's annoying for those of us who did to have to explain our frustration and horror at Palin's treatment. Many of us are again put in the uncomfortable position of calling the elephant in the room...well....an elephant. The tactic of degrading Clinton based on gender was transferred to Palin. There is no denying it. In fact, she was sexualized more easily - making the slutty stewardess jokes easier for late night comics.
If one was an Obama fan the sexist bile directed at Hillary was par for the course, a part of the conversation. It became the context in which many Obama fanatics saw the world. The evil woman was in the way of our beloved man. Even now, suggesting to an Obama supporter that much of the criticism of Clinton sprung from gender fear is met with incredulity - though the evidence is overwhelming. If "Yes, but Hillary is a controlling bitch", isn't spoken - it's right under the surface. That was always their final answer.
Liberals who had nursed resentments about the Clintons since the 90s let loose the full barrage on Hillary. The ease with which this resentment became sexist vulgarity still has me shell shocked. Cunt, Witch, Bitch, Evil, Kill her, Run her over and leave her by the side of the road. Keith Olbermann implied on his show that she ought to be killed.
We all saw the comments on liberal sites. We all know those two 'liberal' kids above thought their shirts were funny. The Huffington Post, the Dailykos, Democratic Underground and Americablog became clubhouses for those hankering to express their most vile, sexist thoughts. And they did. All in the name of supporting Obama. All came from alleged liberals. All from people who claimed the mantel of equality and justice. Palin was hung in effigy as a "joke" last Halloween, a stunt that every feminist in America should have intoned against. Most were silent.
Not her beliefs. Not her convictions. Not her record. Her VAGINA. Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy.God Lord, I wish there was something deeper at play in that remark. Some tiny shard of reality. But there isn't. Men like Sullivan - and we've recently discovered they are still legion - live in terror of any vagina they believe is hell bent on gobbling them up. Sullivan is an extraordinary gasbag - even by the low standards of his readership and clique. Still, he gets to the rub of it for many men. Any woman who does not play by the rules set by men must be stopped. Any woman who questions an adored male figure must be hounded. Burn the witches! Hillary in the spring! Palin in the Fall!
Men from James Howard Kunstler, to Chris Matthews, to Sullivan have let their inner mommy demons run wild for months now.
The hate transition from Clinton to Palin was seamless. Being conservative, Palin gave the Left a little more to work with - but it was hardly relevant. The centering emotion was the adolescent male fear ofvaginas with teeth.
My anger about this topic is not based in politics. Palin's are troubling. It's the phenomenon of denial that disturbs. It is the counterpoint to my frustration with the Obama cult last year - a refusal to see reality. The "Obots" - and I include much of the media - refused to see Obama. They excused his massive flop flops, they ignored his financial backing from Wall Street and Soros, they pretended he'd taken principled stances on issues when he had avoided them, they ignored his vapid, almost empty record. This refusal now has consequences. Obama is what many who did look closely at him suspected all along : a weak, indecisive, inexperienced man who is being rolled by everyone from Nancy Pelosi to the Japanese Prime Minister.
Will those who despise Palin, and despised Hillary before her, ever come out of denial about the real basis of their contempt? Maybe. After all, coming out of denial about Obama has been the nation's group project in 2009. It's possible Palin will be judged on her merits and the content of her character at some point.
In the mean time, someone needs to tell Andrew Sullivan that the gnawing on his testicles is something other than a politician's vagina.
I offer a loud second to Cannonfire's post today on Peter DeFazio. Mr. Cannon boils it down to 4 simple words: We have been betrayed.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) wants Goldman boys Geithner and Summers removed. More than that, his interview on MSNBC's The Ed Show signals a significant shift on the Left. Democrat DeFazio, without apology or excuse, condemns Obama's economic team on the most liberal national news station. Further he insists TARP money go to small business and infrastructure - not Wall Street. Something that should have happened 11 months ago. DeFazio is speaking to the "New Deal" and "Jacksonian/Clinton" Democrats that many assumed were the core of the Democratic party until 2008 - before Soros and the Whole Foods/Cocktail Party/Frank Rich/Daily Kos Left conned their way into the nomination.
