Remember To Tune In Tonight at 8 PM…

to Sheri Tag’s No We Won’t on PUMA United Radio (PURRRRR!).

Now, with extra Conflucian-ness! Co-hosted on alternate Sundays by MadamaB and AngieNC. (Tonight, it’s MadamaB’s turn.)

Tune in as we discuss Ms. Magazine, Caroline Kennedy, and the launch of the PUMASphere! Click the image below to listen.

Roooooaaarrrrrr!

David Shuster Meets His Match

Since I never watch MSNBC anymore, I was fortunate to see these videos posted at No Quarter by Curt of Flopping Aces. These interviews are amazing.

We already know that David Shuster is one of the most misogynistic “reporters” in the media, standing out even among his koolaid-chugging colleagues at the Obama Network. For example, during the primaries he accused Hillary Cllinton of “pimping out” her daughter, simply because Chelsea Clinton, a mature adult, freely chose to make campaign appearances for her mother. In another blatant display of CDS, Shuster brought a “Hillary laughing pen” onto the set during a discussion of primary results and used it to mock Hillary for her “cackle.” Shuster was also one of the most rabid of the TV talking heads in his attacks on Sarah Palin during the general election campaign. There are endless examples of his over-the-top CDS and PDS.

On Friday, Shuster “interviewed” (actually harrangued) John Ziegler a libertarian-conservative radio talk show host turned docmentary filmmaker, whose film Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected will be released in February. Ziegler maintained a good humored tone as he stood up to Shuster’s attempted battering. Apparently Shuster felt he’d been beaten, so he invited Ziegler back a few hours later for another attempt, which was again a failure. Watch and enjoy.

Discuss.

Update: John Ziegler has been “distressed by the general nature of the liberal response” to the preview of his documentary that was posted at you tube.

I should probably hold off (for now) on sharing the over-the-top,hate-filled, profanity-laced, rationality-less e-mail I have received, but you can just go to the comments section of the video and see for yourself!

While I guess I should not have expected much from the followers of a false Messiah virtually installed by an adoring media, even I have been a bit taken aback by the absurdity and intensity of much of the reaction to the video and the Zogby poll that I commissioned.

We Conflucians are not surprised, of course. We also know that the Obots are not really liberals. They are Obamicans.

Sunday: That Giant Sucking Sound

I just finished listening to The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet.  It’s an historical fiction novel saga of massive proportions revolving around the building of a cathedral and the original robber barons who didn’t give a flying fig for truth or beauty.  Follet is a perfectionist when it comes to historical accuracy so I can only imagine what life must have been like to live under the rule of the despicable Sir William Hamleigh, the local lord.  Sir William rapes, raids and plunders his own burghers with impunity.  He owes his allegience to the King and the King doesn’t have time or interest in mitigating disputes or hearing the pleas of Hamleigh’s besieged populace.  Essentially, the 12th century, pre-Magna Carta, was a lawless place.  The church had ecclesiastical courts but the barons did what they pleased and everyone else was forced to eek out a living between tithing the church, paying their outrageous taxes and keeping their heads down whenever Hamleigh decided to torch their homes out of spite.

Virtue wins in the end, but it takes 45 years before the wicked get their comeuppance.  Justice comes when the good guys take time to help themselves and their neighbors, don’t allow fields to go fallow,  keep the poor on their land even when poor weather conditions make it impossible for them to grow food and pay their rents and taxes.  They pitch in for community infrastructure projects, like building a wall and barbicon to keep their lord and his men-at-arms from entering and robbing the village at will.  They volunteer their time on building the cathedral and in the process, create a bustling commercial zone where people from surrounding farms and villagers can ply their wares.  If Sir William had just left well enough alone, he would have seen an increase in tax revenue and a healthier, more productive population.  But nooooo, the wealth that was starting to build had to be siphoned off immediately by Sir William time and again.

History keeps repeating itself.  In the past eight years, the robber barons have made a comeback.  When Bill Clinton, the man of good government stepped down, he left a population that was prospering.  There was a mild recession but in general, people had money in their pockets, were gainfully employed and there was a surplus.  And the robber barons sat back in their saddles and decided it was plunderable.  So, they manipulated the energy markets in California first and siphoned off the assets of vulnerable Enron workers when the whole scheme went south.  But that was just the beginning.  Then came collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and tranches.  The Paulsen Bailout Bill was the biggest transfer of wealth from average taxpayers to the wealthy and powerful with virtually no accountability or oversight.  And Barack Obama was all for it, even as Hillary Clinton tied desperately to get the country’s attention in order to fix the bill before it passed.  But that wasn’t enough.  Then the nobility at Halliburton got no-bid contracts to rape and pillage another country and hoard the oil.  But that wasn’t enough.  Now we know for sure what we suspected all along: speculators drove the price of oil up so that we, the hapless burghers, would spend $4.00/gallon in gas, driving food and heating costs up and bringing vulnerable families in shady mortgages to their knees.

But that wasn’t enough.

The plot of Follet’s book revolves around the White Ship disaster.  King Henry I was a powerful Norman monarch who had a zillion illegitimate children but few true heirs.  His only male heir is drowned in a shipwreck early in the book.   Follet writes the shipwreck as sabotage, planned by the barons, in order to keep the monarchy weak.  Henry’s only remaining heir is a woman, Matilda.  Matilda has a cousin, Stephen, who promises the churches and barons everything they want.  So, they give their allegience to Stephen, setting off a 20 year civil war that tears the country apart and leaves many rank and file English on the brink of starvation.  Stephen *is* a weak king and alliances to him shift like the wind with the end result that the barons pretty much do whatever the F^&* they want, sucking up wealth with impunity and terrorizing the villagers.  And Stephen can’t do a damn thing about it.

Plus ça Change™!

Don’t forget to vote. Here are our recommendations:

For Best Liberal Blog, vote for The Confluence here

For Best New Blog, vote for Uppity Woman here

For Best Small Blog, vote for Nice Deb here

For Best Hidden Gem, vote for Deadenders here

For Best Food Blog, vote for Cake Wrecks here

For Best Pet Blog, vote for F**k You, Penguin here

For Best Podcast, vote for This American Life or NPR’s Planet Money– here.

Thanks for your support!

Women First

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Madeleine Albright

By now, we have all seen the infamous Ms. Magazine cover of Barack Obama in Clark Kent drag, opening his jacket to reveal a T-shirt where the Superman “S” should be. The T-shirt proclaims, “This is what a feminist looks like.” It was a shocking, and yet predictable, hommage to a richly undeserving male by a so-called bastion of women’s liberation; the ultimate poke in the eye after the endorsements of NARAL and NOW for the all-male Obama-Biden ticket enraged us in the general election.

There are so many reasons to be horrified by this cover art, but the one that really strikes me is that the meaning of the word “feminist” is going the way of the word “liberal.” Just as some of those on the leftish side of politics took up the mantle of “progressive” in order to avoid the increasingly negative connotations of the “liberal” label, some female activists are wondering if the word “feminist” should continue to be used to describe us.

I believe, however, that allowing one’s enemies to control one’s language is a huge mistake. Instead of dropping the word “feminist,” we should restate its meaning in the strongest and clearest of terms:

Women first.

For example, this year, two women made history in a spectacular way. Senator Hillary Clinton was the first female candidate to win a primary election, then went on to win more primary votes than any candidate had ever received, male or female. Governor Sarah Palin became the first female Vice-Presidential nominee in 24 years. Yet who did the “feminist” organizations of our time endorse for President and Vice President? On whom did the “feminist” pundits lavish their praise? And whom did Ms. Magazine choose for its cover?

A man. A demonstrably misogynist man, who surrounds himself with people like Larry Summers and Rick Warren, and has only half the women in his Cabinet as the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton.

After witnessing more virulent and naked woman-hatred than I ever thought possible this year, I have realized that “Women First” is what the patriarchy fears. It fears that we will finally throw off our culturally-ingrained desire to erase and abase ourselves for men; that we will use our power of refusal for more than just sex; and that we will take away the advantage that every male child enjoys over every female child simply for being born with an extra scrap of flesh hanging off of his pelvis.

The knowledge of the possible loss of power and privilege is the origin of all the terror that the punditry and both Parties expressed when Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin loomed large on the horizon. No wonder Tucker Carlson said that he wanted to cross his legs every time he saw Hillary – in a very real sense, she would have castrated him and his fellow members of the partriarchy, by rendering his penis less significant in society.