Pathetic

Digby gives the old tired excuses on why she and so many other left leaning bloggers turned their backs on women during the 2008 election.  It wasn’t *their* fault.  Hillary just brought out the misogyny.  Plus, you know, like, there wasn’t a hair’s breadth of difference between them.

The whole post is just lame but the excuse that there wasn’t a bit of difference between Obama and Clinton is incredibly easy to shoot down:

1.) If there wasn’t any difference between them, why was such a tsunami of money thrown his way in February 2008 after she beat him in the big state primaries on SuperTuesday?  Apparently, SOMEBODY thought there was a difference.

2.) If there was no difference, why wouldn’t you go with the person who had the most relevant and comprehensive experience overall?  If you were worried about getting things done, wouldn’t it make sense to go with the candidate who might have a clue and be able to hit the ground running on the first day?

3.) If there was no difference, why wouldn’t you go with the female historic candidate who would represent more people overall including voters in the other camp?  It was even a winning formula among african americans because half of them are women.  I never understood this argument that african americans would walk away from the party if Clinton was nominated.  At the worst, I could see half of them walking away.  The other half would be thrilled with either choice.

And let’s not even get into the real, tangible differences between the candidates.  I can’t take seriously all the lefties who are screaming “neoliberal!” at Clinton.  If Clinton is neoliberal, what does that make Obama?  It’s a lot like the brain dead tea partiers who insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that Obama is a socialist.  Note that Clinton has said over and over and OVER again in the past 4 years that she does not comment on domestic politics.  So, we have no idea how much she agrees with Obama on all the weak policy he’s driven in the past 4 years.  We can only assume that they agree on foreign policy.

But I suspect the bankers *did* know how much of a difference there was between Clinton and Obama back in 2008.  The real estate bubble was already clearly collapsing in early 2007 according to authors such as Michael Lewis of The Big Short.  They knew that the degree to which they would personally suffer was contingent on which candidate was nominated.  And the last thing they wanted was some kind of homeowner bailout.  How do we know that?  Because the last thing homeowners got in the last 4 years was a bailout.  The people who got bailed out were the bankers and ONLY the bankers.  They did not want to see Hillary Clinton implementing a HOLC style program where principals were crammed down and mortgages restructured.  I haven’t got time to track down all of the videos of Clinton on the early morning talk  shows from September 2008 where she discussed her HOLC proposal but there were at least 3 separate appearances. (readers?  can you track them down and add them to the comments?)  Of course, by the time she gave those interviews, she was already out of the picture.

Update: Commenter Rangoon found this op/ed piece by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the September 25, 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal, laying out the argument for why it was so important to implement a HOLC program.  Regardless of one’s vague personal feelings about Clinton, there is a very good possibility that she wasn’t kidding about this policy.  Policy was her strong suit.  She did her homework.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it was this particular policy more than any other that doomed her presidential career.  She knew it was coming, the banks knew it was coming and they didn’t want rehab.  They wanted an enabler.

She also gave an incredibly forceful defense of abortion shortly after she was confirmed as secretary of state.  You will never in a million years see or hear Barack Obama defending abortion like this:

No difference, Digby?  The issue of abortion and women’s reproductive rights are extremely important to you and yet there’s no difference?  How about gay rights, Digby?  Can you imagine Hillary Clinton inviting Rick Warren to her inaugural?  The same Hillary Clinton who ordered the State department to equalize the treatment of gay State department employees and their families as far as the law would go?

But, Ok, we’ll never really know, although I think given her record at State, Benghazi notwithstanding, that she would have been an exemplary president.  Let’s put that aside for now.  I don’t think she’s ever going to run again.  Why should she?  She doesn’t have the advantage of 2008 when all of the auspices were in her favor.  In 2016, it will be a different America and she’s smart enough to know this.  I’d rather she get her own column in the Washington Post or the New York Times.

