Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip
Think what you will about Microsoft but you've got to admit, this was funny.
"No, it's not an inconvenient time..."
Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip
Think what you will about Microsoft but you've got to admit, this was funny.
I'm Mad at You Just Because I Know Who You Are
In the words of Our Queer Teenage Overlord, "Leave Britney alone!" Like she really needs your heinous, shame-based "help." Like anyone does. Go away.
[Previous Targets of My Arbitrary Ire: Carrot Top, Jared Fogle, Baby Luv, The Federlines (wah wah wah!), TomKat, Carrot Top (again), "Dog" Chapman, Rick and Kathy Hilton.]
This Magic Moment...
From the eating-their-own department comes a video that you're sure to cherish for a little while, at least until it scrolls off the main page.
A group of excited (when aren't they?) Ron Paul supporters ran into Sean Hannity the other day and harassed the living crap out of him. It seems that Pravda didn't think too clearly about the possible backlash that would arise from their excluding Paul from the debates.
Those are Republicans yelling at you, Sean. Must suck to be you.
[H/T to C&L]
Quote of the Day
"I think every last one of them would move to Massachussets and marry John McCain if they could."—Joe Scarborough, on the media's fascination with John McCain.
I posted this quote for three reasons:
1. He's right about how the press are a bunch of stupid McCain fluffers.
2. I love the irony when people like Scarborough talk about "the press" like they're not part of the same giant media machine.
3. I love when dudez like Scarborough unintentionally reveal their intractable sexism so casually. "Every last one of them" in "the press" would only have to move to Massachusetts to marry McCain if "every last one of them" were men. Which, ya know, they're not, FYI. Kthxbai.
Global Warming
It's January, and it's nearly 70ยบ outside. I just got back to my desk, having earlier been evacuated to a musty corner of the building's basement. This was the result of a tornado warning that had been issued by the NWS. Hail is falling from the sky. (What next, a plague of frogs?)
Tornados aren't uncommon where I live (Central Missouri). At least not during tornado season. January is a different story. To all you deniers of climate change, do me a favor: Step outside for a minute.
"We Had Abortions"
The LA Times offers up an absolutely infuriating profile of "post-abortive men"—which, despite what the name suggests, are not men who were born after being aborted, but MRAs who are getting involved in the anti-choice movement, via the bullshit "post-abortion syndrome" fallacy, by whining about how men are traumatized by abortions, too—which, naturally, means that women shouldn't be allowed to have them.
I could take you point-by-point through this travesty, but one dude's story pretty much sums up the whole movement:
Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.Yep. It struck him that abortion was wrong. Not his total fucking indifference to the women he impregnated getting abortions, an appalling lack of empathy which any rational person would conclude had to have been indicative of a larger emotional detachment from women with whom he was intimate—that was cool. It was just the women getting the abortions that was the problem. And of course his near-sociopathic apathy toward them and their shared circumstance while pregnant with his spawn obviously had nothing to do with their getting abortions in the first place. Heavens, no. Everyone knows women long to have babies with emotionally unavailable wankstains who slip abortion money under the door.
Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. "It was a complete irrelevancy," he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him -- "from the depths of my belly," he said -- that abortion was wrong.
Aubert has since converted to Catholicism. He and his wife have five children, and they sometimes protest in front of abortion clinics. Every now and then, though, Aubert wonders: What if his first girlfriend had not aborted? How would his life look different?But not so much that he doesn't picket outside abortion clinics to make (what he only now realizes is) a difficult decision for women getting abortions even more difficult. What a hero.
He might have endured a loveless marriage and, perhaps, a sad divorce. He might have been saddled with child support as he tried to build his legal practice. He might never have met his wife. Their children -- Christine, Kyle, Roch, Paul, Vance -- might not exist.
"I wouldn't have the blessings I have now," Aubert said. So in a way, he said, the two abortions may have cleared his path to future happiness.
"That's an intellectual debate I have with myself," he said. "I struggle with it."
In the end, Aubert says his moral objection to abortion always wins. If he could go back in time, he would try to save the babies.Well there's a bloody shocker! I'm positively gob-smacked that he's never stopped to consider whether those abortions might have been a wise decision for the women who had them.
But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?
Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.
No—of course it would have been better if he'd "saved the babies," and brought into the world children of a father who cared so little for one mother that he played softball while she had an abortion. Not better for the mothers, and not better for the kids—but better for Aubert and his burdened conscience nearly 20 years later, and isn't that what really matters?
He has not talked with either of the ex-girlfriends, but he says he can imagine what they feel because he knows how the abortions affected him.Right. And so they must be affected the same way—because however he feels, his ex-girlfriends must feel the same. It's inconceivable to this dipshit that they might have feelings independent of his. Good lord.
[Thanks to Shaker Poly for passing along the article link. Cara's got more.]
Our Fabric is Missing a Lot of Threads
Oliver Willis says what Hillary's really up against is that Obama, by virtue of his race, really does offer greater change than Hillary would, by virtue of her sex:
Undboutedly [sic] people are excited about the prospect of a woman president, but I think it's safe to say that the possibility of a black president would present an even more fundamental shift in the basic fabric of what America is.I don't know how one can possibly claim to legitimately quantify something like that, when both possibilities—a black president, a female president—would be hugely groundbreaking, if realized.
America is a deeply racist and deeply sexist country; recall that the biggest shitstorm over intolerant language of last year was Imus' "nappy-headed hos" comment, which is comprised of both racism and sexism. They are blights on the American landscape, from the presidency to the gutter—and I would really love for it to be possible for us to celebrate one step toward comprehensive equality re: race without diminishing the importance of continued marginalization re: sex. (Or vice versa.)
Our national fabric stands to be changed by either an Obama or a Hillary Clinton presidency—and they would challenge (and fail to challenge) endemic prejudices the other would not. When gatecrashing is presented as a contest—"Obama would be more revolutionary than Hillary!"—it perpetuates the lie that racism and sexism aren't each profoundly pervasive problems in America and subverts the reality that both must be vigorously challenged at their every ugly appearance.
I want a black president. I want a woman president. I want a black woman president!
And I want a gay president, and an openly disabled president, and a dwarf president, and a trans president, and an atheist president, and an intersex president, and a deaf president, and a blind president, and presidents of every race, and every conceivable combination of all these variations that America has to offer.
I want a list of presidents that looks like the fucking country they're leading.
We don't get there by saying this country needs one more than the other. Talking about Obama and Hillary like gatecrashing is a race, rather than an ongoing march toward comprehensive equality, doesn't serve any of us—or all of us collectively—particularly well. So let me infuse Oliver's thought with a much-needed twist of progressive solidarity:
Undoubtedly people are excited about the prospect of a woman president, but it might not be Hillary's turn this time. A black president presents a fundamental shift in the basic fabric of what America is, too—and it's that particular shift toward which voters appear to be drifting right now. In any case, its fucking awesome that someone looks likely to crash the gate this year.That's better.
Clooney Threatens to Boycott Oscars ('Cuz He Ain't No Scab, Yo!)
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert take back to the airwaves tonight, joining Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel, who have no deal with their writers. David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, on the other hand, have struck an interim deal with the guild via Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company (because that's the way Hoosiers roll), thumbing their noses at corporate avarice and exposing the despicable lies about crews' jobs for what they are by showing that support for all involved is eminently possible.
Now comes word that Clooney's being an agitator, "credited with inspiring an actors’ boycott against film award ceremonies that threatens to reduce next weekend’s Golden Globe Awards to a shambles and is jeopardising the most important event in the Hollywood calendar, next month’s Oscars." Ha—right on!
This weekend the Screen Actors Guild announced that the 70 actors shortlisted for awards at the Globes will not be attending the ceremony in sympathy with scriptwriters who have been on strike for two months.Of course he doesn't. He just says, "Dudez, attending that shit would be, like, totally uncool," and because he is the closest thing we have to a superhero, everyone listens.
Officially, television network NBC, which splits millions of advertising dollars with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, organiser of the Globes, says the show will go on. Both bodies said on Friday they were in “an extremely difficult position” and would try to woo the actors back.
Behind the scenes NBC is split between those who are in despair seeking to salvage the festival and those raging at the “disloyalty” of actors.
