(1) If I've had to pay for an unreasonably priced ("unaffordable") health plan, I won't be eligible to utilize a public option, as I'm insured by an unaffordable health plan.
(2) If I'm unemployed, I'll get no relief from provisions related to protections for the employed.
(3) If I'm a freelancer or own a so-called "business" which earns little to no money, I'm fucked.
(4) If I don't have a pre-existing injury or condition, the so-called "reform" health insurance won't have any relevance to my situation.
(5) These proposed changes in health insurance for Americans (NOT illegal aliens, or maybe not even legal ones?) won't cause a deficit. Yep, I can believe this.
(6) The Congress of the USA isn't dominated by Republicans and Republicans in donkeys' clothing. Hmm. Who are our elected officials and why, Mr. Prez, do you give a fuck about the Repugs when they didn't give a fuck about (and even killed off) progressive Dems when they were in power? And also even non-progressive Dems with obvious ties to big fat corporate interests? Duh! I'm mad and I can't take it anymore!
What about you? Can you take this shit?
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
From the Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
By Greg Miller
February 1, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."
Despite concern about rendition, Obama's prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.
The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."
Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.
CIA veterans involved in renditions characterized the program as important but of limited intelligence-gathering use. It is used mainly for terrorism suspects not considered valuable enough for the CIA to keep, they said.
"The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren't very productive," said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.
"In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option," the former official said. "If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control."
In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture," or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.
The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.
In a 2007 speech, https:// www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html "> www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html the agency had to make a determination in every case "that it is less, rather than more, likely that the individual will be tortured." He added that the CIA sought "true assurances" and that "we're not looking to shave this 49-51."
Even so, the rendition program became a target of fierce criticism during the Bush administration as a series of cases surfaced.
In one of the most notorious instances, a German citizen named Khaled Masri was arrested in Macedonia in 2003 and whisked away by the CIA to a secret prison in Afghanistan. He was quietly released in Albania five months later after the agency determined it had mistaken Masri for an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Masri later described being abducted by "seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks." He said he was stripped of his clothes, placed in a diaper and blindfolded before being taken aboard a plane in shackles -- an account that matches other descriptions of prisoners captured in the rendition program.
................. CLICK TITLE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE
latimes.com
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
By Greg Miller
February 1, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."
Despite concern about rendition, Obama's prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.
The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."
Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.
CIA veterans involved in renditions characterized the program as important but of limited intelligence-gathering use. It is used mainly for terrorism suspects not considered valuable enough for the CIA to keep, they said.
"The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren't very productive," said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.
"In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option," the former official said. "If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control."
In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture," or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.
The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.
In a 2007 speech, https:// www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html "> www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html the agency had to make a determination in every case "that it is less, rather than more, likely that the individual will be tortured." He added that the CIA sought "true assurances" and that "we're not looking to shave this 49-51."
Even so, the rendition program became a target of fierce criticism during the Bush administration as a series of cases surfaced.
In one of the most notorious instances, a German citizen named Khaled Masri was arrested in Macedonia in 2003 and whisked away by the CIA to a secret prison in Afghanistan. He was quietly released in Albania five months later after the agency determined it had mistaken Masri for an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Masri later described being abducted by "seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks." He said he was stripped of his clothes, placed in a diaper and blindfolded before being taken aboard a plane in shackles -- an account that matches other descriptions of prisoners captured in the rendition program.
................. CLICK TITLE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Obama Poised to Become Most Ass-kissed President in History
Obama Poised to Become Most Ass-kissed President in History
Suckage Reaching New Heights, Historians Say
by Andy Borowitz
When he is inaugurated on January 20, President-elect Barack Obama is on track to become the most ass-kissed president in the nation's history, some historians believe.
Those experts say that with conservative pundits and evangelists scurrying to hop aboard the Obama bandwagon, in addition to the liberal talking heads who have been kissing his ass for months, the President-elect's buttocks are being sucked to a degree that is without precedent.
"Abraham Lincoln is perhaps our country's greatest president," says Doris Kearns Goodwin, noted historian and author of the bestselling Team of Rivals, "but he never had his fanny kissed like this."
At MSNBC, a top executive announced today that the news network would suspend its regular programming between now and the Inauguration "to administer one long, glorious blowjob to President-elect Barack Obama."
The network's new promos reflect this agenda, as a disembodied voice asks the viewer, "Do you remember the moment when you fell in love with Barack Obama?"
At the final press conference of his presidency, George W. Bush ruefully contrasted his treatment by the press with the historic level of suckage being bestowed on the President-elect's buttal region.
"You people never kissed my hiney like you're kissing his, and you know it," Mr. Bush said. "As far as I'm concerned, you bastards can all go to hell."
Mr. Bush later struck an elegiac note, saying that he was considering several options for his retirement, including a return to full-time drinking.
Suckage Reaching New Heights, Historians Say
by Andy Borowitz
When he is inaugurated on January 20, President-elect Barack Obama is on track to become the most ass-kissed president in the nation's history, some historians believe.
Those experts say that with conservative pundits and evangelists scurrying to hop aboard the Obama bandwagon, in addition to the liberal talking heads who have been kissing his ass for months, the President-elect's buttocks are being sucked to a degree that is without precedent.
"Abraham Lincoln is perhaps our country's greatest president," says Doris Kearns Goodwin, noted historian and author of the bestselling Team of Rivals, "but he never had his fanny kissed like this."
At MSNBC, a top executive announced today that the news network would suspend its regular programming between now and the Inauguration "to administer one long, glorious blowjob to President-elect Barack Obama."
The network's new promos reflect this agenda, as a disembodied voice asks the viewer, "Do you remember the moment when you fell in love with Barack Obama?"
At the final press conference of his presidency, George W. Bush ruefully contrasted his treatment by the press with the historic level of suckage being bestowed on the President-elect's buttal region.
"You people never kissed my hiney like you're kissing his, and you know it," Mr. Bush said. "As far as I'm concerned, you bastards can all go to hell."
Mr. Bush later struck an elegiac note, saying that he was considering several options for his retirement, including a return to full-time drinking.
Friday, November 07, 2008
4 Reasons why America went for Obama
One columnist's take. If he's right, the right-wingers may be cooked. And wouldn't that be loverly!
From The Times Online
November 4, 2008
Four reasons why America went for Obama
The old politics has been swept away because the voters themselves have changed: they are richer, smarter and less white
Daniel Finkelstein
In the late summer of 2004 I sat down for dinner with a friend who was running the Republican Senate campaign in Illinois. He looked disconsolate. Things were not going well.
The Republicans hadn't had much luck with their candidate. Their first nominee had been forced to stand down when his wife accused him of taking her to sex clubs with a view to having sex in public. The man who succeeded him was a hardline Christian who declared that Jesus would not support a Democrat and attacked the Vice-President's lesbian daughter for being a “selfish hedonist”.
Strangely, however, that wasn't why my friend believed they were being routed. The real reason was that the Democratic candidate was brilliant, flawless, a rock star, a phenomenon. And that was when I first heard the name of Barack Obama, now President Elect.
One reading of this election is that it has been an ordinary contest transformed by an extraordinary candidate. America remains the same, runs this theory. It is still an innately conservative nation. The reason this election has been different - and has ended up with the victory of such an apparently unlikely man - is because of the talents and failings of the candidates involved.
This is not a theory I accept. This election has turned out as it did because it needed to. The emergence of Barack Obama only happened, only could have happened, because America is changing profoundly. This was not a landmark election because it featured exceptional candidates. It featured exceptional candidates because it was a landmark election.
Here's how America has changed:
The American people are becoming, literally, a different people.
The most obvious change exposed by this election is in attitudes to race. Little more than 40 years ago Barack Obama would have found it hard to be served lunch in a restaurant, let alone be US president.
In 1962 Alabama Democrats chose George Wallace as their candidate for governor and a few months later he was sworn in, standing on the gold star placed on the spot where, a century earlier, Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. And Wallace had this to say: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.”
Segregation did not last for ever. It did not even outlast George Wallace. And in 2008 Alabama Democrats chose Barack Obama for president.
The traditional politics of white America are being tranformed. The country is changing demographically, rapidly and visibly. US Census Bureau figures suggest that, by 2042, white Americans will be in a minority.
Karl Rove, George Bush's strategist, has long been convinced that the Republicans had to co-opt the Hispanic community or the party would suffer badly in future. That is one reason why, against the instincts of his party, Mr Bush supported a liberal policy on immigration, one that John McCain backed too.
America will never be the same again, because Americans won't be the same.
The world is changing and with it America's place in the world.
America remains the greatest single power in the world, yet the rise of China, the new belligerence of Russia and the wealth of the Gulf set this election in a very different context to its predecessors.
In this election America was not looking simply for a candidate able to command its forces as it enjoyed undisputed hegemony. It was more anxious than that. It was looking for a leader, like Mr Obama, who could command and might deserve the respect of the world.
The crisis in the financial markets only added to that feeling. For the first time in a generation the free market ideal and its advocates were on the back foot.
American politics is being captured by the rising middle class.
For 40 years American politics has been shaped by the split in the Democratic Party over civil rights. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, launched at the end of the 1960s, was to bring over to the Republicans disaffected voters from the segregationist states. It was almost completely successful.
Democratic presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy had united the liberal North with the poor and dispossessed whites of the deep South. After the Civil Rights Act this link was broken. And Democrats struggled without this source of southern support.