Let’s talk about the suggestion that Hillary Clinton brought out the misogyny in the media and the parties.  Wow, I guess we could do nothing about that except become passive observers, right?  I guess we couldn’t threaten the party to walk away from it and their candidate if they didn’t stop using misogyny to further their chosen candidate’s goals.  I guess it would have been silly to point out that gratuitously taking advantage of that misogyny might backfire on women in general.

Ok, we know that our side had a fair share of cowards who were either unable or unwilling to speak up and defend a woman.  They would have defended a female candidate, just not this female candidate.  Well, it’s a good thing it was only one female candidate in 2008.

Except that Sarah Palin got it too.  Now, I don’t care whether you like or dislike Palin.  I don’t like her even if I thought she had a lot more political talent than the left gave her credit for.  For some bizarre, freakish reason, the left still hasn’t let up after 4 years of bashing her.  The left still seems to think she’s relevant even if she’s not.  That kind of obsession is pathological if you ask me.  There must be a reason for the persistence of the Emmanuel Goldstein treatment of Palin.  She’s useful for a good, unifying 3 minute hate, right?  That’s why the left just can’t quit her.  But she’s been useful for years to the Democrats.

With Palin, we saw the same kind of misogyny pick up where it left off with Clinton.  So, clearly, it wasn’t just Clinton that was bringing out the misogyny.  Misogyny became a convenient bludgeon because it worked so well taking out the candidate on the left so it was employed to take out the candidate on the right as well.  And who was one of the leaders of that club?

Digby.

Yep, day after day, week after week, we read how stupid Palin was, what a disgrace her family was right there in the posts of Hullabaloo.  Digby piled on with the rest of the left.

You can say a lot of negative things about Palin.  Justifiably.  You can attack her political philosophy, her conservatism, her opportunism.  All of that makes sense.  But the attacks on her in 2008 were horribly misogynistic.  Remember the effigies?  Remember the “Sarah Palin is a Cunt” T-shirts?  Remember the jokes about Caribou Barbie and the photoshopped pics of Palin in a bikini holding an assault rifle?  Remember the big fucking deal that Katie Couric made over the fact that Palin didn’t have an immediate list of national newspapers in her head that she read cover to cover before breakfast while she took on her responsibilities of running a state?  She should have asked Couric, “How many state budgets have you prepared in a year?”, because that would have been a good question for feminists.  She was a governor who got to be governor without family connections.  That’s something that Katie Couric hasn’t done.  That’s how feminism is supposed to work, Digby.  You are supposed to credit women for their accomplishments, not bury them with your stereotypes.

Whatever you think of Palin, dehumanizing her in 2008 was misogynism like I have never seen.

That’s what misogyny is.  It is the intentional dehumanization of females.  It denies women their personhood, dignity and accomplishments.  It’s belittling and relies on stereotypes, like the idea that a pretty woman must be a light weight or that women need to develop executive experience while men are born with natural authority.  And in 2008, it wasn’t the case that only Hillary Clinton brought it out.  Misogyny was used as an intentional campaign tactic just like rape is used in some countries as an act of terror and political strategy.  Just as the accusations of racism were used to shut up the supporters of Clinton in 2008.

Digby, YOU were part of that.  You decided to not buck your team’s leadership.  If you said anything, it wasn’t forceful enough to get them to stop.  You didn’t stick up for your half of humanity.  Even if you were right that it is Clinton personally that brings out the worst in people, that was no excuse for giving those people a pass to behave as badly as they did. Isn’t that like blaming the victim and don’t misogynists make an art form of blaming the victim?  You had an opportunity to stand up and make a difference even if it meant incurring the wrath and shunning from people who you thought were your friends.  To do nothing was to tacitly admit that Barack Obama could not win without using misogyny and racism.  What does that say about the candidate?  It said enough to me that I could never support him in a million years.

What kind of friends use misogyny to get their guy in at any cost, especially if that cost will have significant repercussions for half of the people living in this country?  Those people were not your friends, Digby.  They were financier class driven political operatives who would have killed their own mothers to get what they wanted from this president.

