Palin vs. Hillary: The Reckoning
One of the few times SNL gets seriously funny occurred this past weekend. Watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler pretty much nail Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, and tell me that Tina doesn’t look uncannily like Palin.
Entries Tagged as 'Politics'
Poor, fat, and stupid? Don’t worry…
…the Greater Los Angeles Ministry of Nutrition knows what’s best. After all, poor people are far too uneducated to know how to eat.
And you wonder how King George and his Court can get away with all that they do? Look at how easily you’re duped.
What’s that? Do I sound bitter? Nahhhhhh…
Liberal Fascism? Believe it…
Today’s Democrats and neo-conservatives are all cut from the same whole cloth: Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler. The nanny state is a direct descendant of those things that horrified us all so much in the middle of the last century.
And don’t let George Bush and his ilk fool you with claims of conservative values. He’s as far from those as Queen Hillary.
Weep for the future.
“Conservative Values?” Not in Washington.
Libertarian candidate (former Republican, enthusiastic Patriot Act pusher, and notorious about-facer) Bob Barr spoke before Netroots Nation this past week (spiritual successor to Yearly Kos), and uttered words which caused InDecision2008’s Cubby Chaser to wonder…
“What the fuck is wrong with the world when it turns out that the Libertarian candidate says the smartest thing of the past seven weeks?”
There’s a lot wrong with the world right now, a smattering of it found all over my infrequently updated blog here.
But perhaps a better question is “what the fuck is wrong with the world when the Libertarian candidate has been saying a lot of smart things over the last few months and no one is listening?”
“Good thing Barr is getting no press whatsoever.”
You can also add the legions of folk in this once-great nation who long ago lost the ability for critical thinking if they ever possessed it. I could blame TV and various other forms of info-tainment, but it’s easy enough for many people to still view those and retain their faculties. No, pure mental, philosophical, and political laziness are at the heart of it all.
As for those “smart” words of Barr? Here is a smattering:
“I’m not sure. The term ‘conservative values’ means so many different things to so many different people. To me, what has utterly failed in the traditional conservative movement is any understanding of or respect for true individual liberty and our constitutional system of government, which was designed expressly to provide protection for individual liberty.
“We now have a government which calls itself conservative, yet believes it’s okay to spy on American citizens within their own country without a court order. We now have an administration which calls itself conservative and supports conservative values that believes it’s okay to detain a citizen or non-citizen in this country and never give them access to courts to determine under habeas corpus if they are being held properly.
“So if in fact respect for individual liberty, respect for the Constitution are conservative values, we certainly don’t have that in Washington nowadays.”
And a few more words to ruminate upon:
“For example, if the citizens of a particular state wish to legalize medicinal marijuana, or to change the definition of marriage in their state, why should the Federal government have any right, if in fact if it respects individual liberty and individual conservative values, have any power have any power to come in and override the position of the people of the state. Yet that’s what we have in Washington. That’s not conservatism. That’s big government.”
How many folks out there do you think would find the above words eminently reasonable, should they even bother to listen or look for them? I would wager the same majority that opposes the destruction of reason and waste of human life that is our invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Those still tied to the notion that the answers lie only with the “Demogogue” and “Republicrat” parties should look at the lessons of the last half century, and especially the last two decades. There are no longer any answers coming from the big two, only a continually-accelerating descent into a singularity.
Seize the birthright so many fought for 230+ years ago. If you want to retain your individual rights, don’t stand anymore for others trying to take them from you, allegedly in your name.
Mr. Barr again:
“The value that is most important to me, is that which is most important, for example, to the great 20th Century philosopher Ayn Rand, and that is the value of individual privacy. As Ayn Rand said, the value of privacy, the notion of a person being freed from the interference of other people, is the essence of civilization.”
Ayn Rand is not a demon, merely another flawed human being, as we all are. She said things those in power fear, some of them wrong to myself and others, but she was able to say them. It is our choice whether or not we’ll bother to listen.
Rise & Fall of the Clinton Reich (NSFW)
I never realized that a long-dead dictator had such insight on today’s problems, until I saw his feelings regarding the end of the High-Definition War between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (NSFW):
But now Der Führer has something to say on the subject of bloody Democratic fisticuffs. I have never seen the kind of insight into Hillary’s mind from anyone before, and it’s so very surprising. Watch and be amazed, but remember…
…both of these videos are oh-so-not-safe-for-work:
The ironies of using Hitler to make this particular commentary are too savory for me to explain, so I shall let you all enjoy its fruits on your own, but I don’t think anything else on the subject of Hillary’s candidacy need be said after this.
Bending like a Reid in the wind…
It seems I’m not the only one who saw Senator Harry Reid on the Daily Show this past week and was struck by how he was one of the worst interviews ever on the show.
At the very beginning of the interview, I could barely hear the man, and he seemed so very out of place on a show so rife with wit. And then he had the temerity to whine about how he was disappointed that the Democratic Majority in the Senate and House couldn’t get anything done.