Yet slowly what one might term a mass chattering class has emerged to make a northern liberal candidate like Mr Obama viable as they had not been since Kennedy. A record number of Americans now complete high school or go to college. There are 7.3 million American millionaires, and more than half the country now considers itself middle class and is working less and enjoying more leisure time. Even to be competitive with these voters the Republicans had to select an unconventional candidate. And still he lost.
We have reached the end of the Southern Strategy and that changes American politics profoundly.
The conventional Republican agenda has stopped working.
The big themes of Republican politics - cut income tax, fight crime, reform social security, outlaw abortion, support marriage - no longer cut it politically. The Democrat tunes play better.
Tax cutting has lost its edge because 29 million Americans pay no income tax at all and because the Democrats have learnt how to blunt the message. Success has made crime less of a preoccupation. And the desperate need for Republicans to win votes among women makes their stance on abortion a serious problem.
The Republicans were forced to select a maverick because they did not have an electable mainstream Republican candidate. This was because the mainstream Republican agenda is no longer a winner.
Welcome to a new American president. Welcome to a new American politics.
daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk
From The Times Online
November 4, 2008
Four reasons why America went for Obama
The old politics has been swept away because the voters themselves have changed: they are richer, smarter and less white
Daniel Finkelstein
In the late summer of 2004 I sat down for dinner with a friend who was running the Republican Senate campaign in Illinois. He looked disconsolate. Things were not going well.
The Republicans hadn't had much luck with their candidate. Their first nominee had been forced to stand down when his wife accused him of taking her to sex clubs with a view to having sex in public. The man who succeeded him was a hardline Christian who declared that Jesus would not support a Democrat and attacked the Vice-President's lesbian daughter for being a “selfish hedonist”.
Strangely, however, that wasn't why my friend believed they were being routed. The real reason was that the Democratic candidate was brilliant, flawless, a rock star, a phenomenon. And that was when I first heard the name of Barack Obama, now President Elect.
One reading of this election is that it has been an ordinary contest transformed by an extraordinary candidate. America remains the same, runs this theory. It is still an innately conservative nation. The reason this election has been different - and has ended up with the victory of such an apparently unlikely man - is because of the talents and failings of the candidates involved.
This is not a theory I accept. This election has turned out as it did because it needed to. The emergence of Barack Obama only happened, only could have happened, because America is changing profoundly. This was not a landmark election because it featured exceptional candidates. It featured exceptional candidates because it was a landmark election.
Here's how America has changed:
The American people are becoming, literally, a different people.
The most obvious change exposed by this election is in attitudes to race. Little more than 40 years ago Barack Obama would have found it hard to be served lunch in a restaurant, let alone be US president.
In 1962 Alabama Democrats chose George Wallace as their candidate for governor and a few months later he was sworn in, standing on the gold star placed on the spot where, a century earlier, Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. And Wallace had this to say: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.”
Segregation did not last for ever. It did not even outlast George Wallace. And in 2008 Alabama Democrats chose Barack Obama for president.
The traditional politics of white America are being tranformed. The country is changing demographically, rapidly and visibly. US Census Bureau figures suggest that, by 2042, white Americans will be in a minority.
Karl Rove, George Bush's strategist, has long been convinced that the Republicans had to co-opt the Hispanic community or the party would suffer badly in future. That is one reason why, against the instincts of his party, Mr Bush supported a liberal policy on immigration, one that John McCain backed too.
America will never be the same again, because Americans won't be the same.
The world is changing and with it America's place in the world.
America remains the greatest single power in the world, yet the rise of China, the new belligerence of Russia and the wealth of the Gulf set this election in a very different context to its predecessors.
In this election America was not looking simply for a candidate able to command its forces as it enjoyed undisputed hegemony. It was more anxious than that. It was looking for a leader, like Mr Obama, who could command and might deserve the respect of the world.
The crisis in the financial markets only added to that feeling. For the first time in a generation the free market ideal and its advocates were on the back foot.
American politics is being captured by the rising middle class.
For 40 years American politics has been shaped by the split in the Democratic Party over civil rights. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, launched at the end of the 1960s, was to bring over to the Republicans disaffected voters from the segregationist states. It was almost completely successful.
Democratic presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy had united the liberal North with the poor and dispossessed whites of the deep South. After the Civil Rights Act this link was broken. And Democrats struggled without this source of southern support.
Yet slowly what one might term a mass chattering class has emerged to make a northern liberal candidate like Mr Obama viable as they had not been since Kennedy. A record number of Americans now complete high school or go to college. There are 7.3 million American millionaires, and more than half the country now considers itself middle class and is working less and enjoying more leisure time. Even to be competitive with these voters the Republicans had to select an unconventional candidate. And still he lost.
We have reached the end of the Southern Strategy and that changes American politics profoundly.
The conventional Republican agenda has stopped working.
The big themes of Republican politics - cut income tax, fight crime, reform social security, outlaw abortion, support marriage - no longer cut it politically. The Democrat tunes play better.
Tax cutting has lost its edge because 29 million Americans pay no income tax at all and because the Democrats have learnt how to blunt the message. Success has made crime less of a preoccupation. And the desperate need for Republicans to win votes among women makes their stance on abortion a serious problem.
The Republicans were forced to select a maverick because they did not have an electable mainstream Republican candidate. This was because the mainstream Republican agenda is no longer a winner.
Welcome to a new American president. Welcome to a new American politics.
daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
BREAKING NEWS: Sarah Palin Receives Endorsement of Fundamentalist Feminists with Mongoloids* and Moms for America.
Disassociated News Extra: 10/14/08: Sarah Palin Receives Endorsement of Fundamentalist Feminists with Mongoloids* and Moms for America.
Sarah Palin rose 2% in some polls today as she reached out to FFM and MA. At a rally in Boise (where boysies are always boysies), the President of FFM, Catherine Smith Krunk, endorsed “sweet Sarah” as the “Mother of America.”
Posing before Fox 5 television cameras in her wolf-skin camisole, Ms. Krunk stated:
“Sarah Palin exemplifies the evolution of feminism, as well as the integrity of motherhood. So who gives a heck if she doesn’t go for Choice? She’s bringing up Mongoloid Baby and plans to make more of them, if God so wills it. In fact, she’s going to extract 50% of the budget allotted to homeless veterans to Moms for Mongoloids, a federal division of FFM.”
Moms for America spokesperson Mary Uganuk rushed on record to agree: “Due to those Arab terrorists, it’s clear that everything’s going to be polluted, including mother’s milk, though we’re working on that. MA is united in its mission that mothers with deformed fetuses be encouraged to bring them into America, as part of God’s work.”
A spokesman for McPain has confirmed (to this reporter) that McPain will announce this at the debates tomorrow night in order to achieve a 2% gain on that …. that guy … umm. “Arab terrorist.”
Arab-American spokesman Allah Ali commented from an unknown location: “Yeah like we really appreciated McPain’s telling that stupid woman at his rally Obama isn’t an Arab. Like we’re all terrorists? Eh? I just lost my entire investment, from my spice and beans shop in Brooklyn, at the stock market. Like I need this stupid shit on top of wondering how I’m going to live on the street with my family?”
Time will tell. Progressives are about to storm both the McPain camp and the Obama camp. At the Obama camp, they’re carrying banners, such as: “CORPORATE OBAMA, WISHY-WASHY OBAMA, PRO-FISA OBAMA: GET REAL OR JOIN THE MCPAIN CAMPAIGN!” At the McPain Camp, they’re saying the obvious: the guy’s even worse of a Pinocchio than Obama."
An anonymous spokesperson for Fed-up Progressive (FFP)stated: "You can fool all of the people all the time. And you can also fuck them, not pleasantly. I'm moving to the South Pole."
* Yes, of course, the term "Mongoloids" is a derogatory term for human beings born with Down syndrome. Use of that term by this author is in no way an endorsement of the ignorant bias of those who abuse it. To the contrary and to make a point. This is a satire, after all. Hypocritical Palin and McPain are sickening in their prejudices. -- CN
Sarah Palin rose 2% in some polls today as she reached out to FFM and MA. At a rally in Boise (where boysies are always boysies), the President of FFM, Catherine Smith Krunk, endorsed “sweet Sarah” as the “Mother of America.”
Posing before Fox 5 television cameras in her wolf-skin camisole, Ms. Krunk stated:
“Sarah Palin exemplifies the evolution of feminism, as well as the integrity of motherhood. So who gives a heck if she doesn’t go for Choice? She’s bringing up Mongoloid Baby and plans to make more of them, if God so wills it. In fact, she’s going to extract 50% of the budget allotted to homeless veterans to Moms for Mongoloids, a federal division of FFM.”
Moms for America spokesperson Mary Uganuk rushed on record to agree: “Due to those Arab terrorists, it’s clear that everything’s going to be polluted, including mother’s milk, though we’re working on that. MA is united in its mission that mothers with deformed fetuses be encouraged to bring them into America, as part of God’s work.”
A spokesman for McPain has confirmed (to this reporter) that McPain will announce this at the debates tomorrow night in order to achieve a 2% gain on that …. that guy … umm. “Arab terrorist.”
Arab-American spokesman Allah Ali commented from an unknown location: “Yeah like we really appreciated McPain’s telling that stupid woman at his rally Obama isn’t an Arab. Like we’re all terrorists? Eh? I just lost my entire investment, from my spice and beans shop in Brooklyn, at the stock market. Like I need this stupid shit on top of wondering how I’m going to live on the street with my family?”
Time will tell. Progressives are about to storm both the McPain camp and the Obama camp. At the Obama camp, they’re carrying banners, such as: “CORPORATE OBAMA, WISHY-WASHY OBAMA, PRO-FISA OBAMA: GET REAL OR JOIN THE MCPAIN CAMPAIGN!” At the McPain Camp, they’re saying the obvious: the guy’s even worse of a Pinocchio than Obama."