And this president is no hero when it comes to championing the rights of the socially disadvantaged. He’s certainly no Martin Luther King who famously said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I don’t know why so many people on the left abandoned women and thought they were doing everyone a favor.  Or maybe they were so driven to elect Obama that the ends justified the means.  I’ve never found that sentiment to be very rewarding.  If fighting the misogyny had meant that Clinton had a fighting chance for the nomination, would that have been so horrible?  After all, NY, NJ, PA, OH, TX, MA, FL, MI, WV, KY, RI, NH, NV, MO, NM and CA (this list not exhaustive) voted for her in the primaries.  It’s only in a parallel universe where we would consider that candidate a failure against a guy who won a bunch of rural, prairie states with cheap, undemocratic caucuses.  I suspect the country would have embraced her and a Clinton/Obama ticket with her in the top slot would have been unbeatable even before the September crash.

But that’s not what happened, is it, Digby?

Don’t look to misogyny against Clinton as the cause.  Look at it as the method.  The bad guys got what they wanted. They got the weakest nominee and president.  If women got caught in that fight and got taken out, fuck’em.

THAT’S what you and your buddies were either too stupid or too complicit to realize.  It’s human nature to want to find a way downplay the effect of “follow the herd” mentality or cowardice or to find excuses (you should at least make an attempt at logic) or distance oneself from the fallout.  I understand that impulse.  We are all guilty of that in some aspect of our lives or others.

But ultimately, we are responsible for the effect of our decisions.  In 2013, women are feeling the effect of the 2008 election when the people who should have put their foot down on the brake hit the accelerator instead.  Digby can lie to herself about what happened in 2008 but she can’t lie to us.

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Note to commenters: Sarah Palin has been talked to death here on this blog and there are filters in place to send all comments containing her name, or variations of it, directly to the moderation queue.  Please don’t tell me about how unfair the left has been to Sarah Palin.  There are very good, non misogynistic reasons for loathing her.  She might be worthy of human dignity but she’s no Hillary Clinton.  If you’re in her corner, you’re wasting your time here.

Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard explains what sexism and misogyny is to the opposition

It’s rare that a woman in power gets a chance to tell the conservative males in government  to STFU about sexism.  I think women around the world have had it up to here with the misogynistic crap and now we’ve got one of our own going on the offensive.  It’s a thing of beauty.  Julia Gillard is not a one off.  She just happens to have enough power to get the message out.  (H/T Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism)

Friday: Found in the spam filter

In case there is any doubt that the left has a serious problem with women, I thought I would share this stinky piece of spam I found in our spam filter this morning.

The person who wrote this is too stupid to even think of a clever username.  He (it has to be a he) is coming from domain Hush.ai*.  Here’s the text of the spam:

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RiverDaughter RiverDaughter@Hush.ai 208.53.157.117

Cleared by AkismetSubmitted on 2012/03/13 at 9:01 pm Yo, wasssup?! I just got done watching Game Change on HBO. Reminded me of when me and my bros pwned your site in the summer of 08 (we were doing the whole tag team faux-hacker thing via various proxy servers because your admin kept banning us/me, and you thought it was Team Obama trying to rile your silly site with all of 100 readers) because the PUMAs wanted to vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t get the nomination. Seriously, can you now agree that your vote for McCain was wasted and would have put a dumb-ass cunt-a-zoid one heartbeat away from the office of POTUS? We still have 9 months left until election day. Do you still want to make that bet? Really, you would want Palin to be your leader? Really? Really?! Answer truthfully, or we will come back and pwn the shit of your site, silly-ass, angry old-ass beatches… Hollaaaaa…. We will pwn your site at will and cause serious dissension in your ranks. So you better answer honestly. Not Spam | Delete Permanently

Where to start?

Yes, we do remember your silly games.  You didn’t upset us nearly as much as you think.

