Nice guy(s)

Clinton, surrounded and forced to give up her delegates on the floor of the Democratic Convention 2008.

If you’re wondering if the reports of bitterness between the Obama and Clinton camps are real or not, consider the fundraiser that Obama held with his donors a couple of days ago to help retire Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign debt:

Four years ago, the Obama fund-raising machine worked to bury Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now his contributors are opening their wallets for her.

Obama campaign officials have asked the president’s elite donors and fund-raisers to donate to Mrs. Clinton’s defunct presidential campaign committee, with the goal of retiring $245,000 in debt left over from her 2008 White House bid. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton is barred from engaging in political activity or actively fund-raising for herself.

People familiar with the effort said the campaign’s outreach grew out of discussions with Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has agreed to headline a series of major fund-raisers for Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, including one this Sunday at the Virginia home of Terry McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Clinton has also been approached to help raise money for Priorities USA Action, a “super PAC” founded by former Obama aides that has had difficulty attracting donors.

But wait, you say, wasn’t there a deal struck back in 2008 that Obama donors would help Hillary retire her debt?  That’s why the campaign was only suspended, not ended and that it’s a common practice and courtesy and good for unity?  And anyway, Hillary hit the campaign trail with Bill and worked her heart out to help get Obama elected.  Surely, that was worth helping her retire her debt.

Apparently not:

It is not unusual for victors to help their former opponents pay down campaign debts: Mitt Romney and his family made contributions this year to the campaign committee of Tim Pawlenty, for example, after Mr. Pawlenty dropped out and endorsed Mr. Romney.

But Mrs. Clinton’s debt has in the past been a point of contention between her supporters and those of Mr. Obama. She ended her White House bid in 2008 with $20 million in debt and loans, and while Mr. Obama asked his top donors at the time to help defray it, many of them — still fuming after the contentious primary fight between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton — refused to do so.

Ahhhh, it’s all coming together now.  So, back in 2008 when Clinton donors had maxxed out their contributions to Hillary, they expected that Obama donors would step up and do the right thing.  But the Obama assholes from Wall Street and the “creative class” donors weren’t satisfied with the ritual humiliation of Clinton on the convention floor where they staged a phony roll call vote and forced her to fork over her delegates on live TV.  Nope, they threw all of that loyalty stuff out the window and had a little tantrum because she had the nerve to continue winning after they told her to stop running in February of 2008.  18,000,000 voters and winning all of the major primaries meant nothing to them.  They did not feel obligated to honor their promises, because that just the kind of Democrats they are.  Nice.

That $20,000,000 debt, by the way, was on top of her own money.  They were loans that she had to take out to fund her campaign because the party juggernaut wanted her out even as the voters still wanted her in.  For the last four years, she’s been dragging this giant debt around, unable to do her own fundraising to retire it while the Obama donors watched.  It has taken them four years while she’s been working her ass off to do what was expected of them.  What is wrong with these people?

So, now, the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.  The Clinton donors hold the cards.  They don’t have to give a penny to Obama for his run in 2012, that is, not until Obama’s donors pay up.  I’d say the split is very real and could be a significant factor in this year’s election.  It goes beyond the donors.

No wonder why Hillary isn’t going to go to the Convention this year.  Besides the fact that she works round the clock as Secretary of State, why the hell would she want to return to the scene of the crime?

Obama and his donors are definitely not scoring points this year.  Loathsome isn’t descriptive enough.

Update: The AP has a new article on the detente between the Clinton and Obama camps.  As is the norm these days, it is trying to make the completely unrealistic expectation that Hillary will run in 2016 look believable.  But anyway, just ignore all that stuff about them being frenemies.  They’re all kissy-kissy now and meeting at Terry McAuliffe’s house tonight to swap checks.

I almost thought this was lifted straight from the Obama campaign spin office until I got to this nugget:

When Obama’s health care bill was in trouble, he and his staff, which included several veterans of the Clinton White House, called on the former president for help. In late 2009 and early 2010, Bill Clinton went to Capitol Hill to rally support and worked the phones with wary Democratic lawmakers.

After the Democratic party was battered in the 2010 elections, Obama called in Clinton for an Oval Office meeting. Afterward, the two made an impromptu appearance in the White House briefing room to talk to reporters. When Obama had to leave for a holiday party, Clinton stuck around, relishing in the attention and the give-and-take with the press.

That day in the briefing room underscored what some Democrats see as their one major worry in pairing Obama with Clinton too often. The ease with which Clinton connects with a range of audiences can call attention to the challenge Obama sometimes faces in doing the same thing.

But that certainly hasn’t stopped the Obama campaign from seeking Clinton’s help in winning a second term, and Clinton has made it clear he is ready and willing.

Wait! Wait!  I thought Obama’s angelic rhetoric inspired swooning in some of his audience members.  Wasn’t he supposed to be so extraordinarily politically gifted that potential enemies would melt on their first encounter?   

{{snort!}} Too funny.

I can just imagine what that fundraiser is going to be like tonight.  Kissy-kissy may very well turn into kissing asses.  Oh, to be a fly on those walls.

**************************

More details about John Edwards’ campaign life came out this past week.  He is on trial for illegally using campaign funds to pay off his girlfriend, Rielle Hunter, during the 2008 campaign season.