An anonymous spokesperson for Fed-up Progressive (FFP)stated: "You can fool all of the people all the time. And you can also fuck them, not pleasantly. I'm moving to the South Pole."
* Yes, of course, the term "Mongoloids" is a derogatory term for human beings born with Down syndrome. Use of that term by this author is in no way an endorsement of the ignorant bias of those who abuse it. To the contrary and to make a point. This is a satire, after all. Hypocritical Palin and McPain are sickening in their prejudices. -- CN
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Obama to 'refine' Iraq plan - Mike Allen - Politico.com
3 strikes and you're out, man.
He flip-flopped on FISA, thumbing his nose at seminal first and fourth amendment rights. Then he spoke of expanding the Bush (Christian) faith--based initiative, avoiding the obvious unconstitutionality of employing religious groups to do what our government has the obligation to do for US residents. Now he's reversing himself on Iraq -- don't kid yourselves. How can ANYONE believe that Obama will effect the progressive changes he once spoke so eloquently about? We're in big trouble.
I called this phony "progressive" from the getgo and Obamaniacs threw nasty words at me. Sorry to say I TOLD YOU SO. NOW, what are you BO fans going to do with your falling hero? Donate more money? Continue to think up absurd rationales? Huh?
Obama to 'refine' Iraq plan - Mike Allen - Politico.com
He flip-flopped on FISA, thumbing his nose at seminal first and fourth amendment rights. Then he spoke of expanding the Bush (Christian) faith--based initiative, avoiding the obvious unconstitutionality of employing religious groups to do what our government has the obligation to do for US residents. Now he's reversing himself on Iraq -- don't kid yourselves. How can ANYONE believe that Obama will effect the progressive changes he once spoke so eloquently about? We're in big trouble.
I called this phony "progressive" from the getgo and Obamaniacs threw nasty words at me. Sorry to say I TOLD YOU SO. NOW, what are you BO fans going to do with your falling hero? Donate more money? Continue to think up absurd rationales? Huh?
Obama to 'refine' Iraq plan - Mike Allen - Politico.com
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Really, Obama, it's the money
So the great change agent decided NOT to vote either way on the telecomm immunity amendment to the FISA legislation, for reasons that should be obvious -- duh (as formerly reported, he supported this legislation, a further evisceration of our 4th amendment privacy and 1st amendment free speech rights). As a matter of fact, BO's been absent from voting 18 times since June 2nd. See his voting record.
How I wish that a genuine progressive were the presumptive nominee!
A friend of mine and I were discussing Obamamania yesterday. And yes folks, follow the money. (good point, E.D. - you don't get to be an Illinois senator without mucho corporate backing.) Yep, Obamamania's part of the American magical thinking mentality. Until/unless we awaken from the "everything will be ok," blind faith trance, we're going to be cooked. Well, we're already cooked (as well as literally deluged). How's YOUR summer going, folks?
Here's a cute little article that suggests the reasons so many so-called House Democrats flip-flopped on Fisa.
Well, yes, then there's Obama's flip-flop on campaign public financing. Suivez l'argent, baby!
Really, Obama, it's the money
How I wish that a genuine progressive were the presumptive nominee!
A friend of mine and I were discussing Obamamania yesterday. And yes folks, follow the money. (good point, E.D. - you don't get to be an Illinois senator without mucho corporate backing.) Yep, Obamamania's part of the American magical thinking mentality. Until/unless we awaken from the "everything will be ok," blind faith trance, we're going to be cooked. Well, we're already cooked (as well as literally deluged). How's YOUR summer going, folks?
Here's a cute little article that suggests the reasons so many so-called House Democrats flip-flopped on Fisa.
Well, yes, then there's Obama's flip-flop on campaign public financing. Suivez l'argent, baby!
Really, Obama, it's the money
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Update re Mark Crispin Miller
Ok. Though he hasn't responded to my reply to his unjust and totally unfounded accusation that I'm a covert Bush lover (makes my skin crawl & itch & my legs buckle), he apparently hasn't removed me from receiving his newsletters. I gather for once there were no newsletters dated yesterday.
My question still remains: Why do Obama supporters assume that everyone who questions him is either a Clinton supporter (and therefor pro Bush) or a conservative deadhead, or maybe a racist? Nobody's answered this. I continue to be crapped off by assumptions and blind faith. Today, I argued with a Clinton supporter who thinks she's going to make waves. David, as you recognize, it's highly unlikely that either Democrat will make waves unless they're of the tsunami variety.
PAX AND WAKE UP, AMERICA!
My question still remains: Why do Obama supporters assume that everyone who questions him is either a Clinton supporter (and therefor pro Bush) or a conservative deadhead, or maybe a racist? Nobody's answered this. I continue to be crapped off by assumptions and blind faith. Today, I argued with a Clinton supporter who thinks she's going to make waves. David, as you recognize, it's highly unlikely that either Democrat will make waves unless they're of the tsunami variety.
PAX AND WAKE UP, AMERICA!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Obama Rah Rah Rah --- Mark Crispin Miller: I'm now a tacit Bush supporter.
I've been a huge fan of Mark's and have attended 3 of his shows in NYC. I also invited him to speak at Hunter College of Social Work which he did and my FIRST KGB reading way back when, which was a wonderful presentation. So now, I think probably he's blocked me from receiving his newsletter because he's bought the OBAMA-PROGRESSIVE CHANGE hype I don't buy. And not because I'm a fan of Clinton's. I've told everyone: I'm not a fan of H R Clinton's. For awhile, I said I was opting for her, as I couldn't tolerate (and still can't tolerate) the misogynistic remarks by the Press and others. Then, I said NO. I can't believe in either "Democrat" as someone I'd be content to support. But that's no good. According to Miller, who's now (apparently) gone WOW WOW OBAMA, I'm a tacit Bush supporter.
Here's the exchange. In response to his dissemation of:
"I believe you might enjoy my article Clintons' Blind Eye to Voters at OpEdNews:
"Even Hillary's endorser, Bobby Kennedy, Jr., knows there's something funny
about the pattern of her wins."
Barbara Bellows-TerraNova"
I responded:
Ho Hum. Whenever Clinton wins, there's even more "Hillary" bashing. Well not really. Whenever she loses, everyone wants to shoo her out of the race, so Obama the alleged progressive (whose mentor was hawk Lieberman & who voted for the Patriot Act, and who has a plenty of corporate ties) will be the only candidate. Crap. Btw, why don't people call Obama by his first name? I'm tearing my hairs out, as I don't like any of the candidates and i'm well aware of Machiavellian Repugnican maneuvers, but I'm so so tired of the "Hillary" bashings. And both "Democratic" candidates have run negative campaigns. So get off your lame horses already! What else is new in Ameerica? Where's the leadership of the D party? What's Dean doing? Get over it!
And here was Mark's reply:
You're for Clinton--in fact, you think you are Clinton--so anything
her campaign does is okay.
Between you and a fervent Bush supporter there's no difference.
___
So then, I responded but got no answer, and I've received no posts from the group or a personal reply from Mark. So what am I to think? Here was my answer:
You're misreading me, Mark, and I don't know why. I'm not for Clinton. I said that. And I'm certainly NOT Clinton. That's a strange accusation.. At one point, I decided to back her, reluctantly, due to all the misogynistic attacks. Then I just couldn't. She's way too conservative for my tastes. I think C and O both play dirty and I hate her campaign. And I've said that. I just don't like the fact that Obama's hoodwinked lots of people into thinking he's progressive when he's not. If he gets in (and I'll vote for him if he's the nominee), I'm afraid he's going to disappoint lots of people. What's wrong with questioning people's assumptions? You do that. But when I say anything negative about Obama, I get skewered. What's going on?
_____________
Where are we at? I'm very much an admirer of Mark and I definitely believe that the last two elections were stolen. But I don't know what to do with Obama bandwagon stereotyping. Face it, friends. Neither candidate is progressive. Neither is what we need: an intense, heart/mind driven, ideologically/philosophically driven candidate who's going to MAKE A DIFFERENCE and even do whatever s/he can to ensure that global warming is (if possible) reversed. I AM SO SO TIRED OF OBAMA SUPPORTERS WHO LABEL ME A BUSHkike CONSERVATIVE or otherwise dismiss me totally FOR QUESTIONING HIS VERACITY.
Here's the exchange. In response to his dissemation of:
"I believe you might enjoy my article Clintons' Blind Eye to Voters at OpEdNews:
"Even Hillary's endorser, Bobby Kennedy, Jr., knows there's something funny
about the pattern of her wins."
Barbara Bellows-TerraNova"
I responded:
Ho Hum. Whenever Clinton wins, there's even more "Hillary" bashing. Well not really. Whenever she loses, everyone wants to shoo her out of the race, so Obama the alleged progressive (whose mentor was hawk Lieberman & who voted for the Patriot Act, and who has a plenty of corporate ties) will be the only candidate. Crap. Btw, why don't people call Obama by his first name? I'm tearing my hairs out, as I don't like any of the candidates and i'm well aware of Machiavellian Repugnican maneuvers, but I'm so so tired of the "Hillary" bashings. And both "Democratic" candidates have run negative campaigns. So get off your lame horses already! What else is new in Ameerica? Where's the leadership of the D party? What's Dean doing? Get over it!
And here was Mark's reply:
You're for Clinton--in fact, you think you are Clinton--so anything
her campaign does is okay.
Between you and a fervent Bush supporter there's no difference.