Special ire is reserved for Clooney, 46. “We know Clooney is a major force behind this decision. He has been earbashing others who may have been willing to cross picket lines,” said one NBC executive.
Sources close to Clooney have laughed at the image of “Red George” as a strike-organiser. “He does not earbash, he is far too easy-going for that,” said a business associate.
Just Another Ordinary Guy
William Kristol boots off his stint as the new columnist by touting Mike Huckabee for president.
Mr. Kristol starts off his column with a thanks to Barack Obama for crippling the Clinton campaign and doing the country a great favor by saving us from "the Clinton Restoration." (For that, Mr. Kristol is consistent; his hatred of anything Clinton is as sure as the sneer on Bill O'Reilly's lips.) But he's still freaked out by the possibility of a liberal Democrat in the White House, and so he grabs on to the only spark of life left in the moribund corpus of the Bush GOP.
I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at this moment that he turned to me and said: “You know, I’ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I’m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I’ve got to say — I like him. And I wonder — could he be our strongest nominee?”Not a ringing endorsement, to be sure, but you can hear the hesitant acceptance as he reviews the campaign style of the former Arkansas governor and says, in so many words, that Mr. Huckabee is the best that the GOP has...much the same way the Democrats did with Mike Dukakis in 1988.
He could be. After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy. Huckabee seems to be that. He came up from modest origins. He served as governor of Arkansas for more than a decade. He fought a successful battle against being overweight. These may not be utterly compelling qualifications for the presidency. I’m certainly not ready to sign up.
Now it’s true that many conservatives have serious doubts about Huckabee’s positions, especially on foreign policy, and his record, particularly on taxes. The conservative establishment is strikingly hostile to Huckabee — for both good and bad reasons. But voters seem to be enjoying making up their own minds this year. And Huckabee is a talented politician.Therein lies the problem. Mr. Kristol, of all people, is glad that Mr. Huckabee fills the bill as an "ordinary American," as if the job description of President of the United States is so easy and doesn't require any other ability that it can't be done by guy off the street. Give him a big office, a lot of staffers, a cool plane, and anybody could do this job.
His campaigning in New Hampshire has been impressive. At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, he played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”
If the last seven years have proven anything, that is surely not the case. I will grant you that on the surface Mr. Huckabee certainly seems far more aware of his surroundings than does George W. Bush, but then again, so does Snowball, my stuffed cat. Mr. Huckabee has the smooth and reasonable answers down pat for when he's speaking in a national debate and the charm and folksiness when he's chatting with Tim Russert, and he knows when to pull out the dog whistles when he's talking to a crowd of evangelicals. That makes him a great salesman, but that's not the top requirement in being a president, either; the guy down the street selling insurance knows how to pitch to the right audience at the right time, and he may even spend his off-hours playing rock guitar with a bunch of boomers who are still trying to recapture the magic of The Kingsmen and "Louie Louie" in their garage. That makes him a candidate for American Idol, not the Oval Office.
Mr. Kristol concludes by warning the Democrats not to misunderestimate Mr. Huckabee:
Some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination. They shouldn’t be. For one thing, Michael Bloomberg would be tempted to run in the event of an Obama-Huckabee race — and he would most likely take votes primarily from Obama. But whatever Bloomberg does, the fact is that the Republican establishment spent 2007 underestimating Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee does win the nomination, it would be amusing if Democrats made the same mistake in 2008.Mr. Kristol's track record for predicting the future is secure. In the last seven years alone he has been so spectacularly wrong on everything from the war in Iraq, going to war against Iran, and just about anything else he's talked about, including the economy and hurricane recovery, that the bookies in Vegas listen to him with intense interest, bet the opposite way, and clean up. But then again, this is a man who has set his standards high enough that George W. Bush will be viewed as a great president and civil libertarian. He also has shown his scruples; he has a record of bashing the New York Times to the point that he once accused the editors of treason, yet he has no problem taking their money and filling up their column inches. (When the appointment was announced several weeks ago, a lot of lefties were aghast. I thought it was telling, however; for all his alleged moral piety that he showed so well during the Clinton impeachment, it showed that William Kristol could be bought by the highest bidder, which makes him just another ordinary pundit.)