As I've said before the party in danger of splintering in the short term is the Democratic - not the GOP. The GOP has shown that it can and will build winning coalitions based on economic conservatism. As opposition, the Pelosi/Reid/Summers/Obama party cannot survive if unemployment stays high. The natural constituency for this wing of the party - the "creative class" - is about 20% of voters. Obama is an aberration. Without the agony of Bush, massive media backing, and funding from various elites, Obama's 2008 campaign would have more closely resembled Howard Dean's in 2004. Alleged economic liberalism and creative class smugness equals rump party status as soon as the fog clears. (Obama is not a liberal, he's a Chicago/Tammany Hall style politician) The Jacksonian Democrats -won by Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries- voted for Obama in the General. They will move to the GOP, as they did in the 80s, if the Democratic Party does not represent their interests. Currently, it does not.
DeFazio's repudiation of Obama's economic policy is a turning point and good news for PUMAs. Obama's honeymoon has been over for the GOP since February, for Independents since the summer - now it is over for populist wing of his own party. Thank God.
DeFazio signals that there will be opposition to Obama from the genuine, populist Left. Here's to hoping it takes root.
Palin is the BULLY???? WTF???? Assholes like Huffington and Bill Mahr are the bullies. But I suspect they are "Perez Hilton bullies". Bitchy little weenies until someone clocks 'em....
In a four-page letter, Alaska-based attorney Thomas Van Flein wrote, "This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law."
I love it. I wish the Left had not given up on clarity and conviction in 2008. How long before the dipshits at Kos and Hufpo squeal about their "first amendment rights"....to slander.....?
Sunday Prayer:Please God, make the Palins sue Andrew Sullivan.
The most horrific and blatant example yet that Obama is Bush 3:
Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.
Actually, Obama is worse than Bush. Bush would never have been so morally depraved as to invoke the budget to promote bigotry. One can hardly imagine a McCain Administration producing a federal brief this reactionary. Hey Andy Sullivan: Go slink away into a hole in Provincetown - FOREVER. You WERE WRONG. Admit it.
Link here. Yes it is Americablog. It may now have finally occurred to Avarosis and the foolish, idiotic Obama Pods that Obama is a fraud of epic proportions. I will never let people like John Avarosis forget what he and the Pods did last year with their relentless, sexist attacks on Clinton. Let's put this as plainly as possible:
A PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON WOULD NEVER SUBMIT A RETROGRADE AND DESPICABLE BRIEF SUCH AS THIS TO A FEDERAL COURT.
NEVER.
Apologize NOW.
YES YOU CAN.
Some of us knew Obama was a fraud before it was cool.
BHO's numbers are falling. I originally said he'd fall below 50% in June (now) then back tracked to Sept. Can I have a do over? It may be June after all. Obama is down to 54% in the Rasmussen daily tracking. The Left is dropping Obama steadily - as steadily as he is breaking promises.
Dakinikat says: Is it just possible that one of these guys will eventually say that some of us were right one day?
Cannonfire has issued a demand for an apology from Obots. I agree. They ought to apologize, they should ask our forgiveness, and amend their behaviour by holding Obama to the standards they set and forth for McCain, Bush, and both Clintons.... and no I am not kidding. I mean it. Kos, Dem Underground, Hufpo, all the Pods on those sites should apologize to all Pumas and Puma supporters. The excuse making for Obama lie's and flip flops must cease. He promised real change, he created an extraordinary level of expectation. No excuses for Obama! He made his bed, he must "lie" in it.
Because of the lively conversation this morning. I made a list...
List of observations:
1. The conversation, even when it gets ugly, is important. So far at least, I'd rather have a smaller audience than an echo chamber.
2. Dissent matters. Even when it confronts things I (or readers here) hold to be true.
3. Resentment is sometimes a place to start. It is not a place to stay. Processes here vary. I, for one, felt the movement called "Puma" - born of deep anger and resentment - should have evolved quickly into a third party concerned with many issues. In my thinking, an opportunity was lost because that resentment did not morph into a third way. The difficulties of a third party in the U.S. became an excuse to not try. I hold fast to the belief that we need a third way as badly as we ever have in this country. Both the corruption of the Democrats and the GOP impulse toward viciousness and stupidity prove this point. The clock is very much ticking on our "way of life" - we need another way.
(I sometimes process my resentments with outright mockery and humor. Sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes fury.)
4. Learning from the past is important -as long as one stays in the present while learning.
5. Forcing those who got lost in the Obama muck last year to see and hear how wrong they were is part of the process of owning and growing into the next place. This task needs to last as long as it needs to last. When a banner across the Huffington Post and the DailyKos announces WE WERE WRONG ABOUT OBAMA, then it might be time to move on. It would be dishonest for me to say that I did not take some joy in just how wrong the Pod people were. I do. My claims to sainthood are a few incarnations away.