___
So then, I responded but got no answer, and I've received no posts from the group or a personal reply from Mark. So what am I to think? Here was my answer:
You're misreading me, Mark, and I don't know why. I'm not for Clinton. I said that. And I'm certainly NOT Clinton. That's a strange accusation.. At one point, I decided to back her, reluctantly, due to all the misogynistic attacks. Then I just couldn't. She's way too conservative for my tastes. I think C and O both play dirty and I hate her campaign. And I've said that. I just don't like the fact that Obama's hoodwinked lots of people into thinking he's progressive when he's not. If he gets in (and I'll vote for him if he's the nominee), I'm afraid he's going to disappoint lots of people. What's wrong with questioning people's assumptions? You do that. But when I say anything negative about Obama, I get skewered. What's going on?
_____________
Where are we at? I'm very much an admirer of Mark and I definitely believe that the last two elections were stolen. But I don't know what to do with Obama bandwagon stereotyping. Face it, friends. Neither candidate is progressive. Neither is what we need: an intense, heart/mind driven, ideologically/philosophically driven candidate who's going to MAKE A DIFFERENCE and even do whatever s/he can to ensure that global warming is (if possible) reversed. I AM SO SO TIRED OF OBAMA SUPPORTERS WHO LABEL ME A BUSHkike CONSERVATIVE or otherwise dismiss me totally FOR QUESTIONING HIS VERACITY.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
False Advertising: New Obama Ad Falsely Claims He Does Not Accept Money From Oil Companies
False Advertising: New Obama Ad Falsely Claims He Does Not Accept Money From Oil Companies: Article and Ad here: HERE
Phil Singer: "It's unfortunate that Senator Obama is using false advertising to explain why he can be trusted to do something about energy prices. Senator Obama says he doesn't take campaign contributions from oil companies but the reality is that Exxon, Shell, and others are among his donors. I wonder if they'll fix the ad."
A new ad by Sen. Obama running in Pennsylvania falsely claims that Sen. Obama does not accept money from the oil industry. In the ad, Sen. Obama says "I'm Barack Obama and I don't take money from oil companies or lobbyists and I won't let them block change anymore."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Obama has received over $160,000 from the oil and gas companies. Two major bundlers for his campaign -- George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar - are oil company CEOs. Sen. Obama has accepted money from Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and just about every other major oil company. Just last month, Sen. Obama accepted another $8,400 from ExxonMobil, $12,370 from Chevron and $6,500 from British Petroleum.
In 2005, Sen. Obama voted for the Dick Cheney energy bill, which was written in secret with the oil industry. Hillary Clinton opposed Cheney's energy bill, has a plan to eliminate oil industry tax breaks, and would require oil companies to contribute to a $50 billion strategic energy fund to jumpstart research and investment in clean energy technologies.
-----------------
OK. You can fool some people some of the time and most of the American people most of the time. The prognosis: this country will continue to descend deeper into the bullshit.
Phil Singer: "It's unfortunate that Senator Obama is using false advertising to explain why he can be trusted to do something about energy prices. Senator Obama says he doesn't take campaign contributions from oil companies but the reality is that Exxon, Shell, and others are among his donors. I wonder if they'll fix the ad."
A new ad by Sen. Obama running in Pennsylvania falsely claims that Sen. Obama does not accept money from the oil industry. In the ad, Sen. Obama says "I'm Barack Obama and I don't take money from oil companies or lobbyists and I won't let them block change anymore."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Obama has received over $160,000 from the oil and gas companies. Two major bundlers for his campaign -- George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar - are oil company CEOs. Sen. Obama has accepted money from Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and just about every other major oil company. Just last month, Sen. Obama accepted another $8,400 from ExxonMobil, $12,370 from Chevron and $6,500 from British Petroleum.
In 2005, Sen. Obama voted for the Dick Cheney energy bill, which was written in secret with the oil industry. Hillary Clinton opposed Cheney's energy bill, has a plan to eliminate oil industry tax breaks, and would require oil companies to contribute to a $50 billion strategic energy fund to jumpstart research and investment in clean energy technologies.
-----------------
OK. You can fool some people some of the time and most of the American people most of the time. The prognosis: this country will continue to descend deeper into the bullshit.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Obama's faux attacks on NAFTA
Obama staffer gave warning of NAFTA rhetoric 27 Feb 2008
From Citizens for a Legitimate Government, 28 Feb 2006
Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned. Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources. The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.
Follow link for entire article.
From Citizens for a Legitimate Government, 28 Feb 2006
Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned. Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources. The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.
Follow link for entire article.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Cash-rich Obama Buys Yahoo
From The Borowitz Report (Andy Borowitz) Yes, folks, it's satire, but hey, if I saw it in The Guardian, I'd believe it!
{Also --- just in (hush hush): Obama Stamps His Feet, Claps His Hands, and Announces to Hoards at Dallas Stadium: "THE PRIMARY IS OVER." After 15 minutes of cheering, the crowd took a break while a reporter asked Obama: "Who said so, oh Great One?" Obama answered, "I proclaimed and it is so." The hoards trampled one another to reach the stage. 176 people were injured, and several died, but then, Obama sneezed, and the cheering deafened Dallas, drowning out tv stations and creating an outage that's alarming the nuclear industry. Representatives of the nuclear industry were reportedly cheering in the wings.} --- CN
Cash-rich Obama Buys Yahoo
Outbids Microsoft for Internet Giant
Flush with cash after a deluge of online donations, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) stunned the business world today by outbidding Microsoft for the Internet giant Yahoo.
The purchase of Yahoo is believed to be the largest acquisition of a multibillion-dollar company ever by a Democratic presidential candidate, industry experts said.
A spokesman for Microsoft at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters acknowledged that the company was “disappointed” to lose Yahoo to Sen. Obama, but added, “We can’t really be mad at him, because we love him so.”
The news of Sen. Obama’s $48 billion offer for Yahoo sent a shudder through Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)’s campaign, which for the past six weeks has been subsisting on Ramen noodles.
In his televised debate in Cleveland, Ohio with Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama said that he was able to purchase Yahoo because his campaign was reaping online donations averaging $1.8 billion a day.
Mr. Obama also offered to “personally hire” 2 million Ohioans to do odd jobs around his campaign headquarters.
“People say, can we really come up with enough errands for 2 million Ohioans to do?” he said. “Yes we can.”
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick praised Sen. Obama’s plan, telling reporters, “His campaign is more than just words, he is offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run.”
Sen. Obama later added, “My campaign is more than just words, I am offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run.”
Elsewhere, President Bush said that the economy was not in a recession, leading economists to conclude that the economy was in a recession.
{Also --- just in (hush hush): Obama Stamps His Feet, Claps His Hands, and Announces to Hoards at Dallas Stadium: "THE PRIMARY IS OVER." After 15 minutes of cheering, the crowd took a break while a reporter asked Obama: "Who said so, oh Great One?" Obama answered, "I proclaimed and it is so." The hoards trampled one another to reach the stage. 176 people were injured, and several died, but then, Obama sneezed, and the cheering deafened Dallas, drowning out tv stations and creating an outage that's alarming the nuclear industry. Representatives of the nuclear industry were reportedly cheering in the wings.} --- CN
Cash-rich Obama Buys Yahoo
Outbids Microsoft for Internet Giant
Flush with cash after a deluge of online donations, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) stunned the business world today by outbidding Microsoft for the Internet giant Yahoo.
The purchase of Yahoo is believed to be the largest acquisition of a multibillion-dollar company ever by a Democratic presidential candidate, industry experts said.
A spokesman for Microsoft at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters acknowledged that the company was “disappointed” to lose Yahoo to Sen. Obama, but added, “We can’t really be mad at him, because we love him so.”
The news of Sen. Obama’s $48 billion offer for Yahoo sent a shudder through Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)’s campaign, which for the past six weeks has been subsisting on Ramen noodles.
In his televised debate in Cleveland, Ohio with Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama said that he was able to purchase Yahoo because his campaign was reaping online donations averaging $1.8 billion a day.
Mr. Obama also offered to “personally hire” 2 million Ohioans to do odd jobs around his campaign headquarters.
“People say, can we really come up with enough errands for 2 million Ohioans to do?” he said. “Yes we can.”
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick praised Sen. Obama’s plan, telling reporters, “His campaign is more than just words, he is offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run.”
Sen. Obama later added, “My campaign is more than just words, I am offering people a real opportunity to go on a Starbucks run.”
Elsewhere, President Bush said that the economy was not in a recession, leading economists to conclude that the economy was in a recession.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Ok. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton: I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!
After listening to/watching PBS Channel 13 - Tom's hour, with commentaries by a few male journalists, I've decided this is it. One guy, Shield, who thinks it's appropriate that Congress hear evidence re that baseball player's alleged crimes - referred to H. Clinton as: "her claim to fame is her husband." (or substantially similar words). Well, hey, I realize that all of my so-called "progressive" friends are going for Obama, with his empty rhetoric, his messianic messages and little if anything to show substance and record. Who cares that neither he nor Hillary voted on water torture? Who cares that Lieberman's his mentor? Who cares that he voted for the Patriot Act? Who cares that he's pro death penalty and anti same sex marriage? Who cares that his pals are telecommunications bigwigs? Who cares that he's wigwagged on many issues? Who cares that he's got more money than H Clinton ... poured into wooing the super delegates? (hey, where's he getting the dough?) Who cares he's a corporate tool without a cogent healthcare plan? I do. If I have to choose between being a p.c. so-called progressive to back some inexperienced yet charismatic half-black guy, whose ancestors weren't slaves but who's playing the race card big time and duping progressives into thinking he's going to be more effective as a change agent than Hillary, who's been maligned by the big press cause she's an assertive woman, guess whom I'm going to support? This entire campaign makes me ill. We're going to end up with McCain, who knows how to dupe people into thinking he's a liberal. Ha. Good match with Obama, who's duped progressives into thinking he's a progressive. He knows little, yet speaks eloquently. Style without substance. The kiddies love him. MoveOn loves him.
