Let's do the time warp again...!
Post Dis!
"The Toll of a Campaign"
Hey, Drudge—why don't you post this as part of your collection, you sexist, ageist, invidious piece of shit?
Wanker.
Question of the Day
I gotta go with the obvious: Who's going to carry New Hampshire?
Additionally: Any thoughts at this point on whose going to take the noms? Wishful thinking? Dashed hopes? Predictions? Whatcha got?
In Other News...
The White House is still filled with lawbreaking scumbags:
A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes.Gee, ya think? Garsh, let's hope the White House doesn't have the number for Geeks on Call, too!
The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.
Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records including e-mail.
Facciola gave the White House five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain e-mails written between 2003 and 2005.
...Facciola noted the importance of acting quickly since e-mails that might be retrievable from individual computer workstations in the White House "are increasingly likely to be deleted or overwritten with the passage of time."
One day, average people will look back on these times and positively marvel at the things the Bush administration was allowed to get away with.
[Comprehensive background here.]
Caption This Photo
Hello... Hello... Hello....
HELLO! What would you like us to power up today?
Via CuteOverload, as usual
An Update on Deeky's Favorite Candidate
Thompson absent in New Hampshire:
While most of the presidential candidates are up in New Hampshire awaiting results of its first-in-the-nation primary, Republican candidate Fred Thompson is already in South Carolina, site of the next major primary vote. The former Tennessee senator, who essentially abandoned his New Hampshire campaign weeks ago, is embarking on an eleven-day bus tour throughout the Palmetto State.If I were one of his financial backers, I'd wonder if he were planning to swap the slack-jawed indifference for some passion about running for the presidency of the United States of America anytime soon. I mean, this guy's got less enthusiasm about his candidacy than the second-place finishers in the annual Doucheville over-60 charity bowl-a-thon.
“I swapped the snow for the mild temperatures,” he said Tuesday.
Time for a little pep in the ol' step, Marvin. People might start to question whether you actually want the most important job in the world when you're less excited about the prospect of being president than Ruthie Franklin is about winning fifty bucks for the Junior League.
The Constitution + One Recipe for Corn Dogs
This morning, Spudsy and I were chatting about how President Glaikit seems to have totally disappeared lately, and how that probably isn't a good thing, and how he's probably taking advantage of this time to himself by plotting to bomb Iran and stage a military coup to retain indefinite control of the nation.
Enter The Onion:Bush Begins Preparations For Nation's Final Year
LOL!
As his last term in office winds to a close, President Bush has directed White House aids and Cabinet staff to begin preparing for 2008, the nation's 232nd and final year in existence.
"My fellow Americans, it has been an honor to be your last president," said Bush during a televised address Tuesday, assuring citizens he would do everything possible over the next few months to promote a smooth transition into utter oblivion. "I want you all to know that I do not intend to let what precious little time we have left go to waste. That's why I ask all citizens to pull together and follow me, so we can accomplish everything we've ever wanted to before it all crumbles around us in a terrible belch of smoke and ash."
… "I am committed to making this the best damn Swan Song the world has ever seen," said Bush, after enclosing a copy of the Constitution and a recipe for corn dogs in an air-tight titanium capsule to be placed just across the Canadian border. "I know this looks like the end—and it is—but I intend to go out with a bang. Now, who's with me?"
Better laugh now…before it's too true to be funny.
[The indirect h/t goes to Coturnix, who's got a great Onion video to check out.]
Ride On, Sisters!
Following July's eminently sensible decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that an insane MRA had no legal basis for being offended by the trademarked term "Dykes on Bikes," the US Supreme Court has now turned away his challenge.
Joe My God:
The trademark was challenged by a men's rights advocacy lawyer who claimed the term denigrated men and was "scandalous and immoral" - grounds for denying a trademark. Dykes On Bikes applied for a trademark several years ago in order to stop an offshoot group from selling t-shirts.That was an update from his previous claim that "dyke" is associated with a "deep obsessive hatred of men and the male gender."
In his challenge, Michael McDermott of Dublin, California charged that men were illegally excluded from the streets during the annual Dyke March and that awarding the trademark would be contrary to "widespread documented understanding of the term 'dyke' as describing hyper-militant radicals hateful toward men."
Nope, just you. And it ain't just dykes either, bub.
Well done, SCOTUS.
Shaker Gourmet: Specken Dicken
Sorry I didn't get to this last week--I was taken out of commission by this crazy cold that everyone is getting (along with all the family stuff this time of year going on as well). The recipe this week comes from Shaker KarateMonkey, who says:
"I thought since it's that time of year I'd submit a traditional New Year's recipe from my family. We have a giant gathering every year and everybody eats themselves to bursting. For some of my more distant relatives this was often the one time a year when I was guaranteed to see them. Maybe that's why I have such fond memories of these wonderful little german pancakes. These days I'm too far away to make it back often so I usually end up making it for just me and my wife who puts on a brave face every year manages to eat a couple."
KarateMonkey has a few notes on this, all are below the fold!Specken Dicken
3 cups sugar
5 well beaten eggs
2 cups dark corn syrup
1 Tablespoon anise seed
1 teaspoon baking soda mixed in a small amount of hot water
1 Tablespoon salt
6 cups rye graham flour
6 cups white flour
bacon, hamburger, or sausage browned and broken up into small pieces (personally I like bacon or cut up cocktail wienies).
Mix all ingredients except the meat together with enough water to make a thin batter. When you're ready to cook, set a small pile of meat on a hot griddle or skillet and pour the batter over it and cook like a pancake. Serve with or without syrup.
irst off Specken Dicken is basically rye pancakes with anise (so they kind of taste like black licorice) and meat. I'm aware that it sounds really weird. I grew up eating this stuff and begin to crave it mightily around the beginning of December every year. I understand though if it might be a bit off putting to some. Just try it. It won't kill you, really.If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com Include a link to your blog, if you have one!
Second, this is my great-grandmother's recipe. She had twelve children. I'll be making it for two this year and cutting everything to roughly 25%. I'll cut the anise a bit more in deference to my wife.
Third the batter is better if you make it the night before and let it sit. When you're ready to cook just add enough water to thin it out to the consistency of think pancake batter.
Fourth and finally, these are a bit more temperamental than regular pancakes. Make sure you thin the batter out enough. Pour them small, and flip the moment bubble break the surface.
Fifth, OK I remembered one more, you're not going to find rye graham flour. Just use rye flour.
The Vast Left Geek Conspiracy
A right wing blog might go under because of a vast left wing conspiracy of geeks.
That's in full compliance with the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #82: "The flimsier the product, the higher the price."When we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.
If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.
Well, we didn’t close down. We ditched Scoop and moved to the best alternative at the time, a program called Drupal. But, in accomplishing the switch, budget constraints forced us to sacrifice some popular site features in order to alleviate the strain on our overused servers.
Needless to say, we always regarded those “downgrades” as temporary, and we hoped to restore the eliminated features – and to add new and even better ones – as soon as we could afford to.
Unfortunately, we still can’t afford to. But we’re convinced that America can afford even less to have us operating at anything less than our absolute peak potential during the coming presidential election season.
So we’ve decided to move ahead with our upgrades without delay, and despite not having the cash on hand – hoping and praying that RedState.com readers like you will help us make up the shortfall with a generous donation.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Granitey Goodness
Turnout in NH is huge.
Despite the myriad things to bitch about during this particular Silly Season, the number of people getting involved and showing some basic freaking concern about their country is not one of them.
Privilege: In One Story (with Pictures!)
[Awhile ago, Zuzu requested a post that was originally published in June, which got lost in exile. Now recovered, I figured it was as good a time as any—and better than most—to repost it.]
Frequently, some story about some new legislation or rule or initiative to stop this or discourage that or address the horrendo plague that wev has become will elicit from one group or another charges of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. And those charges will in turn elicit charges of hypersensitivity, overreaction, "looking to get offended," etc. from members of the privileged group so inured to their privilege, they don't even recognize it.
But along has come the perfect story to demonstrate exactly what privilege really is, in a nutshell. So to speak.
Mr. Carol Broussard, mayor of a Louisiana town called Delcambre, is set to sign into law a new ordinance unanimously passed by the Delcambre town council which will make it a crime to wear trousers that show underwear, punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. When some residents complained that the ordinance was racially-motivated, targeting blacks who wear the baggy trousers "fashionable among hip hop fans," Broussard dismissed them with the inevitable: "White people wear sagging pants, too."
Indeed. In fact, my first thought was that it was intended to target women who wear the low-slung jeans fashionable among, uh, the fashionable. And lest you think that Broussard was thinking of white people other than women, he told the AP that people who wear low-slung trousers would be "better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress." And something tells me Broussard isn't directing that recommendation at teh boyz.
Ultimately, though, it's really the timing of the thing that speaks to privilege. You see, it was only after this
…and this
…came on the scene that passing an ordinance against showing off your underpants and/or asscrack to the world become a legislative priority in the town of Delcambre, only after the appearance of black boys' (and black-emulating white boys') underpants and girls' underpants and asscracks did improperly fitting trousers become such a cause for concern among the vapors-and-fainting-couches set. Decades of this
…in offices, and this
…in homes and workplaces, and this
…in public, just never seemed to spawn the same kind of alarmism. I don't recall having ever heard in all my days a proposal to, for example, require plumbers to wear belts, and not just the tool-hauling kind, or having ever read a hang-wringing editorial on the offensive fashion choices of middle-aged white men. (I do recall a rather amusing SNL sketch though, prominently featuring Dan Aykroyd's ass.)
Undoubtedly, there's someone thinking, "But those guys aren't trying to show off their asscracks," as if intent is a viable explanation for the difference. Thing is, if the issue were genuinely indecent exposure, and how its routine disregard hurts the whole community, as claim the defenders of this proposal, then it should be worthy of attention even when it isn't deliberate. Why never a "shirt must past your buttocks" ordinance to have dealt with the many revealed Delcambre asscracks of yore? Because it's not about white men with plumber's arse. It's about condemning expressions of (one facet of) blackness and (one facet of) female sexuality.
In a very real way, that's privilege: Getting to show your ass in public without officially sanctioned condemnation of it for decades.
Fighting Sexism is Meant to be a Progressive Value
Isn't it? One wouldn't think so, given the way Hillary Clinton's peers are allowing her to be subjected to all manner of indignity on the basis of her sex, with nary a peep in her defense. John Edwards' response to reports of Hillary's emotional moment—which, once the national press was done with it, had turned into a full-blown emotional meltdown—was disgraceful. Obama merely declined to comment in this case, but he hasn't gotten to New Hampshire with clean hands, having recently reduced Hillary Clinton's experience as first lady to attending tea parties; then, responding to being called out by the Clinton campaign on the obvious sexism of that jab, he denied he was referring to her gender (really?—he'd describe a man's experience as having "tea" with people?) and resorted to a thinly-veiled update on the old "hysteria" chestnut: "Those folks must really be on edge."
Yes, that must be it. Or, perhaps, they were rightfully angry about the oblique use of sexism as a political weapon from their own side of the aisle.
(Just as the Obama camp was rightfully angry about the oblique use of race-baiting as a political weapon when it emanated from the Clinton campaign. Ahem.)
Now that Obama is the new frontrunner, and every hour that passes seems to bring him one step closer to his party's nomination, Tom Watson makes a good point about what his silence in the face of sexist attacks on Clinton (or his own use of them) really means:[U]nless Barack Obama speaks out, his campaign's chilling acceptance of the gender bias stirred by our national media will also remind many of Ronald Reagan's acceptance of the race-baiting southern strategy—because if Obama accepts the presidency, at least in part, because of abject sexism, a brutal gender attack on a female rival—the most famous female Democrat in history—he will set feminism in our country back a generation.
Indeed. And that's not just about Hillary. When a female public figure is demonized with sexist swill, and such tactics go unchecked, we collectively give our tacit assent to sexism being wielded against any woman in any situation—which is, by the way, why I end up having to defend Ann Coulter way more often than I'd like.
…Obama has benefited mightily from sexism in this campaign, and has remained silent.
Mannion disagrees with Tom, on the premise that it's "not Obama's or Edwards' jobs to fight it," but, unless you view public expressions of sexism as damaging only to the specific woman at whom they're directed, that claim is absurd. Obama and Edwards are running to govern this nation, of which half its population is women. Why on earth should any of us trust a man who's willing to ascend to his position on the back of slurs that could be used against any one of us? That's the very nature of sexism—it's not about any specific woman, but about us all. Of course we should expect our president to fight sexism, even and perhaps especially when it is levied against women by whose subjugation they are aided.
Obama and Edwards ostensibly believe that men and women are equal; the people who share that belief should expect them to endeavor to defend that principle at every turn, not just when it is politically expedient. See, the thing is, it's been politically expedient to throw women's rights under the bus before, and some of us would like the assurance that we're casting a vote for someone who regards women's equality as an unyielding and constant principle—not a bargaining chip nor just another plank in a platform that can be discarded as necessary. If these blokes refuse to mount a vociferous opposition against sexism on the campaign trail, just because it helps them, that doesn’t bode well for the women they seek to represent as their president.
Tom notes that the evident willingness to benefit in just this way is in direct opposition to Obama's claim to "a mightier throne, one forged in liberal ideals of justice and equality and hope." I'd also note that Obama's whole candidacy is predicated on transcendence of the Same Old Shit, on his being a unique vessel of CHANGE. Well, I've got news for him: Relying on the tired canards of the patriarchy to pave one's way to the White House isn't transcendent and it isn't indicative of change.
That's business as usual.
Mannion says he "can't see how they could come to her defense without seeming to be endorsing her," so let me offer a suggestion: "The sexism being wielded against Clinton is despicable, and it needs to stop. I want to beat Clinton on the issues, not because I benefited from the favor of bigotry."
That wasn't so hard, now, was it?
News from Dixville Notch
All I ever hear is Dixville, Dixville, Dixville! What about West Vagina?
Anyway...
The news is in from Dixville Notch, NH—a town with 17 voters (two Dems, three GOPers, and 12 independents) and 100% turnout, where the polls opened at midnight—and the winners are: Obama and McCain!
The same winners emerged shortly after from another tiny village, Hart's Location.
In other news, one of the buses in McCain's Straight Talk Express caravan broke down. Seriously.
Welcome to Election 2008: Adventures in Metaphor.
Someone get Mr. Cluck on the horn. STAT.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Transcript:
Ferraro: I proudly accept your nomination for vice president of the United States. [huge cheers]
VO: It was a unique moment for America, a special moment for women. In the convention hall, they cheered and gazed with emotion at the Congresswoman from New York, at Geraldine Ferraro, the daughter of an Italian immigrant, who spoke of faith.
Ferraro: To all the children of America, I say: The generation before ours kept faith with us, and, like them, we will pass on to you a stronger, more just America. Thank you. [huge cheers]
Wait Your Turn
Oh fer fuck's sake, already -- I can't believe that I'm hearing all this "my turn" crap about the 2008 presidential race.
If you were ever in any doubt about the supremacy of White, Protestant Patriarchy in this culture, let's do a quick review, OK?
232 Years as a Nation
42 Presidents
42 White Presidents
42 White Male Presidents
42 White Male Christian Presidents
41 White Male Protestant Presidents
1 White Male Catholic President (who was assassinated in office)
46 Vice-Presidents
46 White Vice-Presidents
46 White Male Vice-Presidents
46 White Male Christian Vice-Presidents
46 White Male Protestant Vice-Presidents
Hmmmm.
Let me be perfectly clear.
I am not currently a Hillary Clinton supporter. I am also not currently a Barrack Obama supporter. In truth, I was leaning towards Edwards (until he pulled out the "big strong man who doesn't cry" card today), because I gave up on Kucinich when he said he was "thinking about" Ron Paul as VP.
However -- if anyone wants to talk about whose "turn" it might be to have a shot at the presidency, let's examine the stats:
If the US were really an "equal opportunity" nation, it's very likely that we would have had at least 21 female presidents, and 11 presidents who weren't white. (Don't even get me started on the 4.2 presidents who would have been queer.)
Hmmmm. How many non-white presidents so far? Oh -- that's right: Zero. How many female presidents so far? Oh . . . . that's right: Zero.
So any pundits out there who want to play the "They think it's their turn" card can just STFU and bite my shiny white hiney.
My turn? Her turn? Their turn?
The White-Cross Boy's Club [tm] has whizzed around the board without giving anyone else a turn for 232 years.
So don't you dare whine to me.
That is all.
(This rant brought to you by Outraged Woman, Inc., and One Pissed-Off Dyke International.)
But the News is That She Cried
"Iron my shirt!" yelled a man, who stood up in the middle of a jammed and stuffy auditorium at a high school in Salem, N.H., and held up a yellow sign with the same text. He repeated it over and over.On a day when no one can stop talking what a huge, hysterical girl Hillary Clinton is, because she got choked up talking about her passion for this country and what she believes is best for it, Hillary Clinton also had to stand there while a misgynist fuckwit chanted "Iron my shirt!" at her, and then she had to laugh if off like it didn't matter, didn't affect her, didn't trip her stride in the slightest; she had to keep on doing her job in spite of some insignificant piece of shit trying to humiliate her just for being a woman, and she gracefully turned that vicious attempt to demean her into a chance to note something she "loves" about campaigning.
Mrs. Clinton asked for the lights to be turned on, and the shirt man was removed along with another man who had stood up too.
"Oh, the remnants of sexism are alive and well," Mrs. Clinton said.
When everyone had settled down a bit, she said, "As I think has just been abundantly demonstrated, I am also running to break through the highest and hardest glass ceiling."
Her words were drowned out by a cheering, now-standing crowd.
"That's one of the things I love about it," she said. "It's never predictable."
That, friends, is a tough fucking lady.
For the Record
Reuters: An emotional Clinton vows to fight on
CNN: Clinton gets emotional at New Hampshire stop
The Politico: Clinton fights back tears: 'It's not easy'
ABC News: Clinton Gets Emotional on Campaign Trail
ABC News: Rivals Reacts to Teary Clinton
ABC News: Can Clinton's Emotions Get the Best of Her?
MSNBC/AP: Clinton's voice catches on eve of N.H. primary
AP: Emotions run high on eve of NH primary
AFP: Emotions run high on eve of New Hampshire primary
Yahoo Play of the Day/AP: Clinton chokes up
Bloomberg: Clinton Says 'It's Not Easy' Dealing With Strain of Campaign
And Ezra gets this just right. That was a disgraceful response.