Cannonfire put it succinctly yesterday: I wish to hell that these people would just be honest about what they did. I wish that they would 'fess up to the role they played in foisting this nightmarish presidency on the world. I wish to hell that they would apologize.
Given the level of lies, delusion and deceit around Obama I feel it is nearly an obligation to confront those responsible for foisting this nightmarish presidency on the world.
HOWEVER: If resentment regresses into a sniping victimhood then it is mostly useless.
There is some movement among the worst of the "Obots". A realization with some that they have been had. This is progress. Pressing this point is important for a number of reasons:
-Saving liberals from themselves is a decent, if not exactly noble, cause.
-Obama was and remains a symptom of a larger disease that grew out of the Bush era. The trickery is palpable and needs to be pointed out to the tricked. To ignore this is to assume that the democratic systems are working. One side loses, one wins - that's it. But they are not working. We shall get fooled, yet again, if we do not remember the machinations of the dysfunction.
Though we've seen it all before, there was a quantum leap in the body politic in the level of denial around Obama. It took the full force of the media, an economic collapse, a generalized revulsion toward the incumbent, and many of the biggest loudest blogs to get the man to 52%. As with 2000 - what we have here is evidence that the system itself is broken. The media's capitulation to Obama - and to the pro Iraq invasion meme in '03 - are important and similar indicators. We do not live in the country we are told we live in. Standing against the "manufacturing of consent" is one thing a blog can do and do well.
6. I stated that this was a "grievance" blog. This was:
A. claiming ownership of a word used by a blogger who called all Hillary blogs "grievance blogs".(I should have been clear about that.)
B. An admission that nearly all political blogs are grievance blogs. From Kos to Texas Darlin. Americablog took off because of grievances against Bush era policies. Posts at Cannonfire, Noquarter, and anywhere else one cares to alight are almost always in response to grievances of one sort or another. "Beefs" if you like. RCP is a compendium of writers with grievances. Blogs in the realm of political opinion and political writing are all grievance blogs. Having a grievance in and of itself is not a problem. Making the grievance one's identity is.
7. For the most part the best a political blog can do it point in a direction, give an opinion, make us chuckle, or uncover some facts that may have been missed or underreported. I think this is important: Blogs are blogs. Nothing more, nothing less. The obligation to "report" is a fallacy about blogs that is best avoided. I avoid it by writing opinion almost all the time.
Obama Pods - the time for an apology is now. Apologize. Cannonfire is right on. Please read his post here. This is not sour grapes. This is reality. We who opposed Obama and chose the rational candidate instead demand and deserve an apology from the Dailykos, Ariana Huffington, Keith Olbermann, John Avarosis, and the rest. The vicious trashing of over half of the former Democratic party by Obama stooges and nasty, vile idiots on the elite faux Left was beyond the pale. And for what? An overblown anti-American ego, on stick legs who makes an ass of himself and us before foreign leaders when he's not bailing out the crooks who brought down the economy. Face it Pods, we knew it all along. You saw one thing: His skin color -and went into masturbatory dithers over how "cool" you were for supporting a self evident fraud. It not "intelligence" Pods, it's inexperience, hesitation, and manipulation. Believe it or not - there is a difference.
The Obama Justice department's decision this week to not only embrace Bush's illegal, unconstitutional wiretaps - but to GO FURTHER than Bush ever dreamt of going makes the matter beyond dispute We were right. The pods were wrong.
The behaviour of the Pod people last year must not only be remembered- they must be held to account. Obama is a fraud. We knew it. They refused to see reality and, along the way trashed anyone who questioned them.
I will never let up on this. Obama is a mistake forced on us by fiends like Keith Olbermann and John Avarosis. He is polarizing the nation in ways we are only now seeing - and this will get worse. Watch.
The precision of M.M. is breathtaking. Season One opens during the 1960 presidential campaign. I am told the only fudging in the production design was in using IBM Selectric typewriters which would not show up until the mid sixties...there was not enough of the previous generation typewriters still around to fill the ad agency's office....
Oh my and don't start me on the acting... hmmm hmmm good... not a weak link anywhere.
Now I have a riff/post on why the lead character's name, "Don Draper", will soon enter the American lexicon as a short hand for an entire genre of American Maleness - the true antecedent to this tv character played by Jon Hamm is Jay Gatsby.