I was an Edwards fan until I actually saw him in action in 2007 at the YearlyKos meeting in Chicago and had a Malcolm Gladwell Blink! moment.  I had a similar reaction to George Bush Sr. when he made an appearance at Pitt a long time ago.  They both made my skin crawl.

Anyways, his one time campaign aide, Andrew Young, went above and beyond the call of duty to protect Edwards going as far as claiming paternity for Rielle and Edwards’ daughter, Quinn.  But there are other unsavory details as well.  Young’s nickname for Elizabeth Edwards was Ursula after the evil sea witch from The Little Mermaid.  I have mixed feelings about Elizabeth Edwards.  She seemed like the Lady McBeth type, extremely ambitious but projecting all of that onto her smarmy husband.  But she was also a human being with her own tragedies and triumphs and she didn’t deserve to have all the crap she went through in her last four years dumped on her while she was undergoing treatment for a terminal disease.  A little kindness and attention towards her might have gone a long way.

Anyway, John Edwards is still a louse and a narcissistic PT Barnum of a politician and all of us who thought he could have sincerely done something about The Two Americas should seriously get over it like a bad high school crush.

Opposite Day on Rushbo

Hillary Clinton and Harvey Weinstein at Time's 100 Most Influential People Awards

Hey, according to Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton is just a secretary!  And he calls us “libs” like it’s a bad thing!  {{snort!}}

If Rush is going out of his way to make Hillary look like nothing more than a typist, she must be having a pretty good week.  You can listen to her speech from last night’s 100 Most Influential People Awards here.  Heck, she’s having a pretty good month. Was it the badass Hillary texting or was it the chill Hillary chugging beer straight out of the bottle?  Or was it her phenomenal approval rating?  Gosh, who knows but we haven’t seen the right this bent out of shape about Hillary since 2008.  Relax, Rush, Nancy Pelosi says if we’re well behaved girls and boys, we can vote for her in 2016.  And Nancy has a bridge to sell us in San Franciso.

It’s delightful.  Hillary can handle Rush, I’m sure, but before long, maybe we can listen to Rush from his new home on blogtalkradio.  A girl can dream.

Just Sayin’…

So, Hillary made an appearance at Syracuse University this morning. The line to get in was long and many people didn’t make the cut to get into the auditorium. It was filled to capacity. Mitt Romney should ask her how she does it. Among the waiting were people who wrote her name on the ballot in 2008 and still admired and respected her. She also managed to talk a lot of students into joining the foreign service.

Can anyone remember any other Secretary of State getting this much love? Because I don’t.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman writes that Obama’s political team seems to not know what it’s doing and it hasn’t gotten any better on the economy in the past three years. From Obama’s Missing Theme:

Let’s not get into the question of whether he could, in fact, have done considerably more. The point for now is that this is not the story the administration has been telling, at any point. First they insisted that the clearly inadequate stimulus was just right; then they have tried various anodyne slogans nobody remembers, all of which seem to imply that we’re doing just fine.

Presumably this reflects the judgment of the political team, which apparently believes that pointing out obstruction conveys an impression of weakness, and that happy talk is better than a Trumanesque campaign of hammering the do-nothing Republicans in Congress. But I have seen nothing these past three years suggesting that the political team has any idea how to play this game — and the happy talk leaves them completely flatfooted every time the economy underperforms.

For the past few months there has been an evident drift into complacency, a belief that a string of good jobs numbers will validate the happy talk. That’s a bet that can easily lose Obama the election.

Ah-ha! You guys thought we wanted Hillary because she had lady parts, didn’t you? Confess. Remember Tweety saying that the only reason she won her first term as senator was because people felt sorry for her being a cuckolded wife? I can almost hear him chatting up Sally Quinn about it over the bacon wrapped dates. Au contraire. Women who came of age during the 60s, 70s and 80s didn’t do it all so that we could coast to some high profile job on the slipstream of some guy.

Looks like she’s the real deal, dudes, and your guy is just another guy who counted on his suave demeanor and golf swing to get him to the top. I don’t think Obama has any idea what’s coming his way this campaign season. The media and the party made it so easy last time, he barely needed to campaign. People were falling all over each other just to bask in the light of his reflected glory. He has never had to deal with the right wing noise machine before. Karl Rove is a diabolically clever person and Obama still thinks he can coast on his cool.

Jeez, he even has an unearned Nobel peace prize.

{{rolling eyes}}

I’d almost feel sorry for him except that the rest of us are screwed no matter who claims the White House.

Badass cool and Srsly funny

Yesterday, the tumblr textsfromHillary received the following submission:

Funny thing was, it really was from the Secretary of State’s Office.  When I saw it yesterday, I thought it was a fake submission.  Turns out it was legit because afterwards, she posed with the guys who set up the tumblr:

What the heck is scrunchie time??

Ahhh, I see.  Her staff wants her to stop using scrunchies in her hair on bad-hair days.  Turns out that with all of her travelling, it’s a pain in the ass to have to deal with playing with hair all the time so she grew it out.  Now, she uses a scrunchie when she doesn’t have time to deal with it.

I can so relate.

Monday: So much going on

Update: So, TPM is trying its hand with a little expectation setting. To TPM, it is unthinkable that Hillary will get a crack at the nomination until 2016. The subtext is, “don’t even think about it, bitches”. Like we’re going to be satisfied with that. Hokay, suit yourself. But don’t expect me to vote for YOUR guy in 2012 just because you think I don’t have anywhere else to go. And if it turns out that you find you need me come late October, I’m just going to tell you to wait until 2016.

Also, Rick Warren is a dick. It now looks like both sides of the aisle are engaging in a lot of black-white thinking on welfare reform without considering that there was a right way to do it that would have been both liberal and not redistributory. Europe does it all over the place. So, you know, I reject arguments from both sides while putting myself firmly in the liberal camp. I can promise you that Hillary would never have Rick Warren at her inauguration.

Nothing good ever comes of a bad seed.
**********************************************
I’m in the local Starbucks (found a bit of serendipitous change in my pocket this am) waiting for my car to be fixed. It’s going to be painful but I can’t get around central NJ without a car, so there’s that.

There’s so much worth commenting on that I’m not quite sure where to start. Let’s start with an answer to Violet Socks’ question, “Why are we hearing so much about Hillary 2016?“. This is related to the question, “Why are we hearing so much about welfare reform?”, although at first, you might have missed the connection. In case you missed it, the NYTimes had a big piece on its frontpage yesterday about how welfare reform has left so many people without any visible means of support. It quotes some former Clinton officials who actually *resigned* over welfare reform. {{rolling eyes}} And while the abandonment of so many families during this little Depression is indeed disgraceful and horrifying, the NYTimes is most definitely slanting this story. Here’s why:

1.) Welfare Reform, or Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it” was about putting people to work. I think I’ve mentioned this before but if you’re a liberal, the last thing you want is to create a permanent underclass of people whose lives are tied up in generational poverty. What the vast majority of welfare recipients really want is a job. Yes, there are people who will never be ready for the workplace. Yes, there will be people who have problems with substance abuse or criminal behavior. We need different solutions for those people and while a job is better for people who have run afoul of the criminal justice system, there are just some poor people who shouldn’t have to work in the same way that some middle class stay at home mothers and rich heiresses don’t have to work. Some poor people may not have the emotional wherewithal to go to work each day. We need to do something about that and help them. But the vast majority of people on welfare want to work. It’s not easy to survive on a measly check each month and it’s no way to raise your kids. Putting people on the road to work is a good thing and if that’s what Clinton meant (and I’m pretty sure that it was) then a liberal should be for it.

2.) Clinton’s plan included housing vouchers, healthcare, childcare, training, all the support mechanisms you needed to put people back to work. The Republicans shot that down. Repeatedly. There are votes on the issue and you can go back and look them up. The Clinton reform bill was generous. The Republican bills were much less so. MUCH less so. Eventually, Clinton signed a bill and it was awful but he was able to soften it in his next term. But liberals seem determined to whack Clinton over this for even bringing the subject up. That’s called denial, my friends. They want to deny that welfare had a problem by trapping people in poverty. If you’re a lefty and you’re still pissed over this, get over it. Being poor forever, even if the government is giving you a check is not a life and expecting people to be grateful to you for that is delusional. In fact, you could have seen Clinton’s Welfare Reform bill as a way to strengthen the social safety net for all of us. I know I would have been delighted if after my severance bennies had run out I would have been able to sign onto a government healthcare program while I worked my way back into the middle class. Yeah, that would have been great. No wonder the Republicans were so agin’ it.

3.) In the present, there’s nothing stopping the federal and state Congresses all around the country from approving a second stimulus package for a giant jobs bill or extending welfare benefits. You could call it “emergency TANF extension” or something suitably mellifluous. We do it for unemployed people all the damn time. I am a lucky recipient of such an extension and I am extremely grateful that it has allowed me to pay my insurance bills, my heating bills, food for my adolescent eating machine. I also paid a shitload of taxes from my severance benefits so, youknow, I don’t feel the least bit guilty about this. Last year after I was laid off I still managed to support a family of four on the taxes I paid. The thing is, Republicans would like it if I wasn’t so calm right now. They would prefer it if I and my other unemployed colleagues were desperate and completely broke. Why? So I would turn on Obama and the Democrats. That’s part of their plan. The only thing that is standing between frantic welfare recipients and stability for them and their children is the fact that Republicans want us to get to the point where we are so angry we will turn on the politicians who may still have a conscience (the jury is stil out on that one.)

I’m no fan of Obama and I have plenty of reasons to vote for someone to the left of the Democratic party so what the Republicans are doing has absolutely no impact on me. I wasn’t going to vote for him under any circumstances and I sure as hell won’t vote for a Republican, whose current behavior is rapidly changing my mind about the existence of supernatural forces of evil. But what would make me change my mind about electing a Democrat to the White House? Well, it would matter a great deal to me if Obama bowed out and Hillary threw her hat in the ring. Yep. I’d vote for that ticket.

And, I suspect, there are a LOT of women who have finally woken up and smelled the coffee and realized that we need a champion for us in government. It sure as hell isn’t coming from NOW, NARAL or Planned Parenthood, who seem scared of their own shadows and afraid to rock Obama’s boat. But if they roll over for Obama and demand almost nothing from him, they’ll be completely useless to women going forward and the attacks on us will start to accelerate. So, really, women’s organizations are worse than useless. What we need is a big, dramatic thing to happen that would say loud and clear that things are about to change in a big way.

Why does it have to be Hillary? Because she is a legitimate player. If her own party hadn’t turned on her in 2008, she’d be president right now and running for her second turn. She’s been our “foreign president” and the world loves her and respects her. Even the State Department seems to be running smoothly and hers was the first department to give gay employees all the rights of their straight colleagues. AND she is unabashedly pro-female. She doesn’t shrink from this. No one has managed to shut her up about it and she’s not afraid to confront congressmen about reproductive rights in the strongest possible terms. I haven’t seen Obama even come *close* to confronting the Republicans on these issues in the way that Hillary has.

So, she’s very popular, capable, committed, competent and women are starting to see that we need her. THAT’S why Pelosi is trying to deflect pro-Hillary sentiment to 2016. You know, it’s utter bullshit to believe that Hillary will run in 2016. She’s not. By then, she really will need to dial it back and retire. And by 2016, the damage will be done to the economy, my generation and women. No matter who makes it to the White House, Obama or Romney, the result is going to be the same. On this reality, the lefties are also closing their eyes and wishing. I’m looking at reality straight in the face and you know, it’s not going to happen, guys. There is no 11 dimensional chess game. And if what I read in Karen Ho’s book is correct, we are teetering on the edge of a true catastrophe. In fact, this is not a game. To be perfectly honest, your best hope of turning things around in all respects, is Hillary.

Which is why the NYTimes rolled out that piece about Welfare Reform. The purpose was to taint the Clinton legacy. Just watch, every time people get a little wistful for the Clintons, welfare reform and banging the drums for war in Iran start to ramp up. It’s so damn predictable I rarely read the papers anymore. And you know WHY these two things keep coming up over and over again? It’s because just like right wingnuts, lefties have buttons that can be pushed and these are the two that the political operatives and wealthy know drive lefties absolutely crazy and cause them to vote against their best interests.

So, there you go, Violet. Pelosi is trying to make people wait for Hillary in a scenario she knows is never going to happen. It’s 2012 for Hillary or never. She’d prefer it was never, for reasons known only to Pelosi. I suspect that Pelosi has been in power for so long that she has lost perspective and doesn’t realize that it’s not all about her. Being a liberal doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can never vote liberal on anything. But it sounds like Pelosi is fighting a losing battle. People around her must be whispering about calling Hillary up from the bench. So, the NYTimes rolls out the welfare reform bill and makes it sound like it was all Bill’s fault. A few years ago they and the Washington Post engaged in a series of “The State Department is being run by HillaryLand” posts, remember those? Yep, we were supposed to overlook all the evidence that she was doing a great job and be suspicious of the fact that she manages the department in a different style than her predecessors.

Too late. She’s good. And she projects confidence and command everywhere she goes as the Hillary texting tumblr shows:

Now, I know that Obama doesn’t lay around on the couch texting. (*I* do that) He’s probably playing golf. But here’s the thing, lefties: there’s nothing you can do or say to make me prefer him to her. Nothing. You can call me a racist, Republican, stupid, uneducated, insane, It. Does. Not. Matter. I want HER and not him. He is not entitled to a second term. He’s a lousy president and under him, women’s rights are eroding at an alarming rate. He’s too close to Wall Street and the culture of “smartness”. I see the future, guys, and you do too. It’s not going to be good. And no matter how much Pelosi protests, I am not going to wait until 2016. What the hell does she think we are? Children? Does she think she can get all parental and say something that will make us wait and that will somehow satisfy us or make our concerns less urgent? Well, it won’t. Get Obama out and put him on some fricking speaking tour. Let *HIM* do fundraising and supporting the Democratic party loyally. Get him and Geithner and all of the rest of his Wall Street crowd out of there and give us a dramatic change. Make the Republicans cower in their holy skivvies. Give us Hillary.

Pick a side, Digby

One more time, with feeling:

and

Back when the 2008 primary season started to heat up, DailyKos purged its Hillary Clinton supporters.  Oh, yes it did, you doubting Thomasinas.  You can’t believe that a “news site” like DailyKos would be involved in hurrying them off the site as quickly as it possibly could to make way for the Obama ads but it did.  And it wasn’t nice about it.  I was one of the first victims.  That’s why I’m here at this blog.  And to be honest, I never regretted it.  But as we were picked off, one by one, Hillary’s supporters got less of a voice in the left blogosphere.  Pretty soon, a Democratic party loyalist got the distinct impression that the entire party was converting to Barack Obama with all of the fervor of a religious reformation.  The jihad quickly spread to other blogs and the comment threads filled up with Obama zealots who were enthusiastic about killing the infidels.  Some of those Hillary supporters fled to this blog and a few others.  We weren’t welcome anywhere else.  And mind you, we’re only talking about February of 2008.  It happened quickly and thoroughly, almost as if someone had given marching orders for sites to be flooded with anti-Hillary rhetoric.

Digby held out for awhile but even she succumbed.  In the book, the Bloggers on the Bus by Eric Boehlert, Digby confesses that she was “chickenshit”, intimidated by her commenters and somewhat dependent on ad revenue.  Ok, fine.  We get it.  It took her by surprise four years ago.

But what is her excuse now for being a Doormat Democrat and not holding the party accountable for its rampant misogyny and sexism?  Believe me, I hate to be doing this, pointing out the party’s ugly history, but it isn’t doing enough to combat the crazy assholes on the right.  It is the Democratic party’s feet we need to hold to the fire, not the Republicans.  The Republicans wouldn’t have been able to get this far if the gates weren’t already down to let the barbarian horde in.  Where have the Democrats been for the past decade?

And what is Digby’s role in this?  I’ve got a problem with her co-writer, thereisnospoon.  Back in the Great Purge of DailyKos 2008, right in the middle of the Rec List Hostage Crisis, blogger Alegre, who was a well respected Hillary blogger on DailyKos, got fed up with the pressure to convert and decided to stage a “writer’s strike”.  It was symbolic, of course, but its purpose was to call attention to the way that Hillary voices were being marginalized and persecuted on the largest and most influential group blog.  Markos made fun of her.  (nice going, Markos.  How very impartial)

Alegre’s strike post got a lot of comments.  Let me just highlight one:

Don’t let the door hit you (39+ / 0-)
on the ass on your way out.

I have not been posting much or commenting much in the past months, but I have been reading almost everything.

You are propagating baseless, self-serving, inaccurate, and whiny meme’s on a regular basis.

You smear and deride with the worst of the lot, and you expect people to overlook your own behavior?

Spare us the drama.

Buh-bye.

The only way to ensure a free press is to own one

by RedDan on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 05:26:55 PM PDT

straight from the HRC blast faxes (4+ / 0-)
really sad, actually.

Head to Heading Left, BlogTalkRadio’s progressive radio site!

by thereisnospoon on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 05:39:18 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Oh, look!  It’s thereisnospoon, suggesting that Alegre was getting her marching orders from Hillary’s campaign.  We were very fortunate here on The Confluence to be invited to Clinton’s press briefings and got email updates but these were strictly informational.  No one ever asked us to do anything.  I kind of liked the low pressure tactics.  I never felt indoctrinated by Hillary’s campaign and I doubt that Alegre did either.  In fact, when it comes to the writer’s strike on DailyKos, Alegre got that idea from me.

This morning, Atrios pondered why it is that women are told that their issues are a distraction.  It’s always the wimmen.  Why is that?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because, it doesn’t really serve the purposes of the Democratic party or the Obama administration to rehash old history now, does it?  The last thing they want is an uncomfortable spotlight directed their way so that all the ugliness of four years ago is revealed in all of its glory. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”  They would much prefer that the Republicans take the blame for all of the wretched mess that happened to women.

But Digby has to take a stand.  What is the role that thereisnospoon plays on her site? The Democrats are never going to do right by us if no one holds them accountable and forces them to act instead of sitting back and letting them bask in undeserved glory.  If you support the Democratic party, no matter what it does or *doesn’t* do, it will not do anything for you.  And the attack on women is so severe that to do nothing and say nothing on your behalf is a crime against your own sex.  That goes for NARAL, NOW, the Feminist Majority, Emily’s List and any other women’s advocacy group that has lost its brass ovaries in the past several decades. They are taking your contributions and giving them to Democratic organizations.  What are they demanding in return?  Why don’t we ask them? If they do not have the courage to stand up for women now, and hold the only party who pretends to care accountable for its actions, then we will continue down this spiral of fewer and fewer rights and less and less respect.

Make the Democrats answerable for all of the less than progressive candidates they are supporting this year.  Make them explain why they are supporting an independent male in Maine rather than a liberal woman.  Force Obama to vigorously defend you.

Women’s groups are not keeping up.  When Occupy is taking to the street, demanding economic equality and non-believers are organizing and demanding recognition as a influential voting bloc at the Reason Rally this coming weekend, women’s groups are timidly hiding behind the Democratic party, hoping it will protect them. They’re still trying to work with the system that screwed them over four years ago. Fuck that shit.  Organize a rally in DC, women.  Get your act together.  No one loves you more than you love yourself.  Let’s stick up for ourselves and make the Democrats court us as aggressively as they court the pro-illegal abortionist lobby.

Make a choice, Digby.  Get rid of your party mole or watch women’s rights get whittled away by the Democrats themselves as they pretend to protect them while doing nothing.  Now is the time, when they are telling us to shut up and sit down, to stand up and raise Hell.

Do I expect Digby to actually do this?  No, I expect that she’ll read this post and that she and her discussion group will laugh about it.  Her conscience will feel a twinge but she won’t act on it because she doesn’t want to alienate herself from the group.  Right, Digby?  And they care about women HOW, exactly?

And for those of you ladies who naively think that DailyKos is some innocuous Democratic news site, pay attention: DailyKos is a site that uses thought reform tactics to promote authoritarian Democratic party propaganda.  Whether it started off with this intention is debatable but there is very little doubt in my mind, after having seen it in action in the 2008 election season, that it was exploited by the political campaign operatives and that Markos put his thumb heavily on the scales for the Edwards campaign and then Obama’s campaign.  Alternative voices were purged.  Here are some posts I wrote a few months ago to warn people about the dangers of thought reform in the political blogosphere.

You’ve been Love Bombed

Phobias

Categories

Ok, I think we’re on to something here

Finally, those of you doubting Thomasina’s who are caught completely off guard about what is happening this year and can’t possibly believe that Hillary was done in by her own party, go back to the origins of this blog and read from the beginning.  We followed it very closely.  It is not a pretty story.  You will be disgusted.

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pantsuit

I’ve got a theory that the last thing Republicans want is for the Democrats to start advocating for women.  It suits them just fine that there are so many libertarian and conservative Blue Dog Democrats running for office.  It works in the Republicans’ favor that so many new Democratic candidates are center right.  The minute that the Democratic party starts to get energized and stops sitting on women, the non-religious and labor, the Republicans will be in trouble.  As long as the Democrats take no stand, the Republicans win.

Think about it.

The War on Women: More shots to our hearts

Here’s the other video from 2008 from youtubers Shut the Freud Up.  This one covered a different controversy and highlights two very prominent Democrats:

Ahhh, yes, you can’t make this stuff up, folks.  That was the week where Donna Brazile called us the “old coalition” and made it sound like we couldn’t speak without drooling all over ourselves.  Memories.

Don’t let the Democrats rewrite history.  They’ve got to make amends before they even attempt to claim the moral high ground in the “war on women”.  Otherwise, they’re just cynical bastards playing the political equivalent of a professional wrestling match.  They don’t mean a word they’re saying.

The Democratic party was destroyed in 2008 and women were the losers in that battle.  The party only looked united because the financial crisis in September of that year made voting for a Republican completely out of the question for many people, even the ones who didn’t give a damn what happened to Barack Obama and his party.  But the rift started to show up in 2010.  And now, the Democrats are trying to figure out how to get independent women back.  Let me remind them that some of those independent women were true blue, pro-choice, liberal Democrats before the Democrats cut us loose in 2008 and we are not happy about being tossed aside by the Democrats like some unclean things in 2008 only to be attacked in 2012 by the maniacs on the right.  We know what the Democrats are trying to do and they are going to have to Try. Harder.

We’d be insane if we accepted anything less than an apology and more vigorous pushback.  No more Chellie Pingree incidences.  That’s just to start.  And if your candidate can’t be bothered to pursue women’s rights as aggressively as he pursued the White House, replace him.  This summer is going to get really ugly for all of us because the Republicans are determined to get control.  If Obama’s schtick fails to work this year, tell him to step aside.

One final thing: The Republicans aren’t done yet with women.  There’s one big thing they can still hit before the end.  It’s the Family Leave Act.  Listen up all you pregnant working women.  Ask yourself how the Democrats are going to react when the Republicans go after this piece of legislation.  You might very well be told that you should go home to have your baby and not come back to work.  These are tough economic times.  Employers need to have the flexibility to hire workers when they need them.  This regulation is killing their bottom line and preventing them from hiring new workers. They can’t afford to have an open position for 6 months.  And there are a lot of men out there who are unemployed and need work.  That’s a burden on the state.  Folks, we are paying women to have their babies and stay home for six months eating bon-bons while some family man waits for his unemployment check.  Why don’t these women want to stay with their children and take care of them?  Why have children at all if you’re just going to turn them over to the care of strangers? <Insert metaphor comparing working mothers with some disgusting animal that gives birth and either abandons or eats its young and then goes on to have a lot more sex.>

Sick?  Crazy?  Au contraire.  The Republicans know their target audience all too well.

Maybe the Republicans won’t go that far.  But if they do, the truth won’t matter.  They’ll make it sound like a 6 month paid vacation instead of a guarantee of a job after months without pay.

And what will Obama do when confronted with the choice between employing guys and protecting the jobs of millions of women?  I don’t even want to think about it.  Remember, Michelle Obama decided to court stay-at-home moms when she became first lady.  She took a very low profile position, gardened and played June Cleaver when her two children were already in school full time.  She wanted to send a message and she has.  Working women are not important to the White House.  That was the message I heard loud and clear and the impression was reinforced with Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men, and every time women’s reproductive rights were sacrificed for Obama’s legislative “accomplishments”.

The Democrats and the Obama administration made all of these choices and may be very shocked when they come back to bite them in the ass.  They either weren’t thinking or they were thinking with very male brains.

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The New York Times asks a very good question: Where is the next Gloria Steinem of the women’s movement?

And then buries it in the Fashion and Style section.

{{facepalm}}

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Paul Krugman is worried about the state of employer based benefits since the beginning of the Lesser Depression.  The graph is ugly:

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to Paul.  My industry is busily shedding jobs as quickly as it can and hiring back some workers as independent contractors or at CROs where they do not have to provide benefits.  That’s for the employee to work out with the contracting firm.  The health insurance is expensive.  Many people try to do without.  And this is only going to get worse with the Affordable Care Act because when the mandate kicks in, there will be absolutely no reason why employers should hire in-house at all.  By the way, did you know that contractors who are self employed are also not entitled to any kind of employment protections?  Yep, the employer can discriminate against you and you have the right to walk away from the job.  That’s the extent of your labor protections.  So, to recap: laying off and hiring workers back as contractors is a very, very sweet deal for employers and they will take advantage of the ACA to do more laying off.  Do not expect them to pass the savings on to you.

If the last four years could have been worse for working people, I can’t imagine how.

For more information on your new work environment and compensation plan, check out the Freelancer’s Union.

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Anyway, I’ve got a lot to do today so my comments may be sparse.

For those of you who missed the first video from Shutthefreudup from 2008, here it is:

The War on Women: the shots heard round the world

Some of you who have been following this blog since the beginning may remember this video.  Others may be new to it.  But it’s just as true today as it was four years ago.  This so-called “war on women” isn’t new and it isn’t an exclusively Republican phenomenon.  Wanna know how I know?  Just watch (and try not to tear up.  This video is like a sucker punch):

Also, Jennifer Granholm says the latest attacks on women are equivalent to “sexual McCarthyism” and the answer to the famous question is, No, they have no shame.

But let’s be honest and truthful because the truth will set us free.  This war was started by the media and the Democrats who put out a political hit on the strongest female candidate in the history of the United States.  It was a political assassination and the Democrats pulled the trigger.  They held no one accountable because it gemmed so nicely with their own plans. They wanted Hillary out of the way so they could anoint Obama and roll in the gobs and gobs of cash his Wall Street sponsors were going to bring in.  Yeah,  a lot of them rationalized their behavior.  I’ve heard every excuse and the people screaming “Third Way” irritate me the most after this president has taken the Democratic party as far right as it has ever been.  Then there is the anti-war crowd who were carefully mined by the Democratic political operatives and who hung the responsibility for two wars exclusively on Hillary’s shoulders and let every man who ever voted for the IWR or wasn’t even in the Senate at the time and therefore, couldn’t be held accountable, have a pass.

You know what, you people who made up stupid excuses and let yourselves be used?  STFU. Your opinions on the “war on women” are worthless.  That was *us* up there in that video getting attacked night after night by Keith Olbermann and Tweety.  That was us that DailyKos was accusing of racism just because we thought our candidate was pretty damn good.  That was us before the election and look at where we are now.  We women got totally screwed by the media and the Democrats who did nothing to stand up for us.  Nothing.  They are responsible for what is happening today.  They left a hole in the social fabric big enough for the right wing nutcases to roll through with the biggest badass truck of misogynistic shit they could drive.

Thanks for nothing, Democrats.

I find the Republicans to be hyprocritical, ruthless, dishonest, cruel and power hungry to the point that they will destroy everything in their path to get whatever they want.  They are like predators.

And Democrats are just sexist fools.

Tuesday: Stupid Girls

The Obama 2008 campaign certainly brought out the best in Americans didn't it?

Update from Ugsome: “The way I look at it, the Democrats are so far to the right on women’s issues that the only way the GOP can differentiate itself is with witch burnings and scarlet letters.”

There’s more than a kernel of truth in that sentiment.

r u reddy pointed me to this article in the NYTimes that describes how Obama’s campaign was going to roll out it’s initiative to sweet talk women on March 23 but Rush Limbaugh’s timely little Slutgate rants made them move up their timetable.  Why waste this golden opportunity?  Obama and Jon Favreau must be peeing themselves over this.  They don’t have to do anything for women, not even make any particularly strong statements.  All they have to do is open their arms and say, “Come to papa, we understand.”

By the way, has anyone seen this video of the Obama Staff inaugural ball from January 21, 2009?  You know, the one where JZ and the staffers sang “I’ve got 99 problems but a bush ain’t one”?  Yeah, no double entendre there.  The bitch version used to be one of Obama’s traveling campaign theme songs during the primaries.  You know, the primaries against his opponent who happened to be a bitch or a sweetie or a honey or some other stupid word:

As Ugsome says, “Cynical. If he’d done squat for women’s rights he wouldn’t have to focus his tender attentions like this.”

Let’s put it this way, the Republicans wouldn’t have turned up the crazy like this if they didn’t sense some weakness in the Democrats on the issue of women.  And that weakness goes back to 2008.

All you’re going to get from the Democrats is cynical game playing in an election year.  Remember, these are the people who used misogynism against not one but two female politicians in 2008.  They know that if Obama has to make a choice, he will sacrifice women to get the evangelical vote.

Don’t think we’re not watching, Democrats. Democratic congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, in Maine wanted to run for Olympia Snowe’s Senate seat but decided against it when a former governor who is running as an independent got the backing of the Democrats.  If that slap in the face doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.  Even the excuse she was forced to give for the betrayal by the Democrats makes no damned sense because if Olympia Snowe had not decided to resign, she would have been a sure vote for the Republicans when it comes to Supreme Court nominations. So even if Pingree had lost, there would have been no net change in votes.  In other words, Chellie Pingree was guilted into leaving the Senate race because the whole responsibility for future Supreme Court nutcases was going to be on her head if she lost to a Republican.  Does anyone really believe this steaming pile of horsesh*$?  If Obama and the Democrats really wanted to reach out to women for their votes this year, the disaster in Maine was not a good start.

Well, I’m just a single voice in the wilderness and the rest of the women in the left blogosphere are too afraid to challenge their brethren about Obama.  The guys will pull the same guilt trip on them and they’ll hold back, the chickenshits.  But let me just tell them now that they are going to be responsible for what happens to women if they don’t speak out and demand something from Obama and the Democrats right now, *before* the election.  If you make it easy for him, he will owe you nothing.  This is a good time to test the commitment of your male blogger colleagues.  Either they are with women or they aren’t.  Demand that Obama come out and declare his unequivocal support for women to make their own choices without any patronizing language.  Demand that he risk pissing off the religious.  Demand that he tell extremists where to shove it.  Demand that he enthusiastically support women’s equality and reproductive rights.  Make him promise that he will put the full force of his office behind enforcement of those rights.  Make him get rid of the conscience rule right this minute.  And make him swear in public that he will never, ever again cut a deal with any politician to sacrifice women’s rights in order to pass a piece of legislation.

If you can’t make him do those things, then he doesn’t deserve your support.  He is either with 53% of the American public or he isn’t.  He either needs you and will do everything he can to get you or he’s no good, he’s no good, he’s no good, baby, he’s no good.

And he’s also down in the polls.  His approval rating has dropped steeply since last month from 50% to 41%.  It’s supposedly due to gas prices but there are also intimations that the public isn’t buying all the rah-rah over the economy.  They don’t believe it’s getting better.  I’m with them on that.  Women are also among the chronically unemployed and they are watching.  We are not amused to be the pawns in some political game that has been designed to get Obama votes. He’s on the ropes and he’s looking vulnerable.  Now’s the time to get him to commit.  Make him pay for every vote.  Make him grovel.  If you don’t, you’re just a bunch of stupid girls.

And that goes doubly for NARAL, the Feminist Majority and any other bunch of stupid girl activists who have pledged to work for Obama in 2012 without getting anything in return.  During Slutgate, I scrupulously avoided signing my name to any useless online petition for those organizations.  The last thing I want is to be ashamed of these organizations emailing me to support Obama after he’s used them.  He’s no better than Romney and Santorum and he doesn’t deserve your support until he’s willing to sacrifice himself for women.  He really needs our votes because he’s lost support among white men.  Now is the time to make him put up or shut up.  It’s either us or the fundies.   By their fruit you shall know them.

More on Hillary’s Message about Choice

Last night, I caught the tail end of Digby’s episode on Virtually Speaking.  Now, I like Digby.  I can be critical, and I will be in a moment, but I have to say that there are very few writers on the left that write with the clarity and precision of Digby.  Most of the time, she is spot on when it comes to analyzing issues.  During the last four years, I have dumped a lot of blogs from my reading list for their shameless selling out to the Obama dudes.  Taylor Marsh, DailyKos and TalkLeft come immediately to mind.  But I’ve always read Digby because she’s just that good.

But I think she’s wrong about Hillary’s “Safe, legal and rare” approach to abortion.  I am firmly convinced, after watching and reading Hillary Clinton’s opinions and speeches over the last 20 years, that she focuses almost all of her efforts on prevention so that abortions are unnecessary.  And why should she care to make them unnecessary?  It’s because they are inconvenient, difficult to obtain, sometimes dangerous and expensive in many parts of the world, including this country.  I don’t think that is a comment on how icky abortion is.  It’s more a comment on reality.   We technically have abortion on demand in this country but compared to even the most progressive nations in the world, and I do not count the US among those nations, abortion on demand throughout all nine months is unheard of.  That’s because women in the most progressive nations have access to good contraception, education about family planning and sexuality and social support systems for women who decide to carry their pregnancies to term.  If you put your emphasis on prevention up front, you have less to worry about afterwards and this leads to *more* power for women, not less.

I don’t know why this concept is so difficult to understand.  The prevention first position represents a significant amount of thought on the issue of reproductive rights from an empowerment and a societal point of view.  The abortion on demand, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead position represents, in my mind at least, a lack of planning, foresight and attention to detail.  It turns women into beggars because if societal sentiment ever changes through the efforts of a very vocal minority, there is no multiple backup system firmly embedded in the rest of society to pick up the slack. Finally, “safe, legal and rare” is proactive about sexuality while “abortion on demand at any time” is reactive.  The latter is what you get when everyone accepts the purity ring mentality.

But here’s the reason why I think the left missed a crucial opportunity for women when they took a pass on Hillary.  Watch her comments from the Women in the World event from a few days ago again:

There are two points she makes that illustrate that she gets it and has a mastery of this issue that Obama can’t touch.

The first is Choice.  The one thing that fundamentalists do not like for themselves or others is choice.  They see the world in binary.  You are either good or bad, a slut or a mother, saved or damned.  There is no room in their world for choice.  Choice makes them uncomfortable.  Nauseous even.  They want a world where their choices are made for them.  They want to be able to consult a book and have the answers written out.  If you’re a man, you conduct your life one way, if you’re a woman, you conduct your life another.  There are no choices.  Stick to the rules and no one gets hurt.  Your personal opinions, talents and goals are not important.  It’s a very Taliban mentality.  But that’s the way they want our country to operate.  To restrict choices to those strictly defined for each gender as written in the bible relieves their anxiety.  Whether this anxiety is natural or induced doesn’t matter.  Choice is to be avoided at all cost.

The second is Extremism.  She is saying that Extremists have it in for women.  She is not singling out any religion in particular and in fact, she says she values the right of each woman to make a choice about how she wants to worship.  But Hillary is saying that Extremists use religion to advance their goals.  Extremists are enemies of democracy.  She also says that the measure of a democracy is determined by how we treat women.  The logical conclusion is that you can’t have a democracy if you allow extremists to restrict the choices of a sizeable segment of your population.  We have seen that this is true in many countries around the world and are witnessing it in Israel and here in the US right now.

These are the points that Obama fails to acknowledge when it comes to addressing the contraception issue.  He fails to associate the word “choice” with freedom and “extremism” with an assault on democracy.

You Democratic party loyalists can talk amongst yourselves about why Obama fails to do this.  To me, his rationale is not important.  All that is important is that he fails to do it. But it is this precision of thought and analysis, which Digby herself should admire, that has always defined Hillary’s approach from Obama’s to me and why we “Hillary Holdouts” miss her voice on the domestic stage so sorely. It makes all of the difference.