By the way, PUMA stands for Party Unity My Ass.  It was a response to the nauseating pressure on us to check our brains at the door of the voting booth and do as the party told us or be called racist, un-educated old ladies.  Well, we weren’t racist, uneducated old ladies but we were definitely right about Obama.  He’s an inexperienced, over his head, overly ambitious, mediocre at best, politician who was catastrophically miscast as president when our nation needed a more prepared leader.  And he doesn’t really work for us, so there’s that.  Don’t believe me?  Just try to get him to act like a Democrat.  We’ll wait.

We also weren’t pro McCain, although there were some people here who immediately decided to support him after the Democratic national convention.  Have you seen the pictures I took of Denver that week?  The police presence made an Occupy event look like a field day.  The Democrats brought in the fricking National Guard.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which party is engaged in a full-on suppression of Occupy Wall Street.  But whatever, some people supported McCain outright.  Some voted for him as a protest vote against the primary vote manipulation tactics of the Democrats and sat in their cars and cried afterwards.  Maybe YOU are willing to let your primary votes be given away to a candidate you didn’t vote for without a fight, but we weren’t.  And now, the parties might as well do away with the primary system.  It’s all rigged.  The answer is already known in advance and you the voter have no say in the matter.  I assume that’s ok with you.

As for Sarah Palin, there’s a difference between treating female politicians with respect and admiring them for their political views.  We tried very hard to do the respect thing, until she teamed up with Glenn Beck and put a target on Gabby Giffords home district.  I would call that foolish.  We never admired her for her political views but we don’t think it’s particularly helpful for the left to indulge in misogynistic attacks on her.  These attacks would include calling her stupid, even before it had any proof, or calling her a cunt, which I have trouble typing, much less saying.  That’s one of the words that even I, foul mouthed as I can be, find unacceptable.  It goes right up there with the word nigger, which I also don’t say and haven’t since I was 4 years old and had my mouth washed out with soap before I even knew what it meant.  I don’t know how YOU were brought up but there are certain things you aren’t even allowed to think much less say and one of those things is you never should call any woman a cunt.  Ever.  Under any circumstances.

I haven’t seen the HBO series, because having been laid off in the biggest decimation of the science industry in history during the Obama administration, I have been forced to cut the cord to save money. But knowing as I do that Obama has a well known problem attracting independent women who previously voted for Hillary Clinton, I’m not surprised this film was produced and aired.  The only problem is that Palin is not running this year.  Obama is.  I have to ask myself why the president of the United States and his party are still running against the has-been female governor of a rural state.  Confident and competent political leaders don’t need to pile on a former female politician who poses absolutely no electoral threat to them.  What’s the point unless bashing Palin gives them a smug sense of superiority and machismo.  Does the Obama administration thinks it is scoring points by humiliating and shaming the women who still admire Palin?  If that’s their best attempt at winning over the wimminfolk, it’s a complete waste of money and makes me wonder what the hell twisted ideas they are thinking about the independent women who are sooooo not impressed with Barack Obama.

So, it doesn’t matter how many shows are rolled out to make Palin look like the biggest idiot that side of the Yukon.  She isn’t relevant.  We’ve got our eyes on Obama and Romney.  And Obama’s campaign is in the habit of ignoring the fact that there are two versions of the independent female voter: the kind that went over to the Tea Party and the kind that stayed liberal.  We are in the latter camp and have NEVER been Tea Party voters.  And I think that with this movie, he has just insulted our intelligence.  Again.  There’s also the famously insulting touting of the Lilly Ledbetter act as being some equivalent to the Paycheck Fairness Bill that never made it out of committee.  Like we can’t look at our paychecks, assuming we still get them, and figure out if we are any better off under Obama.  We aren’t.  In fact, we’re going backwards.  But the Obama administration still acts like women have the mental capacity of eight year olds and can’t tell the difference and that constant repetition of this deception is going to convince us otherwise.

I don’t come from a family where women are treated like dirt and their lack of mental gifts exaggerated or where african americans are treated like second class citizens.  That kind of crap wasn’t tolerated in my house.  But if you do, then that tells me all I need to know about the kind of people the Democrats are attracting these days. It doesn’t speak well of their fan base.  It’s not that we’re grabbing the smelling salts.  We’re just very, very angry. Or is it the kind of people the Republicans are attracting these days?  For all I know, your purpose in coming here and spewing this drivel is to try to drive people away from the Democratic party.

As far as I’m concerned, neither party should be playing games with women or using push-pull marketing techniques to get them to commit to one side or the other.

All that counts is the data.  What have you done for us lately?  Neither party should feel comfortable with its upcoming performance review by the women they are hoping to attract to their side.

So, to sum it all up: we’re not Palin supporters here, you ‘git.  We don’t like your misogynism, no matter which party you support.  And we will hold both parties accountable for being cynical political monsters who have done nothing to improve our lives in the past four years.  Keep playing these games and you might find yourself on the losing end of the biggest political protest vote in history.

*Rather unusual name, don’t you think?  Perhaps this is completely coincidental but Hushai was the name of King David’s counselor in the bible.  Hushai went to David’s son, Absalom, and pretended he was defecting.  In reality, he was spying for David.  Anyway, the whole rebellion didn’t end well for Absalom.

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In other news, Hell has officially frozen over and pigs are now flying somewhere in the world.  Maureen Dowd is trying desperately to not show a tinge of regret that women were stuck with Barack Obama and maybe he is an inadequate advocate for women’s rights.  She even quotes Hillary Clinton’s speech from a couple of days ago.  (See below)  Of course, she also rolls out the idea that Hillary will run in 2016 but I think that’s nonsense.  Who knows what Hillary will do?

One thing is for sure.  With 8 years of Obama under our belt, by the time 2016 rolls around, it will be waaaaay too late for women.  He will have set us back by 50 years.  The time to elect a woman was 2008, Maureen.  If only you had taken two seconds to think about it instead of gleefully and gratuitously bashing Hillary.

Violet Socks posted one of the comments from Modo’s thread on her post that merits reprinting here:

Who would have thought that Hillary Clinton would have to fight for women’s rights at home? Oh, I don’t know — maybe anyone who read your columns between 1992 and the present? The ones that simpered and snickered over her husband’s infidelities, called her “the most degraded wife in history,” repeatedly compared her to a sadistic dominatrix during the 2008 campaign, speculated without any basis whatsoever that she would hijack the Democratic convention, and then, when you turned out to be wrong about that, that she would secretly connive with John McCain to defeat Obama? And how like you to keep bringing up the ludicrous notion that Obama might replace Biden with Clinton on the 2012 ticket, even if you know it’s absurd. When will women finally be liberated? Well, for starters, when we learn to stop kneecapping each other.

Pretty much sums up MoDo’s shortsighted attacks on Hillary going back over the past two decades.  Let me add that given the number of elected delegates Hillary had going into the convention, she would have had every right to “highjack” it, if that means insisting on a legitimate roll call.  The blame for Hillary’s ritual humiliation at the convention can partially be laid at Dowd’s feet.   It’s no surprise that women should be feeling some regret now after the vicious attacks we’ve been subjected to in the past couple of months.  Let this be a lesson to Maureen, who is one of only two female columnists on the NYTimes Opinion page.  Let’s see, what is the Plum Line Metric for the NYTimes opinion page?  2 females / 10 males = 0.2. That’s pretty far from gender parity at our nation’s “paper of record”. Given that number, doesn’t it make sense, Maureen, that when women write about women political leaders that they try to put women in the best possible light so that women writers are treated with the same respect and authority as men?  Writing snippy, nasty little digs on Hillary Clinton over the past 20 years was the equivalent of carrying the water for the assholes who are attacking us now.  It would have also contributed greatly to your job security.  When it comes time to add another female columnist, it is much more likely that you will be replaced instead of supplemented.  Just sayin’.

Charles Pierce wonders if there are women who really feel that Barack Obama wouldn’t be a better alternative than Romney.  Um, Barack is certainly no better than Romney, Charles.  I know you don’t have ladyparts so your perspective on this is somewhat stunted but, no, Barack Obama is not our savior from the mean old Republicans.  It goes beyond birth control.  When both parties have been able to get away with sexism and misogyny virtually non-stop since the 2008 election, the fallout goes beyond the bedroom.  It starts to infiltrate the workplace and public sphere as well.  It becomes a free-for-all to undermine women in all aspects of life.  I have seen it up close and personally in the industry I worked in.  Men get carte blanche to undermine women because they know that no one in power is going to stick up for them.

I’m sure that I am not the only professional woman to have noticed this fallout effect from Barack Obama’s election, Charles.  Ask Christina Romer, Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair and Nancy Pelosi.  He was about the worst thing that could have happened to us.

Here’s the segment of Hillary’s speech that MoDo quoted:

Gawker still doesn’t get it

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As I’m sure you all know by now, the website Gawker published the salacious details of an alleged no-sex one night stand some guy claimed to have had with Christine O’Donnell. This was too much even for Andy Sullivan, and NOW as well as most feminist bloggers condemned the article.

So did Gawker apologize? Not hardly.

What’s missing from most of the criticism is this essential bit of context: Christine O’Donnell is seeking federal office based in part on her self-generated, and carefully tended, image as a sexually chaste woman. She lies about who she is; she tells that lie in service of an attempt to impose her private sexual values on her fellow citizens; and she’s running for Senate. We thought information documenting that lie—that O’Donnell does not live a chaste life as she defines the word, and in fact hops into bed, naked and drunk, with men that she’s just met—was of interest to our readers.

Much of the criticism leveled against us is based on the premise that we think hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with men or women whenever one wants is “slutty,” and that therefore our publication of Anonymous’ story was intended to diminish O’Donnell on those terms. Any reader of this site ought to rather quickly gather that we are in fact avid supporters of hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with men or women that one has just met.

Our problem with O’Donnell—and the reason that the information we published about her is relevant—is that she has repeatedly described herself and her beliefs in terms that suggest that there is something wrong with hopping into bed, naked and drunk, with a man or woman whom one has just met. So that fact that she behaves that way, while publicly condemning similar behavior, in the context of an attempt to win a seat in the United States Senate, is a story we thought people might like to know about. We also thought it would get us lots of clicks and money and attention. But we thought it would get us clicks and money and attention because it was exposing her lies.

Well then, since “exposing lies” justifies their publishing the lurid allegations about O’Donnell’s alleged sexual history, I guess candidates no longer have any right to privacy whatsoever. Everything is fair game.

Jeebus, can you imagine the can of worms that would be? But somehow I doubt we’ll ever see an unmarried male candidate slut-shamed for what was (even if true) legal and consensual sexual behavior.

Whoever this putz Dustin Dominiak is, I hope he never gets laid again in his entire life. It would serve him right.

One last note: Before anyone complains about me posting another defense of a evil wingnut racist homophobe anti-abortion Tea Partier, I ain’t happy about it either.

If these fucking so-called progressives would stop being sexist assholes, I wouldn’t have to defend people like Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

I don’t care if the Republicans do it too or did it first.

IT’S WRONG.

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Sexism? What sexism?

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The picture above is NOT A PARODY, it is the actual cover of Mother Jones magazine, a periodical named for a feminist icon:

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), born in Cork, Ireland, was a prominent American labor and community organizer, who helped co-ordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Her activities were done under the moniker of Mother Jones, after which Mother Jones magazine is named.

But it’s all good, because two women (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery) came up with the idea and another woman was the illustrator:

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It’s not that there aren’t enough clues on the cover of the new issue of Mother Jones—the headline, for one—but since you (well, a couple of you) asked: Yes, that is a full-throated homage to the B movie classic Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. If you’re like us, your knowledge of American cinema doesn’t encompass the full plot of this 1958 gem, but suffice to say that it involves a wealthy heiress, Nancy Archer, who after an encounter with an alien is found on the roof of her pool house and soon grows into a giantess. She goes searching for her no-good husband and his mistress, Honey Parker (!), and mayhem ensues. We liked the image because of the subtle historical echoes and… oh, who are we kidding: We liked it because the poster is awesome. (The echoes, though, are there: 1958 was an election year, in a recession, that dealt the president’s party a big string of defeats and launched the Senate careers of, among others, Gene McCarthy, Robert Byrd, and Edmund Muskie.)