So as much as it makes me not quite ecstatic to support a moderate Democrat who should send her ridiculous husband to an island for the duration of the campaign, I'm resigning myself to doing so, for many reasons, including those already enumerated on this blog --- principally, I don't buy the rhetoric and like a good lawyer, I scrutinize the evidence. This is not a choice between progressives. Face it. Be wary. I've been wary of the Obama PC Cult hype since the getgo. You should be too.
So as much as it makes me not quite ecstatic to support a moderate Democrat who should send her ridiculous husband to an island for the duration of the campaign, I'm resigning myself to doing so, for many reasons, including those already enumerated on this blog --- principally, I don't buy the rhetoric and like a good lawyer, I scrutinize the evidence. This is not a choice between progressives. Face it. Be wary. I've been wary of the Obama PC Cult hype since the getgo. You should be too.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Everyone's Progressive Hero Obama didn't bother to vote against waterboarding
Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government
14 Feb 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It 14 Feb 2008 The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods tortures that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President [sic] Bush, who has threatened to veto it. Democratic supporters of the measure hailed its passage and immediately challenged Mr. Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, did not vote. Republican opponents of the bill were joined by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Bush, the Connecticut independent, and Ben Nelson (D-NE).
14 Feb 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It 14 Feb 2008 The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods tortures that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President [sic] Bush, who has threatened to veto it. Democratic supporters of the measure hailed its passage and immediately challenged Mr. Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, did not vote. Republican opponents of the bill were joined by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Bush, the Connecticut independent, and Ben Nelson (D-NE).
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Another Obama Expose + The Urgency of Media Reform
There are plenty of critiques of Hillary R Clinton. I'm more interested in the exposes of Obama, due to his attraction to voters who think he's progressive and are drawn to his youth, vitality, and vapid rhetoric (his speech writers are damn good and he speaks with silver tongue!). Americans and many others have a tendency to go for style over substance - Arnie and Ronnie are good examples of that. Frankly, I don't care for either candidate, as I've said before. There are no choices; either "Democrat," if elected, might prove to be somewhat of an alleviation from Cheney-Bush & co., but unhappily slight - certainly insufficient to undo the damage. The uber capitalistic paradigm of American democracy has failed to provide the constitutional safeguards and benefits we all need. Many of us progressives know that. Yet so many so-called liberals and progressives (eg, moveon) are in denial, wanting desperately to wave a flag and believe in a political messiah. What's the solution when our population doesn't get the truth from the mainstream media? (See, eg, "Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning." The Brad Blog.) The only possible way out of the seemingly irreversible mess must begin with the transformational takeover of media -- a daunting task, but at least some fearless Internet reporters and investigators are devoting their lives to it. If the people are not educated, the paradigm will remain the same. -- CN
_____________________
from counterpunch.org
Declaration of Independence Day Edition
July 4, 2007
Another Automaton of the Atomic Lobby
Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK
It is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Oil prices are expected to rise to even higher levels as the United States dependence on foreign crude is becoming increasingly unstable. And the perceived threat of global warming is making even the most skeptical of politicians nervous. The future of planet Earth, they claim, is more perilous than ever. Al Gore has made an impact.
But the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache no buzz. The purported solution to the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.
The Clinton years indeed saw an all-out expansion of nuclear power, not only in the US, but all over the globe. First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors" -- that is, Westinghouse.
A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.
In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."
The atom lobby during the 1990s had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around the neck of the brightest star in the Democratic field today: Barack Obama.
Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.
The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."
"Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,'' says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon's Commonwealth Edison utility.
These gracious accolades come from one of Exelon's top executives, despite the fact that Obama proposed legislation in 2006 that would require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks. While introducing the legislation Obama noted the failure of Exelon to report a leak of radioactive tritium into groundwater near one of their Illinois plants. But the senator's criticism of nuclear power goes only so far.
During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions "on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable -- and realistic -- for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration." Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry's top trade publication, praised the senator. "Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of 'common sense solutions.' And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind."
Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of their more eye-grabbing numbers don't check out. For example, as noted in a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuke industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total CO2 emissions, hardly a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather than renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, atomic power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."
Clearly Senator Obama recognizes the inherent dangers of nuclear technology and knows of the disastrous failures that plagued Chernobyl, Mayak and Three Mile Island. Yet, despite his attempts to alert the public of future toxic nuclear leaks, Obama still considers atomic power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must certainly be pleased.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. St. Clair's new book on the environment, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published in December.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.
They can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net
_____________________
from counterpunch.org
Declaration of Independence Day Edition
July 4, 2007
Another Automaton of the Atomic Lobby
Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK
It is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Oil prices are expected to rise to even higher levels as the United States dependence on foreign crude is becoming increasingly unstable. And the perceived threat of global warming is making even the most skeptical of politicians nervous. The future of planet Earth, they claim, is more perilous than ever. Al Gore has made an impact.
But the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache no buzz. The purported solution to the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.
The Clinton years indeed saw an all-out expansion of nuclear power, not only in the US, but all over the globe. First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors" -- that is, Westinghouse.
A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.
In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."
The atom lobby during the 1990s had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around the neck of the brightest star in the Democratic field today: Barack Obama.
Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.
The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."
"Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,'' says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon's Commonwealth Edison utility.
These gracious accolades come from one of Exelon's top executives, despite the fact that Obama proposed legislation in 2006 that would require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks. While introducing the legislation Obama noted the failure of Exelon to report a leak of radioactive tritium into groundwater near one of their Illinois plants. But the senator's criticism of nuclear power goes only so far.
During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions "on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable -- and realistic -- for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration." Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry's top trade publication, praised the senator. "Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of 'common sense solutions.' And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind."
Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of their more eye-grabbing numbers don't check out. For example, as noted in a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuke industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total CO2 emissions, hardly a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather than renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, atomic power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."
Clearly Senator Obama recognizes the inherent dangers of nuclear technology and knows of the disastrous failures that plagued Chernobyl, Mayak and Three Mile Island. Yet, despite his attempts to alert the public of future toxic nuclear leaks, Obama still considers atomic power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must certainly be pleased.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. St. Clair's new book on the environment, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published in December.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.
They can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Goodbye To All That -- on the Clinton v Obama Campaign
Goodbye To All That (#2)
by Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008
"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking
free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting
women (for an online version, see
http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and
contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another
specific "Goodbye . . ." But not since the suffrage struggle
have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this
country—been so set in competition, as the contest between
Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls.
So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden
who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for
politics.
—She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever
had labor pains?)
—When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it
was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my
shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and
pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby
Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed
Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort
"See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the
forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm
unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the
Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short
memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a
dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles."
Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group,
"Citizens United Not Timid." John McCain answering "How do
we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have
dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?"
For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between
splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we
would be righteously outraged—and they would not be
selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election
history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only
Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a
storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's
vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far
enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This
is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is
sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would
recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about
race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such
vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense
of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from
MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments
(www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim
Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male
panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony
Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while
interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And
that's not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male
and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations,
ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not
only African American and European American but Latina and
Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab
American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn't
exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist
countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter
how many ways a woman breaks free from other
discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world
still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our
womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle
that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are
justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which
whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to
pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and
then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female
we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be
in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a
chance—even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending
politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on
African American women deciding on which of two candidates
to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting
black feminists told me they're being called "race
traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest
scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and
sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this
planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape
and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy;
being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the
disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted,
the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule,
religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced
feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital
mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted
gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances,
and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about
qualifications after all. We know that at this historical
moment women experience the world differently from
men—though not all the same as one another—and can
govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet
and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran
for this high office and barely got past the gate—they
showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke
fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists
so famished for a female president they were even willing to
abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even
including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though
unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he
hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over
what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking
their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by
politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience,
and skill is actually seen as attractive, when
celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that
it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to
understand the vast global complexities of power on a
nuclear, wounded planet.
—the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky
president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to
George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his
inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when
she's worked intensely at everything she's done—including
being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my
state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women
who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their
own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe
someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the
last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the
women's movement that quipped, "We are becoming the men we
wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing
their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've
been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him,
couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised
a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had
ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush
twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't
bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the
rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is
not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist
movement. She's running to be president of the United
States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and
other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir
rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as
proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of
government so far have been related to men of
power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows:
Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed,
Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and
more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the
first pathway "in" permitted to women: Representatives Doris
Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan
. . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting
her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it
wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and
dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a
dork."
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by
showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who
actually threaten thestatus quo), who can't identify with a
woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky
power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if
they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any
age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not
electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're
already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet
Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save
hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground
Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I
could have saved thousands—if only I'd been able to
convince them they were slaves."
I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young
women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart
men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it's in
their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.)
She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of
foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail,
ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while
retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping
on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections
and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was
awfully glad about those when she raised dough and
campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might
make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned
by practical know-how—and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile,
goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually
he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked
with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson.
If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run.
But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on
history, papering over real inequities and suffering
constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How
dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to
rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful to triage the
single largest demographic in this country's history: the
boomer generation—the majority of which is female?
Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more
conservative with age—and we are the generation of
radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history."
Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man
prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality
of the United States. And though we never went away, brace
yourselves: we're back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit,
better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a
family-focused workplace; the women who established
rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and
date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody
rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and
environmental movements; who insisted that medical research
include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more
nurturing parents; who created women's studies and Title IX
so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are
the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography,
who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed
demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are
the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud
successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years,
won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S.
voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire.
There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't
recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by
campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with
everything Bill.
So listen to her voice:
"For too long, the history of women has been a history of
silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to
silence our words.
"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied
food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken,
simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of
human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery
of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when
women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to
death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are
raped in their own communities and when thousands of women
are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a
violation of human rights when a leading cause of death
worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are
subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human
rights when women are denied the right to plan their own
families, and that includes being forced to have abortions
or being sterilized against their will.
"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the
right to speak freely—and the right to be heard."
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State
Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full,
stunning speech).
And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary
D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government
Association, Class of 1969."
"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us
understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic,
and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity,
the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another
in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an
integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust
and respect is one with desperately important political and
social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we
just don't have time for it."
She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the
skill of our being: the art of making possible."
And for decades, she's been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real
question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we
women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?
"Our President, Ourselves!"
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in
furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely
treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was
butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women
globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We
need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly,
with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to
volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money,
argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best
qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I
support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm
bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with
ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every
point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are
identical with Obama's—and the few where hers are both
more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I
support her because she's already smashed the first-lady
stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I
believe she will continue to make history not only as the
first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman—but
because I am.
############################################
About the Author: An award-winning writer, feminist leader,
political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the
Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books,
including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the
now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood
Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of
contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in
the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent
books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's
Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots
of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel,
The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A
Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in
September 2006.
by Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008
"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking
free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting
women (for an online version, see
http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and
contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another
specific "Goodbye . . ." But not since the suffrage struggle
have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this
country—been so set in competition, as the contest between
Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls.
So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden
who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for
politics.
—She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever
had labor pains?)
—When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it
was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my
shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and
pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby
Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed
Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort
"See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the
forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm
unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the
Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short
memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a
dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles."
Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group,
"Citizens United Not Timid." John McCain answering "How do
we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have
dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?"
For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between
splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we
would be righteously outraged—and they would not be
selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election
history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only
Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a
storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's
vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far
enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This
is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is
sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would
recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about
race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such
vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense
of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from
MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments
(www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim
Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male
panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony
Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while
interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And
that's not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male
and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations,
ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not
only African American and European American but Latina and
Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab
American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn't
exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist
countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter
how many ways a woman breaks free from other
discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world
still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our
womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle
that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are
justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which
whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to
pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and
then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female
we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be
in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a
chance—even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending
politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on
African American women deciding on which of two candidates
to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting
black feminists told me they're being called "race
traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest
scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and
sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this
planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape
and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy;
being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the
disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted,
the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule,
religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced
feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital
mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted
gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances,
and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about
qualifications after all. We know that at this historical
moment women experience the world differently from
men—though not all the same as one another—and can
govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet
and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran
for this high office and barely got past the gate—they
showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke
fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists
so famished for a female president they were even willing to
abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even
including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though
unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he
hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over
what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking
their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by
politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience,
and skill is actually seen as attractive, when
celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that
it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to
understand the vast global complexities of power on a
nuclear, wounded planet.
—the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky
president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to
George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his
inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when
she's worked intensely at everything she's done—including
being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my
state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women
who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their
own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe
someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the
last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the
women's movement that quipped, "We are becoming the men we
wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing
their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've
been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him,
couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised
a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had
ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush
twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't
bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the
rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is
not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist
movement. She's running to be president of the United
States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and
other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir
rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as
proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of
government so far have been related to men of
power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows:
Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed,
Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and
more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the
first pathway "in" permitted to women: Representatives Doris
Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan
. . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting
her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it
wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and
dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a
dork."
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by
showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who
actually threaten thestatus quo), who can't identify with a
woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky
power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if
they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any
age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not
electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're
already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet
Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save
hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground
Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I
could have saved thousands—if only I'd been able to
convince them they were slaves."
I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young
women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart
men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it's in
their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.)
She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of
foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail,
ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while
retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping
on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections
and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was
awfully glad about those when she raised dough and
campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might
make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned
by practical know-how—and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile,
goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually
he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked
with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson.
If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run.
But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on
history, papering over real inequities and suffering
constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How
dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to
rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful to triage the
single largest demographic in this country's history: the
boomer generation—the majority of which is female?
Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more
conservative with age—and we are the generation of
radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history."
Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man
prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality
of the United States. And though we never went away, brace
yourselves: we're back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit,
better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a
family-focused workplace; the women who established
rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and
date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody
rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and
environmental movements; who insisted that medical research
include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more
nurturing parents; who created women's studies and Title IX
so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are
the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography,
who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed
demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are
the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud
successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years,
won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S.
voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire.
There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't
recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by
campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with
everything Bill.
So listen to her voice:
"For too long, the history of women has been a history of
silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to
silence our words.
"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied
food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken,
simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of
human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery
of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when
women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to
death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are
raped in their own communities and when thousands of women
are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a
violation of human rights when a leading cause of death
worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are
subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human
rights when women are denied the right to plan their own
families, and that includes being forced to have abortions
or being sterilized against their will.
"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the
right to speak freely—and the right to be heard."
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State
Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full,
stunning speech).
And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary
D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government
Association, Class of 1969."
"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us
understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic,
and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity,
the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another
in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an
integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust
and respect is one with desperately important political and
social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we
just don't have time for it."
She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the
skill of our being: the art of making possible."
And for decades, she's been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real
question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we
women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?
"Our President, Ourselves!"
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in
furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely
treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was
butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women
globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We
need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly,
with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to
volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money,
argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best
qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I
support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm
bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with
ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every
point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are
identical with Obama's—and the few where hers are both
more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I
support her because she's already smashed the first-lady
stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I
believe she will continue to make history not only as the
first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman—but
because I am.
############################################
About the Author: An award-winning writer, feminist leader,
political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the
Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books,
including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the
now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood
Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of
contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in
the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent
books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's
Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots
of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel,
The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A
Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in
September 2006.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
More on Media Misogyny
From Mark Crispin Miller:
While we're busy (too busy!) looking into the condition of our voting system,
which the media refuses to discuss, there are, of course, a lot of other issues
that our press also ignores, or handles badly.
Take, for instance, the blunt sexism that has always marked the media's
treatment of female politicians (and female human beings generally), and that
has now come to the crisis-point at MSNBC. While Hillary Clinton has her
faults (she's not my choice), being a woman isn't one of them, any more than,
say, Obama's being African-American is one of his faults (and that candidate
does have his faults, although you wouldn't know it from the media).
[FROM ME: To see how Obama's manipulated his childhood memories in order to play the race card, see: OBAMA'S CHILDHOOD.]
While Hillary, I repeat, has major faults (including a campaign that Murray Chotiner
would have loved), the animus against her has, from the outset 16 years ago,
always been infused with wild misogyny, especially on the right. No member
of the press should ever feed that animus in any way; and so it's absolutely
proper that those apes at MSNBC have been slapped down for it.
MCM
From Media Matters
"Media Matters"; 2/8/08
The mess at MSNBC
NBC President Steve Capus' statement is the best sign yet that NBC News is beginning to take seriously the lengthy pattern of inappropriate comments about women made by NBC and MSNBC reporters. But apologies and statements and even suspensions don't mean anything unless they are followed by an actual change in behavior. Things didn't change at NBC/MSNBC after the Matthews controversy; hopefully they will this time.
Shuster responds to firestorm over his Chelsea Clinton comments
"Last night during the show, I spoke about Chelsea Clinton and noted the affection that so many of us have for her. I also spoke about phone calls she has made to superdelegates to convince them to support her mom. In describing this effort, I used a phrase that was inappropriate, and I apologize to the Clinton family, the Clinton campaign, and all of you who were justifiably offended. As I said this morning on MSNBC, all Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton, and I am particularly sorry that my language diminished the regard and respect she has earned from all of us and the respect her parents have earned in how they raised her." Read More
NBC News president: Shuster suspended for Chelsea Clinton comments
Statement from David Brock on Pattern of Sexist/Misogynistic Outbursts on MSNBC: "The Time for Apologies Has Passed"
MSNBC's Shuster falsely claimed he said "Americans should be proud of" Chelsea Clinton before his "pimped out" comment.
"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser
The mess at MSNBC
Three weeks ago, in the wake of Chris Matthews' quasi-apology for one of his countless objectionable comments about women in general and Hillary Clinton specifically, I argued that Matthews' apology was not enough. Neither Matthews nor MSNBC had acknowledged that the problem ran far deeper than one comment by Matthews -- and their failure to make such an acknowledgement was an ominous sign that the apology would not be accompanied by a change in behavior, no matter how forcefully Matthews insisted: "I get it."
So what has happened in those three weeks?
MSNBC has turned Matthews' purported apology into a promotional campaign, using clips of his statement to advertise MSNBC programming. Not the parts of the statement in which he acknowledged having been "callous," "nasty," and "dismissive" toward Hillary Clinton, of course -- the parts in which he spoke of his love for politics.
Turning a forced apology into a promotional campaign seems like a pretty good sign that MSNBC and Matthews don't "get it" at all.