Okay enough! An Itunes gift card later I am working through season one with the same joy I felt upon my first read of Love In the Time of Cholera - too happy to stop and too happy to keep going for long without a pace about to work off the skittering pleasure of being alive...
One the other side is Peter Schiff. He says all this money conjuring will bring on hyperinflation. Link here.
Bernanke has declared war on deflation. I'd like to submit the possibility that high inflation is not seen as an economic problem by those in the Administration. High inflation is the goal. It is their solution. I think there will be an attempt to inflate our debt away. I am not an economist - I am inferring based on actions - and attempting to understand what the thinking is. The Fed has decided to print money. This would be fine if the money was going to be worth something. It won't be. At least not nearly as much as it is today. This policy has the potential to inflict unreal pain. Though that pain would be short lived in relative terms. A few years tops. However, in those few years the social disruption will be severe.
Money is being forced into the system. Eventually it will appear. But what will it be worth?
One of the down sides of being a blogger ( and, in fact, there are not too many) is dealing with resentful dime store journalists. I long ago got over the idea that I was:
A. Trying to get an A in High School journalism class. and/or B. That as a blogger this site (on any blog site) is in any way comparable to a newspaper. Or that it should attempt to be one. Ms. Huffington, having attempted to force her gay husband into a Senate seat and failing, and attempting, hilariously, to force herself into the California governor's mansion and failing - seems to have succeeded in forcing many to believe she runs an online newspaper.
At any rate, knowing that a blog is, in fact, not a cigar, has freed me up to opine, rant, rave, make fun of, and generally hold forth on subjects that interest me without too much care.
An oddity in the big blogger world (of which this site does NOT qualify) is the pissing contest between "legit" news sites and, say, adolescent whiners playing dress up trying to get a ticket to the Big Show - (I am thinking the word "cheetos" here.) Huff and Kos acted as kiddy club houses for Clinton haters all last year. Now, God Bless 'em, they are stuck with both Obama and their humorless egos.
The "real" media is no better. Grabbing crap from big blogs, promoting it, and then screaming that blogs can't be trusted is psycho. But alas, can we expect more from places like MSNBC that are run by amoral bridge trolls?
Nevertheless - I do like it when a big time media outlet reflects an opinion I recently stated on this blog. I am as susceptible to "smug" as any Pod. I just don't think "smug" is a lifestyle choice as Huffington, Kos, Sullivan and the rest clearly do.
I railed on Shepard Fairey after he was arrested in Boston for tagging. Most of my rant that night had to do with the odd - and smug - liberties "artists" like Fairey take with copyrighted material. But I ended by declaiming that he was not an "artist" in any real sense. I still believe this.
Oh, and I loath that "Hope" poster for all the right reasons. It is cheap, creepy, Orwellian and unconsciously ironic. It is not art. It is commentary. These are not mutually exclusive. I know. I've been to the Sistine chapel. Still, grabbing an AP photo, then watering down the stupidity, pain, and delusions of millions into a one word marketing coup is shrewd - but that's about it. AMC has a show called Mad Men in which doing the above activity is dramatized weekly.
Imagine my happiness when the New Yorker ripped Shepard a new one. Ah, validation.
In this little corner of the Internets the watchword is WATCH. Closely. As I've said already, I have no faith or hope in the man who is now President and this is a good thing. My expectations can be easily met, and, I suspect, will be. Some already have been met. That inauguration thingy was too pricey but did seem nice. The speech was okay.
If Obama turns out to be a truly transformative leader I benefit, you benefit, we all do. Win/Win.
Along the way, those of us who refused to "get on the Obama bus" now have the obligation to see as clearly as possible, to own what we already know. The man did not emerge from the ether yesterday. He got where he is with brutal tactics and calculating deceits. Not exactly new, but he did raise the bar. Aspects of these characteristics may benefit him as he deals with Pelosi and that lot.
For anyone who feels the need to "give him a chance" I support that. I don't feel this need. I want proof.
He's failed the trust test 1000 times over the past year. At every single moment when integrity was called for Obama chose duplicity. The Wright speech was as close as he came to showing some integrity. But then he ditched the old grump a week later anyway.
I won't be shaking the etch-a-sketch simply because he was sworn in. Real liberals don't do blind allegiance.