Is he completely oblivious to the fact that it’s no one’s fault but the Democrats? Are he and his majority still stuck in the past where they were the whipping boys of Bush and his Republican sycophants? I would say so, as he sure looked and sounded completely whipped.
Stewart tried gamely to energize Reid, but was ultimately unable to give life to the corpse.
See for yourselves:
Obama’s “bitter” pill
All right, it’s been a few weeks since I really had something to say, but this last weekend has stirred my muse once more.
By now most of my American readers will have heard the accusations leveled at Senator Obama for his alleged “elitism,” stemming from a comment he made about economics and the effects a long-term loss of opportunity have on those experiencing it:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Anyone not running for president and not living the high life can see immediately that Obama has touched on yet another truth: people with no money and no prospects get pissed off, and they need someone to get pissed off at. This isn’t exactly a revelation; we’ve all experienced this in ourselves to one degree or another.
And step back for a moment and think about this: can anyone imagine Senators Clinton and McCain having the cojones to confront an unpleasant truth like this and talk to their constituents about it like they have a modicum of intelligence?
I can’t, yet Obama did the same thing in his “More Perfect Union” speech on racial divisiveness in America (watch it if you haven’t, and see someone who hints at the courage of Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin), and in many other speeches and comments. As Bitter Jon says at his site Bitter Voters for Obama:
One of the most refreshing things about Barack Obama is his fearlessness when it comes to voicing a hard truth. It’s an ice cold glass of unsweetened lemonade: hard to swallow, but unmistakably pure. The truth is, if you aren’t bitter, you’re probably voting for someone who is going to give us more of what we’ve been getting all along. And all Clinton and McCain seem to be saying is “Let them eat Lemons.”
I may not agree with Obama on everything, but there is an edge to him, unpolished and forthright, not unprincipled and smoothed over like other politicians who appear subject to the whims of voters and media.
Also, let us not overlook the blatant hypocrisy of two very well-heeled multimillionaires accusing someone of Obama’s modest income and bootstrapped origins of being out of touch with mainstream, working class Americans.
I applaud him for this, and I can see that come November, this race will boil down to one thing: whether people are so fed up with the direction of this country that they finally take a true interest in debating actual, important issues that hearken back to the debates of the Revolution and our very reason for sundering our ties to Great Britain all those years ago, or whether they lack the energy to rise up and break the hold that television and sound-bite pundits have over them, sinking us further into the moral, social, and economic quagmire in which we now reside.
I hope it’s the former, and I mean for my words here to push for that, but my hope remains dim.
As an aside, please enjoy Obama himself pointing out McCain and especially Hillary’s peacock feathers in this highly entertaining speech he gave on Sunday in Steelton, PA. Especially amusing is the reference to Hillary in a duck blind.
Of doping and peloton protests…
An update to my post yesterday.
It seems the riders of the Paris-Nice peloton are not happy about van Impe’s treatment, and they’re getting upset at the apparent overreach of doping controls at that race—I haven’t much sympathy for this since they were warned by the UCI that racing under ASO only would strip them of rights and dignity. Though whether the UCI’s controls would have been less invasive and time-consuming is a question for another day.
However, David Rebellin makes a strong point that is symptomatic of extremism of anti-doping efforts:
“We support the controls, but what I’m worried about is the invasion of privacy. They come to our homes and we are always available. They have to remember that we are people, too, and not gangsters.”
And there it is in a nutshell: all riders are guilty unless proven otherwise.
David, welcome to the insanity of drug wars everywhere. It’s only going to get worse.
This is certainly something we’re starting to become familiar with in the U.S. as our rights are being eroded by this administration and the fear they’ve generated in the sheep. I’m sure that once they have doping “under control” they’ll start testing for terrorists.
Then again, who’s to say they’ll wait that long. Remember, the indignities these riders suffer are really nothing compared to what hundreds, if not thousands, of people experience every day at the hands of the inept and abusive Transportation Security Administration.
Cycling: humanity and politics in a nutshell.
Of doping and Belgian vampires…
Belgian cyclist Kevin van Impe had his heart ripped out this past Monday, so leave it to a bureaucratic bloodsucker (I’ll bet he’s French) to drain whatever life was left in him.
I really hope this colossal screw-up turns around and bites them in the ass. At this point, I am as sick of the anti-doping crusaders in Europe as I am of the police state drug warriors here in the U.S.
Just another example of what happens when little bureaucrats get a taste of a little power. I hope this vampire and his masters get some stakes through the heart. Oh, wait…
…from reading this story, it appears they don’t have any. Or if they do, they’re shriveled, vestigial organs.
About time, Keith
While I don’t know if the Ferraro fracas is so much to get worked up about, Olbermann takes the time to castigate Hillary for other failings as well.
At this point, with the Republicans trying to game the Democratic nomination, her growing unpopularity, and her stupidity at suicide-bombing her own party, it’s time for her to take the high road and step back.
Unlike Keith, I think it’s already too late for her, and now she’s just causing strife and attrition within the Democrats that will only lead to President McCain, a far worse prospect than President Obama.