Mr. Kristol sounds like someone who is trying to convince himself and his fellow Republicans of something he doesn't quite believe himself; that Mike Huckabee is the best of a very bad lot and the best chance they have of winning the election (as opposed to the Democrats, who are more concerned about actually running the country once the election is over). This is his way of saying to his fellow wingers, who up until now have been savaging Mr. Huckabee, that just another ordinary guy may not be all that bad. But then again, any winger who would write for the New York Times can't be expected to have high standards anyway.
(Crossposted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
Obama: Speaking the Unspeakable About Race
by Pam Spaulding. Crossposted from The Blend.
This country has so many issues ahead of us, the economy, Iraq, health care, our shredded civil liberties, yet the fact that we as a country still cannot discuss race; we deny the role it plays in the political discourse when discussing Obama. There isn't a discussion of the tried and true race-baiting tactics that have been used by both parties to stoke fear in the Base of The Black Man at the polls (remember the Harold Ford ads?). Will there be an honest discussion about these political tactics and how they will play out in 2008, or will pundits dance around it, making only veiled references because a frank discussion about race and its toxic role in political elections makes people uncomfortable.
After I ran that cowardly, vile Freeper post about Obama the night he won in Iowa, several people have posted about it. A recap of the filth:
Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.Some thought that there's no point bringing attention to the bigoted fringe element, others thought this is the tip of the iceberg and it should not go unnoticed.
By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.
Hussein's exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.
I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.
As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.
God Bless America, Land of the Free.
For me it's not about elevating these bottom-feeder attacks, per se, it's showing how raw people are willing to be under the cover of anonymity, and it gives license for other veiled attacks (remember, Hillary's supporters were caught with their pants down perpetuating the Muslim smear in Iowa). Hillary's supporters/camp has tried to "go there" with the casual raising of Obama's drug use as a teen to get that story back into media play.
Freepers may be fringe, but if you've got Dem supplicants willing to go there who aren't crazy, you can imagine the unending drumbeat of similar race-baiting that will go on in the mainstream GOP. And we all know what kind of third party Republican mailers end up in mailboxes not tied to the party. It's going to be toned down very little from what that Freeper said in that post, the GOP will decry the tactics, but the low-information voters can be swayed. The people who honestly don't think they are racist, but can be influenced by what we think is ridiculous propaganda.
Remember John Kerry and the Swift Boat attacks. He thought ignoring it and taking the high road would pass as a "response." How wrong he was. Rovian tactics of repeating lies so often that they become a truth to the target audience is time tested.
For every fringe element there will be less ham-handed but equally offensive tactics used by the GOP to race-bait and hide behind the cover of "I'm not racist look over there at the Free Republic." Note the community guidelines of the FR actually ban people for racist posts, so obviously this sort of thing passes muster as fair game. The key is to make the GOP answer for its Base. They court this vote, they own it.
Obama's success has again raised the issue of his safety, given the crazies out there. Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen reacting to the Freeper post:
It would seem that Obama's that much more of a threat to these hateful hordes among us in blue and red states alike, as evinced in a recent racist blog post by anonymous coward hiding safely behind a computer somewhere between sea to shining sea. (Hat tip to รผber-blogger Pam Spaulding.)Andrew White, on his blog 10,000 Things, said this to say about what he feels the obligation is of the media, and the political community to address the issue of race head on:
I fear Obama's fate as a front-runner. I think about murdered politico Bobby Kennedy -- an ultra-wealthy White public servant, and the fear he instilled in an unknown mass of the White citizenry in 1968. And my concern heightens that much more for Senator Obama and his family amidst of his auspicious win this evening.
We are ready to elect a black man President and if Obama wins the nomination we will elect him but his campaign, and everyone else on the Democratic side, is going to have to be ready to win a race war. Us white folks are mean sons of bitches when someone threatens OUR power.Moving on to the other extreme, this image and message comes to us from The Dark Wraith, who puts a disclaimer on what can only be kindly be called a disturbing graphic. Oh, the times we are living in.
I'm not talking about the KKK or Stormfront obvious nutcases but mainstream Mom and Pop white folks that don't think of themselves as racist but really don't want those people living in their neighborhoods or dating their daughters. The ones that live in towns across America that are 88% white and 12% other and really don't have much if any association with black society.
And make no mistake, electing a black man threatens white power, control, and dominance. Note also that Obama is a black man despite being 50% white. We have never claimed half-whites as white. They are black. We don't claim them as even half white. They are black.
I'd love to say we're more evolved in this country on race, but time and again, we've been been proven wrong.At the suggestion of Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword, a graphic is herewith offered to Sen. Obama and his supporters.
Opinions, vows, or other declarations made in the graphic above do not in any way reflect an endorsement by Dark Wraith Publishing or its proprietor of a candidate or ways of showing support. In other words, for God's sake, don't blame me for this graphic: it was Minstrel Boy's idea; I just happen to be good at graphical artwork. For my own part, I am personally opposed to incendiary imagery and words.
The ray of hope that race didn't matter in Iowa, a 95% white state is heartening, but as we all know, it takes one crazed fool...
Inevitably, one of these campaigns will (or supporters with enough distance from the campaigns for plausible deniability) "go there" and use tactics meant to scare voters about their country being led by a black man. Everyone knows that fear works, particularly if it's done in a subtle way. We already know the fringe element will take care of doing the hardcore Stormfront-inspired dirty work.
Can you just imagine all the pundit apologists trying to explain it away if they even bother to acknowledge the problem. It will be like Imus all over again, the MSM racing to find some color to put on the air to discuss a third rail topic for fear of the usual talking heads appearing "racist" (as re-defined by current culture).
The other oft-cited defense for avoiding discussions about race is to make the claim that they are unqualified to discuss race matters because they aren't a person of color. This of course, is absurd, but the fear is well-founded because of the elements in the black and other minority communities that loose their cookies when anyone white makes a statement on race that remotely reflects a lack of knowledge about the issue. The blowback only drives whites further into the closet, and any opportunity for a teachable moment is lost because of defensiveness.
You all know it's true. It's why nearly all of my posts on tense race matters results in fewer comments, fewer attempts by readers to expose themselves, even anonymously, as potentially ignorant about one issue or another in regards to race, politics and how white privilege affects all of us.
It's all absurd, and in this case of discussing the situation of the literal health and well being of Obama, it's dangerous to continue dancing around these terribly difficult topics any longer and hope and pray our inattention to the issue will not result in violence, death and further misunderstandings.
That statement, btw, is no indication that I believe it's inevitable that some crackpot will do something or that the mere discussion of it will foment anything. I think this is a straw man people use to avoid the difficult discussions. The crackpots are already out there, folks. This post is about bringing the discussion out into the sunlight, which is the best disinfectant.
That is why there is hope in this call for change by (young) Iowa voters -- race discomfort is receding, and Obama has struck the right chord. Are the candidates, and the entrenched career consultants and the political machinery in both parties ready for a different kind of change -- to let go of the race-baiting tactics they don't want to admit to using to their advantage? That is the test of principle, and it might as well happen in open discussion, not behind closed doors.
What I'm reading so far doesn't sound promising. In fact, these folks are so addicted to fear and smear in the Democratic party that they beg for the ability to "go there" lest the GOP get to it first.
Melanie Levesque, a state representative in Brookline, New Hampshire and a member of African-Americans for Hillary, said Obama lacked the experience to win the presidential election, echoing the official Clinton spin. However, she went on to add a few thoughts of her own, which are not far from the surface of the Clinton campaign.Obama wrote about it in his book, so what is there to discuss? He gave a more thorough disclosure than Big "I didn't inhale" Bill. And I'm sorry, if someone's middle name needs to be a campaign issue, then Hillary Clinton's campaign is worse off than I ever believed.
"I'm very concerned that you can't state [Barack Obama's] middle name, you can't state his record and you can't state his past life," she said. Asked if she was referring to Hussein, his Muslim middle name, and his admitted use of drugs, including cocaine, in his youth, she said, "Yes."
Two wrongs don't make a right -- Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the baiters who insist on invoking "Barack Hussein Obama" know exactly what they are doing. We all know what they are doing, and it's bush league (pun intended) pandering to the worst instincts in people. If Clinton and other Dems want to go there, please do so, but you're going to be called out on it -- and you're going to have to answer for the consequences of staying in the political gutter. Yes, the GOP will go after him on the most base level, and Obama will address the issues as they arise. Your "help" isn't required on that front to "vet" anything on this front. We all know what the game is, and it's killing them that going negative with race-baiting comes with a risk of serious blowback.
Obama's political record is relevant and fair game, but it sure sounds like making comparisons to Clinton's record isn't sexy or effective enough to work, so they are itching like they are infested with fleas to go negative.
***
Glenn Greenwald discussed the untethered fears and musings of the "intelligencia" on the Right -- witness Jonah Goldberg, who seems to think if Obama loses, there is going to be rioting in the streets (do you think he envisions a sea of Big Black Bucks terrorizing the masses, hmm?):
Over at National Review, Jonah Goldberg has a "theory" about what might help Obama win in the general election. After noting that Obama will be "the first serious mainstream black contender for the White House," Goldberg warns (emphasis added):Yeah, we're all over that race thing. Racism is a thing of the past...right? That's what the right wing keeps telling us. They must have amnesia. What was Jena 6 about? Better yet, if that's simply too politically complicated a matter, what about the fallout from it -- some of your fellow Americans felt the license to do things like this...I think it's worth imagining a certain scenario. Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee -- and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008.I wonder: in Jonah Goldberg's "imagination," which (ahem) "certain segments" of the American population exactly will "become completely unhinged" if Obama loses and thereby spawn "social unraveling"? And who are the people who are going so deeply to fear this "social unraveling" that they vote for Obama just in order to keep those "certain segments" in line and well-behaved?
* Man fired after reporting co-workers put a noose around his neck
* Arkansas pol's bigot eruption: we're 'overrun by immigrants and outpopulated by the blacks'
* Neo-Nazi group publishes addresses and phone numbers of Jena 6 families (urging "readers to 'Get in touch, and let them know justice is coming.'")
* Four nooses were found hung from a tree at a school in High Point, NC
* White Louisiana students re-enact 'Jena 6' in blackface
Glenn aptly notes that there was a segment of the population that became unhinged over a presidential election. Remember the incident in Miami in 2000 when a group of Republican thugs in shirtsleeves lost their cookies during the recount? (Village Voice):
The "bourgeois riot" celebrated by Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot helped stop the announced manual recount of the 10,750 undervote in Miami-Dade County. Instigated by an order from New York congressman John Sweeney to "shut it down," dozens of screaming GOP demonstrators pounded on doors and a picture window at elections headquarters. The canvassing board, which had already found a net Al Gore gain of 168 votes, reversed a decision it had made a couple of hours earlier to begin a tally of the undervote.Those folks weren't random GOP activists, these were aides to pols shipped down there to intimidate and affect the recount process. Glenn had me rolling with this:
The mob gang-rushed a local Democrat carrying a blank sample ballot. They threatened that a thousand Cubans were on their way to the headquarters to stop the count. Several people were "trampled, punched or kicked," according to The New York Times. The canvassing board chair at first conceded that mob pressures played a role in the shutdown -- which cost Gore the 168 votes as well -- but later reversed his position...
...Instead of condemning the Dade tactics, W. himself called the victory party that night to praise them, and Republicans invoked the specter of Jesse Jackson, who'd merely led peaceful protests outside election offices.
The "certain segment" creating "social unraveling" and blocking vote-counting in 2000 with their thug tactics wasn't quite the same as the "certain segment" which Goldberg and Reynolds are ominously warning will riot in the event of an Obama loss:Amanda's post on whether she should reconsider her endorsement of Edwards now because of the drivel on the right about Obama is an interesting exercise in musing aloud about the impact of "going there" (by the right, though as we've seen, when under the gun Dems don't mind going in the race gutter if it's expedient). I'm sure many people right now are wondering what the level of discourse will be should Obama continue to succeed.
Amazing Race Open Thread
We've been forgetting for weeks, but Liss and I finally remembered that it's on, so here's the open thread!
What If They Threw A Caucus And No One Cared?
That’s what happened yesterday in Wyoming. The whole affair was something of a non-event for media. The candidates too, for that matter, with only about half them bothering to campaign there. This may be because Wyoming has the lowest population of all the states, and probably isn’t considered "worthwhile."
As a state, Wyoming also somehow manages to be even whiter than Iowa. It also has one of the highest Mormon populations, percentage-wise. The latter fact may account for Willard’s victory there, where he scored himself eight delegates.
It doesn’t explain how Fred Thompson ended up in second. Seriously, who the hell is voting for this guy?
After his victory, Willard was quoted as saying "The people of Wyoming took the first step towards bringing true conservative change to Washington."
Conservative change? Pardon me, but don’t those two words have opposite meanings? What the hell is conservative change? Is that more of the same? Or is it something different, but maybe not too different?
Maybe I can't blame the media for ignoring him.
Make Them Squirm
To follow up on Chet's post below, here's how two lords of the punditocracy look at the new front-runners in the presidential race, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama.
First, George F. Will, who has an almost visceral dislike for the suddenly-popular Mike Huckabee:Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: "In my family, 'summer' was never a verb." Nixon, who maundered about his parents' privations and wife's cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?
As for Sen. Obama, he's almost giddy.
Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.
Frank Rich also sees the refreshing -- dare I say it -- change in the forecast with these two men.The two men are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don’t run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the “compassionate conservative” president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.
Compared to the cable talking heads, Mr. Will and Mr. Rich seem to be actually enjoying this topsy-turvy world. Good for them. If one of the side effects of the Huckabee and Obama candidacies is that it serves as a royal smackdown for the establishment stormcrows of punditry, then it will be well worth it just for the fun of watching Fred Barnes, Brit Hume, and Morton Kondracke squirm.
The “they” who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism’s status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.
[...]
Among the Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee is also as culturally un-Bush as you can get. He constantly reminds voters that he did not go to an Ivy League school and that his plain values derived from a bona fide blue-collar upbringing, as opposed to, say, clearing brush on a vacation “ranch” bought with oil money attained with family connections. “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off,” he told Mr. Leno, in a nifty reminder of Mr. Romney’s corporate history as a Bush-style, Harvard-minted M.B.A.
It’s such populist Huckabee sentiments that are already driving the Republican empire to strike back. The party that has milked religious conservatives for votes for two decades is traumatized by the prospect that one of that ilk might actually become its standard-bearer. Especially if the candidate in question is a preacher who bashes Wall Street and hedge-fund managers and threatens to take a Christian attitude toward those too poor to benefit from the Bush tax cuts.
No wonder the long list of party mandarins eager to take down Mr. Huckabee includes Rush Limbaugh, Robert Novak, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review. Dan Bartlett, the former close Bush adviser, has snickered at Mr. Huckabee’s presumably low-rent last name. Fred Barnes was reduced to incoherent babbling when a noticeably gloomy Fox News announced Mr. Huckabee’s victory Thursday night.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
The Measure of a Woman
by RedSonja
BBC America recently aired a show called My Small Breasts and Me. Since my husband, KarateMonkey, is always interested in a show about breasts, for research purposes, and I was curious to see what they had to say, we decided to tune in.
Being a woman, I am fairly familiar with breasts. Mostly my own, as I am a straight girl, but I have observed many other sets between sports, theater, and modern entertainment. I am aware that many would consider me fortunate, as I am "well endowed"—48 DD at the moment. (In the interest of full disclosure, in my skinny high school days I was more like a 34 B...) But I must admit to being interested in "how the other half lives."
MSBaM covered 3 women—young, articulate, and (in their eyes) flat-chested. They were all miserable; one woman felt that clients she made presentations to viewed her as "pre-pubescent." Another, a single mother of two, was so self-conscious that she had broken down into tears during a trip to the corner store. A third was ashamed when out with friends at the beach, crossing her arms across her chest while they analyzed celebrity breasts in a magazine.
This show treated these women quite sympathetically; there was almost no voiceover work, and each woman's approach to solving her perceived problem was treated without judgment. One woman used a suction machine that literally sucked on her breasts (not nearly as fun as it sounds!) for 11 hours a day. She also began taking some herbs that some people think mimic puberty.
The woman who hated going to the beach with her friends was exploring surgery as an option. She started out by looking into funding for her surgery, and discovered a website (My Free Implants, and no, I won't link to it) that allows men (and presumably women) to donate money to specific women to fund their boob jobs. In return, the men get "personalized videos, pictures, and messages" from the women. More on the utter creepiness of this later…. She also met with a woman who had raised enough money for her surgery on this website, and then watched the surgery being performed. Interestingly enough, this person actually requested that the surgery cause her breasts to look artificial.
My favorite approach was the mother of two, who chose to do phototherapy. In it, the photographer takes pictures of the individual in an effort to give them an objective perspective on themselves. This photographer in particular, Ellen Fisher Turk, did a lot of work with rape victims, cancer survivors, and individuals with eating disorders.
Results were mixed. The woman using the herbs and suctioning had a falling-out with her boyfriend. She wasn't sure if it was because the herbs she was taking were making her irritable, or if she was giving herself permission to be cranky because of them. She had gotten some results, going from an A to a C cup, but saw a doctor who cautioned her that the change might not be permanent.
The woman looking into surgery chose not to have it done. She did spend some time walking around town with "breasts" made out of rice and pantyhose, and enjoyed the extra attention that she received.
The woman who chose to do phototherapy was probably the most successful. She found that, after looking at her pictures several times, she was able to see more about herself than just her breasts. The next scene was of her going to a waterpark with her two children, actually enjoying herself. It brought tears to my eyes.
There were several things in this show that really struck me. One was the obsession with breasts. While I jokingly referred to KarateMonkey's breast-friendly tendencies, it's certainly true that as a society, we are fixated on them. I imagine most of the women reading this remember being in middle school and the nearly constant analysis of breasts —whether your own or someone else's. And who can forget the changing in the locker room, trying to put your shirt on without showing ANYTHING!!
We learn from an early age that breasts are dirty, to be covered up—and simultaneously that they can (and should) be used as a tool, to get what we want. What nobody ever straightforwardly points out to girls is: "You know what? They're YOURS. Do what you want with them. Enjoy them. Let men touch them or not. Show them off or not. They ARE NOT YOU, nor are you them. They are just another part of the whole you, no more important than any other corporeal parts, and less important than most of the intangibles."
We are socialized to obsess about breasts. Are they real? Are they fake? Are they even? Can you see too much? How about not enough? Better wear a bra, ladies, or they'll sag when you're old! Here, have some padding! Here, have some more! Better yet, just pay us a gajillion dollars, and we'll jam some permanent padding in there for you!
Which leads me back to My Free Implants—I'm all for consenting adults doing what consenting adults want to do, but this website is sheer exploitation and abasement. Women are basically groveling, trying to be the hottest or whatever it takes to get the "donors" to fork over the money. And I suspect that in the mind of most of the women on the website, this is a crucial thing—to have "normal" breasts. The website plays on the insecurity that our society has fostered; that with small boobs, you can’t be sexy. And it's reprehensible.
We've gotten so wrapped up in the sexualization of breasts that we can't see the women for the tits. Rather than letting them be one facet of our sexuality and femininity, they have become the very symbol of our sex. And the result of that is women like those in the show—who feel that, because their breasts deviate from some imaginary norm, they are less than. It makes them do things like attach suction units to their chests for 11 hours a day, or flirt with strangers in order to get money to pay for breast augmentation, just to be more. But what they're lacking isn't breasts, and all the pumping and the surgery in the world won't fix what's broke.
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That is all for small breasts. In a potential next installment, I'll review My Large Breasts and Me, also on BBC.
[As a long time reader, but first time writer, RedSonja is finding that this blogging thing is HARD. She splits her time between her devoted and adorably geeky husband KarateMonkey, a ridiculous number of animals in the house, and feeding her video game and reading addictions. She pines for the day when she can do what she loves to do, study animal behavior, rather than what she currently does, which is study animal eliminiation. She sold her soul years ago for a good beer and a plate of cheese fries, and hasn't missed it for a second.]
Not Really
Speaketh King of American Conservative Christianity Dr. James Dobson: "The results of the Iowa caucuses reveal that conservative Christians remain a powerful force in American politics. That had to be a great shock to those on the far left."
Um, nope. We're well aware the GOP still routinely panders to you. Kthxbai.
Caption This Photo
Touch my nuts, and these trees are goin' down Samson style, beeyotch!
Via CuteOverload