One of the reasons pro Clinton blogs were a treat and relief all year was because they supported and defended her while never letting her off the hook. I knew I disagreed with Clinton's war votes. The Obama pods knew he fudged his Iraq stance every 3 months and decided not to take in the information and deal with it - but instead to lie and pretend reality was, in fact, not reality.
The Obama Blogs and Media Machine attacked Clinton and ignored Obama's reality. They often slipped into moral depravity. Kos allowed - it seems encouraged - death threats against the Clintons, incitements to rape, and all manner of other vulgarity. Huffington was a caldron of blind hatred and shiny delusion. Avorisis sold his soul. Andrew Sullivan tried to - but came to find he does not have one. Poor Andy. Olbermann made a joke about killing Clinton.
Ha. ha.
The trolls who got off on alighting at those places, punking the Clintons, and working into dithers of Obama rapture are in for rough sledding. He's not what was sold. What he actually is is still open to question. And it may not be so bad. What he will be to many is disappointing. Most Pods began frantically making excuses the day after the election. In those pockets of the Left where integrity, principles, and consistency still matter the Obama party has long since dispersed.
Though this blog and many bigger ones directed fury at the Obama charade - lines where drawn in the sand. Anger was in full bloom. The murderous fantasies of spoiled children were not.
BHO does not fit any of the usual labels. Though this may sound appealing and revolutionary about now- it is not. Core principles matter. I have no idea what his are, or if he has any. Liberal and conservative are nouns. Moderate is a verb. To say Obama is moderate is to imply an action or way of being. It is not a statement of core beliefs.
Splitting the difference is not a core principle. It is a tactic. The Carter, Bush 1, and Clinton presidencies all suffered when a lack of core principles was exposed or principles were betrayed. Bush 2 believed in a thing or two along the way - but his anti-curious shallow personality resulted in an ossifying stupidity as the first years of the Iraq war and Katrina proved.
If President Obama demonstrates leadership skills and integrity, takes intelligent action, and proves he belongs where he now is - I will applaud. The campaign and transition proved that he was shrewd and supported by many. Nothing else. As far has I can tell, even after the speech yesterday, is that he believes in "unity". Before November he believed in "hope".
Yeah, well. Who doesn't?
The bar is so high for me, and my expectations so low, precisely because I watched closely all year. So far, all he brings to the party are slogans, speeches about unity, and, since winning, a congenital compulsion to split the difference in all fights. Oh, and a lot of very powerful folks behind the scenes who do have expectations.
A pre Presidency We Told You So: Riverdaughter nails the Daily Kos Krap. I, for one, have no intention of being polite about jackasses like King Cheeto, Avarosis and Andrew Sullivan as President Sunshine collapses into a people pleasing, pro Wall Street amorphous blob. They were and are idiots. Destructive idiots who spent last year whoring for the George Soros crowd. Obama is even turning into a coward on Stem cells research. Bush 3. Bush 3. Bush 3. And, by God, WE TOLD YOU SO. The Huff/Cheetos/Sullivan ninnies are the strongest argument we have for bringing back the stockades and the fine art of tomato throwing. Either knowingly or not, (don't care which) last year Avarosis, Sullivan, Huffington, Cheetos, were on the vanguard of destroying American liberalism for yet another generation. They ruthlessly attacked 3 true reformers - one on the left and 2 on the right - while intellectually masturbating themselves into a frenzy over an unvetted living, breathing question mark of a man - who happened to be a good speaker and, of course, overriding all other concerns, he was not white. President Question Mark is now turning out to be a weenie beholden to the Wall Street interests (and God knows who else) who bought him and then brought him to the White House.
Holidays: Happy M.L. King Day. I am glad we set this day aside. MLK getting his own day, while Washington and Lincoln have had their birthdays merged into a joke holiday set aside for electronic gadget sales is - historically speaking - obscene. And after 240 years we still don't honor a single woman in our yearly round up of three day weekends. That sh*t ain't right.
Music: Inauguration songs I love include:
A Poll:
This poll is entirely fictitious, as all post JFK Americans know that there are no conspiracies in the U.S.A. Anyone who thinks America is subject to the exact same behind the scenes power plays as Ancient Rome, Elizabethan England, or, frankly, anywhere else in the history of civilization, is, we all know, a dolt. We also all know-by virtue of being let in on the joke by the always free and fair American Media/Entertainment Complex- that everything is ironic all the time - except natural disasters, sometimes missing white people but only if they are pretty and/or rich, and the installation of new leaders. Conspiracies are simply not ironic. Therefore they do not exist. But let's just say:
