You Must Remedy This

Keith takes Hillary to school over the race baiting strategy.

You Get Me Closer To God

I've always loved this video. Deliciously creepy.



Update: It's hard to believe that video ever got airplay on MTV. One of their better moments.

We Don't Need No Bling

Okay, just when I think I've seen the worst of these things, some white-bread, dopey-ass Clinton supporters go and surprise me. Much like Clinton's campaign, these vids are a special form of soul torture. Here's the latest in the race to the bottom of the taste barrel:

Bonus points for the "house needs a woman to clean it" meme, eh? More still for, "We don't need no bling." Classy. 

P.S. No need to thank me. 

Mark Rove

A fat fuck who lies for a living who isn't named Rush Limbaugh and, indeed, makes ol' Rush look like a straight shooter?!? Nah, can't be!

Oh, yes! And guess what? He pretends to be a Democrat. And he's the person Bill and Hill trust more than anyone—their own personal Karl Rove, named Mark Penn. Click through to USA Today article to listen to the skeeve bash Obama and then lie about it. On tape. 

You just gotta love these people. This is Team Clinton, folks.

Choice cut:

Though the campaign later argued that he hadn't said it, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief campaign strategist told reporters this morning that Sen. Barack Obama "can't win the general election."

He also says Obama can't pass the risible "Commander-in-Chief Test." The freshly-minted "Economy Test." And, get this, "The Keystone Test." LOL. I can't wait to hear what they come up with next.

Toxic Hill

The more this campaign goes forward the more I wonder if anyone will vote for Hillary besides unreconstructed 2nd-wave feminists and fossilized geezers if she should finagle the nomination. I mean, I know she's pissed me and half of Obama's supporters off, and that's one thing. But she's managing to alienate longtime die-hard Dems, too. As this reader to TNR illustrates:

I am what's called a SuperVoter. Having been born in Boston, I learned to "Vote Early and Vote Often." That is, I vote in every primary, local election, etc. I have voted for no one but Democrats for at least thirty years--I believe that we are a wealthy enough nation to be compassionate. I have been involved in politics for much of that time, including stints as a lobbiest(non-profit) and high-level appointment of two governors, not having campaigned for or against either of them. I have been in the room plenty of times watching the sausage get made that is getting elected and then governing. Though I supported her for all of 07 and into January of 08, I have never witnessed a lower Democratic campaigner than Hillary Clinton. It's ugly and its not coming from both campaigns equally, but from hers primarily. Very ugly. Very unfortunate. And, I'm sorry, but let me say it again: Very ugly.

Ice Water In Her Veins

A Daily Dish reader feels a chill in the air.

A Sociopath On Air. If you did not hear Clinton's interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR this morning, be sure to give a listen. It shattered my Obama optimism.
Inskeep gave her several of the hard questions you write about every day, and she parried every one. She sounded -- not was, but sounded -- rational, logical, sensible (Obama-like?) in explaining why the MI and FL delegates should be seated, and denying she ever said McCain was more qualified than Obama. Some of her answers were such whoppers that Inskeep actually repeated the questions, his voice rising with incredulity.

The woman is an absolute assassin. Ice water in her veins. A second-generation terminator (yeah, the liquid-metal kind). As a politician, I fear she is light years ahead of Obama, and I am very, very afraid.

But that's just the beginning. 

The in-tray is full of readers who just can't believe it:

I just listened to that NPR interview you linked earlier. Holy shit was it infuriating.

I think the thing I hate the most about Clinton/Bush style politics is that it completely disables the press. It was obvious that Inskeep thought she was full of shit, but what can he do? Her answers were divorced from reality, but in a way that makes them sound reasonable. The only word that comes to mind is "double-speak." Either Inskeep can accept the rhetorical landscape that she presents, or he can call her a liar. Either way he's screwed. If he plays by her terms, she wins. If he calls her a liar, she plays the victim card, rails about the biased media, and wins. Trying to merely challenge her assertions in an intellectual way is bound to fail as well, because she'll just spit out more double-speak, putting the interviewer back at square one.

If all Obama accomplishes as President is to cripple this kind of politics, I will consider him a resounding success. 

Oh, and congratulations, Senator Clinton. You and your husband now share mental space in my head with George W. Bush. Yes you can destroy my good will for you and your husband. And I'm sure you are ready on day one to make me want to tear my fucking hair out.

I wonder if the Clintons understand what they are doing to people - people who weren't Clinton-haters in the first place, people whose votes they need.

Listen to the interview yourself.

Woe Is Hillary

Next time someone tries to tell you that poor Hillary is losing because sexism is more palatable than racism. Or because the press hates her. Or because the youth are fickle and prefer the rock star. Or whatever other pity party they want you to buy into, just remember. Remember just how many advantages she came into this race with: 

• Huge name recognition. 

• Aura of inevitability 

• Wife of extremely popular former president. 

• Tons of money. 

• Institutional infrastructure. 

• Lack of soul (oops, couldn't resist). 

Then there are the party numbers that this Washington Monthly reader points out:

Hillary Clinton is running for the nomination of a party that is majority white/ethnic, by a 70/30 ratio, and majority female, by a 60/40 ratio. Despite these overwhelming advantages which identity politics should give her, she is actually losing to a black male candidate by every statistical measure that you could devise.

All of which merely tells us what a god-awful lousy candidate she really is.

And Ferraro has the gall to say that Obama has an advantage because he's black? If he were a playing on a demographically level playing field, he'd be beating Hillary by a margin of 3-1 right now.

Hillary owes all of her success to the fact that she is a white woman running against a black man in a party which is 40% white women and about 15% black men.

All I Know Is...I'm Through Apologizing.

A Clinton supporter finally sees the light. 

A Loyal Clinton Soldier Turns in His Badge
She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals -- whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband's serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man. For sixteen years, I was a proud soldier in the legion of "Clinton apologists" -- who believed that peace and prosperity were more important than regrettable personality traits.

And then she ran for president.

Christian Nation?

Wack jobs say the founding fathers were Christians. Saner sorts (like myself ;) say they were Deists. Turns out that, as if often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. 

WERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS REALLY CHRISTIANS?....Religious conservatives have long insisted that the Framers were deeply and traditionally Christian, an assertion central to their contention that America was founded as a "Christian nation." Secular liberals, by contrast, have long argued that most of the Founders were agnostics or, at best, Deists who believed that reason, not scripture, is the true path to understanding the Almighty.

So which side is right? Neither is, quite, according to Steve Waldman, founding editor of beliefnet.com and the author of a terrific new book, Founding Faith. Waldman has read just about every available thing that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the rest said and wrote, publicly and privately, about their personal theological views. He comes to two conclusions. First, all the Founders saw themselves as Christians and believed that God in one way or another guides human affairs. So, score one for the religious right. Second, not a single one of the main Founders actually believed in the divinity of Jesus, which is the central tenet of the Christian faith. Score one for the secular left.

Steve is blogging about this over at TPM Cafe. Also he's compiled an archive of his source material so you can read for yourself what the Founders had to say about their personal religious beliefs. You might also check out the cover story he wrote for the Washington Monthly (where he's a contributing editor) on the surprising role evangelicals played during the founding in securing religious freedom.

Blame It On Evolution

Beats feeling like a slacker with too much time on his hands.

Why We're Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data
In other words, coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.

It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.' "

Poo Quality Index (PQI)

What your poo says about you. (Really.) Salon.com explores the issue. It's funny. It's informative. It's funformative! Here's a preview:

The Bowel Movement
What is your poo telling you about your health? It's the burning question that has everybody's head in the toilet these days.

Indeed, what the book's coauthors, Josh Richman and Anish Sheth, M.D., say was once regarded as "malodorous waste" can now be openly regarded for what it is: a miracle of creation, a crystal ball of intestinal health, a feng shui of the derrière. "Like a snowflake, each poo has a wondrous uniqueness," they write. 

*******

Then there's the rarely discussed form of toilet elation, "poo-phoria."

"This poo can turn an atheist into a believer and is distinguished by the sense of euphoria and ecstasy that you feel throughout your body when this type of feces departs your system," write the coauthors. "To some, it may feel like a religious experience, to others like an orgasm, and to a lucky handful it may feel like both. This is the type of poo that makes us all look forward to spending time on the toilet."

Going to the john is no longer simply a process of elimination. No, the "unbridled elation that results from releasing the perfect poo" is now a transformative act, bringing the conscientious fiber-eating toilet sitter to a spiritual or sexual high.

You have to read the whole thing.

Bonus video:

O, Brother, Why Art Thou?

As usual, it's leagues better than Clinton's amateur vids. And also as usual, it's still ick-inducing. Call me hard to please, I guess.

Camille On Hillary

Camille Paglia, the iconoclastic third-wave feminist scholar/author, struggles to tell us how she really feels about Clinton's candidacy.

Hillary, her shrill voice much improved and lowered through brutal overstrain, has certainly gained confidence and performance skill on the campaign trail, but I still don't trust her. The arrogant, self-absorbed Clintons have shown their unscrupulous hand to all who have eyes to see. Yes, Hillary may know the labyrinthine flow chart of the Washington bureaucracy, but her peripheral experiences as a gallivanting first lady scarcely qualify her to be commander in chief. On the contrary, her constant resort to schmaltzy videos and cheap entertainment riffs ("The Sopranos," "Saturday Night Live") has been depressingly unpresidential. Is this how she would govern? All that canned "softening" of Hillary's image would have been unnecessary had she had greater personal resources to begin with. Her cutesy campaign has set a bad precedent for future women candidates, who should stand on their own as proponents of public policy.

Would I want Hillary answering the red phone in the middle of the night? No, bloody not. The White House first responder should be a person of steady, consistent character and mood -- which describes Obama more than Hillary. And that scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it's 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest"? And why is Hillary sitting at her desk in full drag and jewelry at that ungodly hour? A president should not be a monomaniac incapable of rest and perched on guard all night like Poe's baleful raven. People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.
[…]
The cloud of feminist cant about Hillary's struggling candidacy has been noxious. "Media misogyny has reached an all-time high," screeched the National Organization for Women in a press release titled "Ignorance and Venom: The Media's Deeply Ingrained Sexism." Groan. If women are going to play in the geopolitical big league, they'd better toughen up and learn how to deal with all the curveballs. Never has the soppy emotionalism of old-guard feminist reasoning been on such open and embarrassing display. How has Hillary, who rode her husband's coattails to the top and who trashed every woman he seduced or assaulted, become such a feminist heroine? What has she ever achieved on her own -- aside from the fiasco of healthcare reform?

And if the media is treating Hillary in a gendered way, hasn't she herself constantly and cynically dramatized her embattled womanhood? It began with her snappish defense of her hangdog husband during the Gennifer Flowers imbroglio of 1992. Blame tail-chasing Bill, from Little Rock on, for sexualizing the popular perception of the Clintons. Nubile, exploited Monica Lewinsky will always hover around Hillary like ghostly baggage. Bill's serial abuses betray a profound ambivalence about and deep-seated hostility to women -- something the Clintons' giddy feminist flacks just don't see. Why was Hillary flying around the world to those 80 countries anyhow -- building her résumé while leaving her randy hubby unleashed? Anyone who thinks Bill's exploits are going to stop after Hillary is president has, well, a screw loose.

I wish she'd stop pulling her punches.

The Ferraro Flap V

Okay one last thing from Ezra Klein at The American Prospect:

What If?
Yes, it's fairly reprehensible that Geraldine Ferraro said "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." But in a weird way, there's much less to this comment than meets the eye. After all, Obama is not a woman, nor a white man. He's who he is. 

To say that if he were different, things would be different is to say nothing at all. 

As a white woman, maybe he would have led a military coup and established himself dictator. Who knows!? Hell, if he were a slightly less inspiring speaker, or had an off-night at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he wouldn't be in this position either. Similarly, if Hillary Clinton were a black man, it's unlikely that she would have been a national political figure for the past 15 years, as it's unlikely that she would have married another man from Arkansas, and unlikely that the country would have put an interracial, same sex couple in the White House. But so what? This is an election, not Marvel's "What If?" series.

The Ferraro Flap IV

Hopefully, the final post on this topic, from The Daily Dish.

Ending The Victim Spiral
The one indisputably positive aspect of the Obama candidacy - to left or right - has been his remarkable ability to make a case for his nomination without relying on this kind of identity politics and victim-mongering. That he doesn't shrink from minority status and pretend that his blackness doesn't matter is not the same thing. His ability to both represent a black man and yet represent a figure beyond a black man is the core of the historic salience of his candidacy. 

It's why a gay man living in many different worlds feels that Obama can and will move all of us forward. It is why so many with complex identities and revulsion for racial or gender groupthink have been given new hope this time around. It shows that he has actually moved beyond the kind of thinking that lay behind Ferraro's original nomination and the toxic politics of the 1970s left.

I hope this stuff ends soon - and that the Obama camp does not degenerate into constantly being offended, however justified the offense is. Better to remind ourselves of the positive aspects that Obama has allowed for and that his enemies are trying to cloud and pollute. Here's one from almost a year ago that is worth remembering again today:

My favorite moment was a very simple one. [Obama] referred to the anniversary of the March on Selma, how he went and how he came back and someone (I don't remember who now) said to him:

"That was a great celebration of African-American history."

To which Obama said he replied:

"No, no, no, no, no. That was not a great celebration of African-American history. That was a celebration of American history."
Yes.

When this election is fought on their terms - on grievance and resentment and identity victim-mongering - the bad guys win. We mustn't let them take this moment away from us.

"Team Clinton" Responds To Race Accusations

Funny because it's true.

The Ferraro Flap III

Josh from Talking Points Memo has a great video summation of the recent mess:

The Ferraro Flap II

Finally, this morning the Clinton camp responds forcefully:

Ms. Ferraro is speaking for herself. We have made clear that we reject her remarks. —Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson

And Ferraro has since resigned from her post as finance committee member. Here's the letter:

Dear Hillary –
I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.

I won't let that happen.

Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren.

You have my deep admiration and respect.

Gerry

The Ferraro Flap

Well, looks like this Ferraro story has legs. And maybe I was too quick to give her the benefit of the doubt. She's getting bloodied throughout the blogosphere. A consensus is forming that her "gaffes" are part of a strategy to inflame white resentment (by giving voice to it) over issues like affirmative action.

And instead of staying mum, she continues to press onward, digging the hole deeper. This time by going on The O'Reilly Factor (of all places) and saying this:

O'REILLY: Apparently you told the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, California, quote, "If Obama were a white man, he would not be in this position. If here were a woman of any color, he would not be in the position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is in a country who's caught up in the concept." Did you say that?

FERRARO: Yeah, but I also said a lot before that.

O'REILLY: Right, but you know you're gonna get hammered on that.

FERRARO: I was not speaking – no, I was speaking to – it was a paid speech. I was not representing a campaign. I go out and give speeches. I don't –

O'REILLY: Oh, I understand that.

FERRARO: You know, like you do.

O'REILLY: I absolutely know they can take you out of context, but do you believe that Barack Obama, if he were a white mean, white senator, would not be in the position?

FERRARO: Absolutely.

More from Kos:

She was "taken out of context", but asked directly if that's what she meant, she says "absolutely". So what the hell is she talking about? […]

This is what the Clinton campaign is reduced to. Taking a candidate who has inspired hope and passion, and working overtime to turn him into the "black candidate" even though she has no hope of winning the nomination absent a coup by super delegate. Now there's a legacy for Clinton. Congrats to her on pulling that one off.

And it's clear as day, given their refusal to ask for Ferraro's resignation, that the Clinton campaign is as complicit and pleased with Ferraro's words as they are with her media strategy.

Then there's this from the Daily Dish:

The Ferraro Gambit Is Deliberate
The Obama campaign saw Samantha Power resign for a less offensive remark. But Ferraro is now on the networks and airwaves amping up the volume, and Clinton, in classic passive-aggressive mode, is merely "disagreeing." Isn't this obviously about Pennsylvania? Isn't this classic Rove-Morris politics - to keep designating Obama a beneficiary of affirmative action and Clinton a victimized white woman in order to racially polarize a primary where Clinton needs white ethnic votes? Ferraro's original gaffe was an accident. The compounding of it is a strategy. A reader comments:

I'm willing to bet damn near anything Bill thought this up himself. As a white male Bill realized he couldn't push Obama into the ghetto box, but what a brilliant strategy! - let's have another "disadvantaged group" lambaste Obama through an elderly white female surrogate to divide and conquer in the victimology sweepstakes. Since whites outnumber blacks, and white females in particular outnumber black voters, it's an incredibly audacious gambit to win the nomination. Throwing the kitchen sink apparently means turning the Democratic Party into an all out race versus gender war, ultimately allowing Bill and Hillary to either emerge on top or for Obama to be so badly damaged that the Superdelegates will fear he's lost the white vote in the general election. That's exactly the game the Clinton's have set in motion here.

ClintonAttacksObama Wiki Incident Tracker

Here's a site dedicated to tracking TeamClinton's dirtier attacks on Obama. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I find some of these (about 5 or 6 or so) to be a stretch, but the shear number of obviously legitimate ones is pretty striking. 

Click here to check it out.