But it isn't the best sign. Consider what else has happened during MSNBC broadcasts since Matthews' apology.
First, Matthews' MSNBC colleagues leapt to his defense. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough and reporter David Shuster lashed out; Scarborough declaring it "offensive" and "outrageous" that Matthews had to apologize, and Shuster adding "this is absolutely infuriating, to see the way these groups used him for pure political gain is absolutely infuriating." As I noted at the time, Scarborough and Shuster have their own history of questionable comments about women:
At the end of his rant, Scarborough insisted, "This ain't about Hillary Clinton's campaign."
Scarborough got that part right. This isn't about Hillary Clinton's campaign. This is about a consistent pattern of misogynistic comments by Chris Matthews. Comments about and directed toward a variety of women. A consistent pattern of Matthews objectifying women. And a consistent pattern of MSNBC looking the other way.
It's about an MSNBC host saying things like this: "I've been trying to call Alessandra Stanley with The New York Times for some time just to have lunch with her, and she thinks it's because I'm trying to influence her -- that's not the case at all, it's because, I was surprised, I saw a picture of her and I thought she was kinda hot!"
That one wasn't Chris Matthews, though. That one was ... Joe Scarborough.
It's about things like a male MSNBC host describing a woman running for president as "shrill" (and "very shrill") and asking, "[W]hat about her housekeeping skills?" Those were Joe Scarborough, too.
MSNBC's David Shuster also chimed in with a defense of Matthews: "[T]o see him have to go through this is absolutely infuriating, to see the way these groups used him for pure political gain is absolutely infuriating."
But this isn't about political gain. This isn't about one comment about Hillary Clinton, or even 30 comments about Hillary Clinton: This is about Chris Matthews' pattern of inappropriate treatment of women, and about MSNBC's continued acceptance of it. It's about things like a male journalist doing a mocking "impersonation" of the women who host The View - an impersonation that featured a high-pitched, whiny voice.
That one wasn't Chris Matthews, either. That one was ... David Shuster.
Then, after defending their colleague, it was back to business as usual for NBC/MSNBC reporters.
Tim Russert suggested that there is irony in a "self-avowed feminist" having shown "some emotion," as though feminists are the dour, humorless beings Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson think they are. At least Russert stopped short of using the term "feminazis."
A few days later, Tucker Carlson mocked the idea that Hillary Clinton could have been a "victim of gender discrimination," noting that she had gone to Yale Law School. Clinton's comments about "gender equality," to which Carlson was purportedly responding, were in fact general, and not about her specifically. And his invocation of Clinton's graduation from Yale Law as evidence of a lack of gender inequity in her life was just bizarre: As Clinton noted in her autobiography, "When I entered Yale Law School in the fall of 1969, I was one of twenty-seven women out of 235 students to matriculate. This seems like a paltry number now, but it was a breakthrough at the time and meant that women would no longer be token students at Yale."
Incidentally, Carlson doesn't seem to have defended Matthews. Maybe he didn't want to draw attention to his own on-air behavior:
And then there's MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, who has described Hillary Clinton as "whining" and suggested the reason there are so few women in Congress is that "most women are so sensible, they don't want to get involved in something as stupid as politics" and said of Clinton, "[W]hen she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs," and described her as "castrating, overbearing, and scary." (MSNBC can't say they didn't know what they were getting when they hired Carlson; before joining the cable channel, he said women "want to be spanked vigorously every once in a while" and told Elle magazine that Clinton is his "guilty fantasy," explaining: "Every time I see her I think I could, you know, help. ... She seems tense.")
On January 23, an (all-male) Morning Joe panel laughed along as Mike Barnicle compared Hillary Clinton to "everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court."
Then on January 30, Joe Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski, "Mika, don't make me backhand you."
On February 4, Matthews led a panel discussion of what the Associated Press described as Clinton's "emotional reunion Monday with a colleague from the early days of her legal career as a child advocate." The discussion featured a suggestion that Clinton had cried on purpose in order to win votes the next day, a statement by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson that "with some people it's sad movies ... with Hillary Clinton ... it's an impending primary. It just breaks her down." Even Chris Matthews seemed to understand that something might not be quite right about the obsessive focus on Clinton showing emotion; near the end of the discussion, he said, "I wonder what [sic] we're focusing more on this than we would if it were a male candidate."
During MSNBC's February 5 primary coverage, correspondent Lester Holt seemed surprised that "[t]he first woman candidate with a serious shot at winning the presidency beat out her male rival" in exit polls on the question of "[w]ho would make the best commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces?" Holt even reminded viewers, "Keep in mind, this at a time the nation is fighting on two fronts." This wasn't the first time an NBC personality seemed to question whether a woman could be an effective commander in chief of the armed forces:
* On June 24, 2007, Chris Matthews asked if Clinton's "being surrounded by women" makes "a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?" Matthews went on to say, "But isn't that a challenge, because when it comes down to that final decision to vote for president, a woman president, a woman commander in chief, will be an historic decision for people. Not just men, but women as well."
* On May 30, 2005, Matthews asked retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey if "the troops out there" would "take the orders" from "Hillary Clinton, commander in chief." When McCaffrey responded, "Why wouldn't they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure," Matthews responded: "You're chuckling a little bit, aren't you?" When McCaffrey responded, "No," Matthews said: "No problem? No problem? No problem?" McCaffrey answered, "Absolutely not. None."
Most recently, David Shuster said on the February 7 edition of Tucker that "there's just something a little bit unseemly" about Chelsea Clinton contacting super delegates on behalf of her mother, adding, "[D]oesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
This morning, Shuster offered a Matthews-esque quasi-apology for analogizing Chelsea Clinton to a prostitute.
But, like Matthews, Shuster didn't seem to "get it."
Shuster first claimed to have praised Chelsea Clinton on Tucker: "I said a lot of wonderful things about Chelsea. I praised her; I said Americans should be proud of her. ... as I said last night, everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton." In fact, Shuster had not said Americans should be proud of her, or that "everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton." Not even close.
Then Shuster reiterated that Chelsea Clinton's efforts on Hillary Clinton's behalf are "unseemly" -- though, again, he did not explain why they are unseemly, or whether it was unseemly for Mitt Romney's sons to campaign on his behalf.
Finally, Shuster got to the real issue: "[L]ast night, I used a phrase -- some slang about her efforts. I didn't think that people would take it literally, but some people have."
That's just ridiculous. Nobody took Shuster's statement that Chelsea Clinton is "being pimped out" literally. Nobody. People were bothered that he analogized her to a prostitute, not that they thought he was actually saying she has sex in exchange for money. Shuster's "I didn't think that people would take it literally" excuse is like calling someone a b*tch, then saying, "Hey, I didn't think people would think I was saying she is literally a dog." It completely misses the point.
This afternoon, NBC News President Steve Capus issued a statement calling Shuster's comments "irresponsible and inappropriate" and announcing that Shuster "has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts" other than to make another apology, which aired tonight. Shuster then offered a more complete apology at the beginning of the February 8 edition of Tucker.
Capus' statement is the best sign yet that NBC News is beginning to take seriously the lengthy pattern of inappropriate comments about women made by NBC and MSNBC reporters. (NBC News did not issue a statement about Matthews, allowing Matthews' overly narrow, on-air quasi-apology to stand as the closest thing to an official statement.)
But apologies and statements and even suspensions don't mean anything unless they are followed by an actual change in behavior. Things didn't change at NBC/MSNBC after the Matthews controversy; hopefully they will this time.
According to Capus, "NBC News takes these matters seriously." If NBC News wants viewers to believe that, it would help if it told us how it is taking these matters seriously. What steps has NBC News taken to ensure that things like this don't happen again? Have executives given their reporters and pundits guidance about what kinds of things are not appropriate to say? Have they talked to Matthews and Scarborough and Carlson and Shuster and the rest about their lengthy history of objectionable comments to and about women?
Three weeks ago, I wrote: "A week ago, MSNBC had a Chris Matthews problem. If things don't change, the cable channel may have a much bigger problem."
Maybe this time they'll listen.
While we're busy (too busy!) looking into the condition of our voting system,
which the media refuses to discuss, there are, of course, a lot of other issues
that our press also ignores, or handles badly.
Take, for instance, the blunt sexism that has always marked the media's
treatment of female politicians (and female human beings generally), and that
has now come to the crisis-point at MSNBC. While Hillary Clinton has her
faults (she's not my choice), being a woman isn't one of them, any more than,
say, Obama's being African-American is one of his faults (and that candidate
does have his faults, although you wouldn't know it from the media).
[FROM ME: To see how Obama's manipulated his childhood memories in order to play the race card, see: OBAMA'S CHILDHOOD.]
While Hillary, I repeat, has major faults (including a campaign that Murray Chotiner
would have loved), the animus against her has, from the outset 16 years ago,
always been infused with wild misogyny, especially on the right. No member
of the press should ever feed that animus in any way; and so it's absolutely
proper that those apes at MSNBC have been slapped down for it.
MCM
From Media Matters
"Media Matters"; 2/8/08
The mess at MSNBC
NBC President Steve Capus' statement is the best sign yet that NBC News is beginning to take seriously the lengthy pattern of inappropriate comments about women made by NBC and MSNBC reporters. But apologies and statements and even suspensions don't mean anything unless they are followed by an actual change in behavior. Things didn't change at NBC/MSNBC after the Matthews controversy; hopefully they will this time.
Shuster responds to firestorm over his Chelsea Clinton comments
"Last night during the show, I spoke about Chelsea Clinton and noted the affection that so many of us have for her. I also spoke about phone calls she has made to superdelegates to convince them to support her mom. In describing this effort, I used a phrase that was inappropriate, and I apologize to the Clinton family, the Clinton campaign, and all of you who were justifiably offended. As I said this morning on MSNBC, all Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton, and I am particularly sorry that my language diminished the regard and respect she has earned from all of us and the respect her parents have earned in how they raised her." Read More
NBC News president: Shuster suspended for Chelsea Clinton comments
Statement from David Brock on Pattern of Sexist/Misogynistic Outbursts on MSNBC: "The Time for Apologies Has Passed"
MSNBC's Shuster falsely claimed he said "Americans should be proud of" Chelsea Clinton before his "pimped out" comment.
"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser
The mess at MSNBC
Three weeks ago, in the wake of Chris Matthews' quasi-apology for one of his countless objectionable comments about women in general and Hillary Clinton specifically, I argued that Matthews' apology was not enough. Neither Matthews nor MSNBC had acknowledged that the problem ran far deeper than one comment by Matthews -- and their failure to make such an acknowledgement was an ominous sign that the apology would not be accompanied by a change in behavior, no matter how forcefully Matthews insisted: "I get it."
So what has happened in those three weeks?
MSNBC has turned Matthews' purported apology into a promotional campaign, using clips of his statement to advertise MSNBC programming. Not the parts of the statement in which he acknowledged having been "callous," "nasty," and "dismissive" toward Hillary Clinton, of course -- the parts in which he spoke of his love for politics.
Turning a forced apology into a promotional campaign seems like a pretty good sign that MSNBC and Matthews don't "get it" at all.
But it isn't the best sign. Consider what else has happened during MSNBC broadcasts since Matthews' apology.
First, Matthews' MSNBC colleagues leapt to his defense. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough and reporter David Shuster lashed out; Scarborough declaring it "offensive" and "outrageous" that Matthews had to apologize, and Shuster adding "this is absolutely infuriating, to see the way these groups used him for pure political gain is absolutely infuriating." As I noted at the time, Scarborough and Shuster have their own history of questionable comments about women:
At the end of his rant, Scarborough insisted, "This ain't about Hillary Clinton's campaign."
Scarborough got that part right. This isn't about Hillary Clinton's campaign. This is about a consistent pattern of misogynistic comments by Chris Matthews. Comments about and directed toward a variety of women. A consistent pattern of Matthews objectifying women. And a consistent pattern of MSNBC looking the other way.
It's about an MSNBC host saying things like this: "I've been trying to call Alessandra Stanley with The New York Times for some time just to have lunch with her, and she thinks it's because I'm trying to influence her -- that's not the case at all, it's because, I was surprised, I saw a picture of her and I thought she was kinda hot!"
That one wasn't Chris Matthews, though. That one was ... Joe Scarborough.
It's about things like a male MSNBC host describing a woman running for president as "shrill" (and "very shrill") and asking, "[W]hat about her housekeeping skills?" Those were Joe Scarborough, too.
MSNBC's David Shuster also chimed in with a defense of Matthews: "[T]o see him have to go through this is absolutely infuriating, to see the way these groups used him for pure political gain is absolutely infuriating."
But this isn't about political gain. This isn't about one comment about Hillary Clinton, or even 30 comments about Hillary Clinton: This is about Chris Matthews' pattern of inappropriate treatment of women, and about MSNBC's continued acceptance of it. It's about things like a male journalist doing a mocking "impersonation" of the women who host The View - an impersonation that featured a high-pitched, whiny voice.
That one wasn't Chris Matthews, either. That one was ... David Shuster.
Then, after defending their colleague, it was back to business as usual for NBC/MSNBC reporters.
Tim Russert suggested that there is irony in a "self-avowed feminist" having shown "some emotion," as though feminists are the dour, humorless beings Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson think they are. At least Russert stopped short of using the term "feminazis."
A few days later, Tucker Carlson mocked the idea that Hillary Clinton could have been a "victim of gender discrimination," noting that she had gone to Yale Law School. Clinton's comments about "gender equality," to which Carlson was purportedly responding, were in fact general, and not about her specifically. And his invocation of Clinton's graduation from Yale Law as evidence of a lack of gender inequity in her life was just bizarre: As Clinton noted in her autobiography, "When I entered Yale Law School in the fall of 1969, I was one of twenty-seven women out of 235 students to matriculate. This seems like a paltry number now, but it was a breakthrough at the time and meant that women would no longer be token students at Yale."
Incidentally, Carlson doesn't seem to have defended Matthews. Maybe he didn't want to draw attention to his own on-air behavior:
And then there's MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, who has described Hillary Clinton as "whining" and suggested the reason there are so few women in Congress is that "most women are so sensible, they don't want to get involved in something as stupid as politics" and said of Clinton, "[W]hen she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs," and described her as "castrating, overbearing, and scary." (MSNBC can't say they didn't know what they were getting when they hired Carlson; before joining the cable channel, he said women "want to be spanked vigorously every once in a while" and told Elle magazine that Clinton is his "guilty fantasy," explaining: "Every time I see her I think I could, you know, help. ... She seems tense.")
On January 23, an (all-male) Morning Joe panel laughed along as Mike Barnicle compared Hillary Clinton to "everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court."
Then on January 30, Joe Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski, "Mika, don't make me backhand you."
On February 4, Matthews led a panel discussion of what the Associated Press described as Clinton's "emotional reunion Monday with a colleague from the early days of her legal career as a child advocate." The discussion featured a suggestion that Clinton had cried on purpose in order to win votes the next day, a statement by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson that "with some people it's sad movies ... with Hillary Clinton ... it's an impending primary. It just breaks her down." Even Chris Matthews seemed to understand that something might not be quite right about the obsessive focus on Clinton showing emotion; near the end of the discussion, he said, "I wonder what [sic] we're focusing more on this than we would if it were a male candidate."
During MSNBC's February 5 primary coverage, correspondent Lester Holt seemed surprised that "[t]he first woman candidate with a serious shot at winning the presidency beat out her male rival" in exit polls on the question of "[w]ho would make the best commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces?" Holt even reminded viewers, "Keep in mind, this at a time the nation is fighting on two fronts." This wasn't the first time an NBC personality seemed to question whether a woman could be an effective commander in chief of the armed forces:
* On June 24, 2007, Chris Matthews asked if Clinton's "being surrounded by women" makes "a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?" Matthews went on to say, "But isn't that a challenge, because when it comes down to that final decision to vote for president, a woman president, a woman commander in chief, will be an historic decision for people. Not just men, but women as well."
* On May 30, 2005, Matthews asked retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey if "the troops out there" would "take the orders" from "Hillary Clinton, commander in chief." When McCaffrey responded, "Why wouldn't they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure," Matthews responded: "You're chuckling a little bit, aren't you?" When McCaffrey responded, "No," Matthews said: "No problem? No problem? No problem?" McCaffrey answered, "Absolutely not. None."
Most recently, David Shuster said on the February 7 edition of Tucker that "there's just something a little bit unseemly" about Chelsea Clinton contacting super delegates on behalf of her mother, adding, "[D]oesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
This morning, Shuster offered a Matthews-esque quasi-apology for analogizing Chelsea Clinton to a prostitute.
But, like Matthews, Shuster didn't seem to "get it."
Shuster first claimed to have praised Chelsea Clinton on Tucker: "I said a lot of wonderful things about Chelsea. I praised her; I said Americans should be proud of her. ... as I said last night, everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton." In fact, Shuster had not said Americans should be proud of her, or that "everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton." Not even close.
Then Shuster reiterated that Chelsea Clinton's efforts on Hillary Clinton's behalf are "unseemly" -- though, again, he did not explain why they are unseemly, or whether it was unseemly for Mitt Romney's sons to campaign on his behalf.
Finally, Shuster got to the real issue: "[L]ast night, I used a phrase -- some slang about her efforts. I didn't think that people would take it literally, but some people have."
That's just ridiculous. Nobody took Shuster's statement that Chelsea Clinton is "being pimped out" literally. Nobody. People were bothered that he analogized her to a prostitute, not that they thought he was actually saying she has sex in exchange for money. Shuster's "I didn't think that people would take it literally" excuse is like calling someone a b*tch, then saying, "Hey, I didn't think people would think I was saying she is literally a dog." It completely misses the point.
This afternoon, NBC News President Steve Capus issued a statement calling Shuster's comments "irresponsible and inappropriate" and announcing that Shuster "has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts" other than to make another apology, which aired tonight. Shuster then offered a more complete apology at the beginning of the February 8 edition of Tucker.
Capus' statement is the best sign yet that NBC News is beginning to take seriously the lengthy pattern of inappropriate comments about women made by NBC and MSNBC reporters. (NBC News did not issue a statement about Matthews, allowing Matthews' overly narrow, on-air quasi-apology to stand as the closest thing to an official statement.)
But apologies and statements and even suspensions don't mean anything unless they are followed by an actual change in behavior. Things didn't change at NBC/MSNBC after the Matthews controversy; hopefully they will this time.
According to Capus, "NBC News takes these matters seriously." If NBC News wants viewers to believe that, it would help if it told us how it is taking these matters seriously. What steps has NBC News taken to ensure that things like this don't happen again? Have executives given their reporters and pundits guidance about what kinds of things are not appropriate to say? Have they talked to Matthews and Scarborough and Carlson and Shuster and the rest about their lengthy history of objectionable comments to and about women?
Three weeks ago, I wrote: "A week ago, MSNBC had a Chris Matthews problem. If things don't change, the cable channel may have a much bigger problem."
Maybe this time they'll listen.
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