MoJo’s creative director Tim Luddy encouraged illustrator Zina Saunders to follow the poster out the window in tone and feel, tweaking only the landscape to look more suburban. Saunders, who by the looks of her gallery has been mildly obsessed with Sarah Palin (to terrific effect) took the assignment very seriously, at one point sending a picture of Palin in her beauty-contestant days to confirm that she’d gotten the proportions right.

So what if they portrayed the most popular female Republican in the country as a monster in a miniskirt? When women do it it’s okay.  Besides, they got the proportions right.  That’s what really matters.

Does Digby have Stockholm Syndrome?

Not Digby

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Stockholm Syndrome:

In psychology, the Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.

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A while back I asked Who Kidnapped Digby? Today I saw this over at Hullaballoo:

Everybody knows that Tbogg is a very funny guy. This is a classic. So’s this. And those are from just this week. But no offense to da man, I have to point out that Tbogg readers are actually the funniest people in in the blogosphere. if you read no other comment section, read that one.

Plus there’s adorable basset dog on basset puppy (with a tramp stamp) action.

“Everybody knows that Tbogg is a very funny guy?” Who is this “Everybody?”

If you think Tbogg is funny you are either a misogynist or you have never read any of his posts about Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin or PUMA. He even mentioned us during last year’s Wonktard War:

It’s worth mentioning that The Confluence is a PUMA blog which means that Jim Newell is spending precious moments of his life arguing with people who still think it would have been fairer for Hillary Clinton to have been allowed to play from the ladies tees during the primary season. And if you think that groups like the Susan B. Anthony List or the CWA are detrimental to the feminist movement, you’ll have to admit that The Confluence is really pulling out the stops when it comes to reconsidering that whole women’s suffrage thing.

Of course he was tipped off to the whole thing by his good pals at Blogstalkers.

Hey Digby, here’s a clue: “Tramp stamp” is a misogynist term. It refers to a tattoo on a woman’s lower back as an indication she is a “slut.” Or according to Urban Dictionary:

“Those chicks with tramp stamps are the kinds of girls you take home to bang. Don’t get into relationships with them because they are often immature gold digging sluts who sleep with everyone. Oh yeah, make sure you use a rubber because you don’t want to end up with chlamydia trachoma (which 1 in 20 women have between the ages of 14-39 according to the center of disease control… probably much higher if they have a tramp stamp considering the scientific coloration [sic] between sluttiness and tramp stamps). Also, if they pop out a baby (which they often do), they may have issues getting epidurals through their tattoos in the lower back.”

Real funny. As for Tbogg’s readers, here’s a sample of the comments in the link Digby recommends:

I can’t help but comment on the Michele Bachmann ads on the right. Call me strange, but I find her somewhat attractive. That is, if you could get past that look in her eyes. You know, the look that says her stuffed animal collection probably reflects her forays into home taxidermy.

Neighbor: “Why does Ms. Bachmann put cat food on her front porch every night? They don’t have any pets. By the way, have you seen Puffball or Mr. Snuggles recently?”

Seriously, the look in her eyes is usually accompanied by a jacket that fastens in the back.

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Well, it looks like a certain Colored Woman needs to commence with some cleanin’, don’t it? And while we’re at it…. Boy! Get yur feet off’n our furniture!1!

Sweet Jeebus, make it stop…..

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Since mentally they’re still functioning in the good old days when “darkies” weren’t allowed to read or write, they’re probably offended that the Obama’s have any books at all.

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{{headdesk}}

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Saturday Morning News and Views

Good Morning, Conflucians!!!!

I’ve been surfing around the ‘net for awhile, and I’ve come up with a somewhat eclectic collection of links that mostly ignore current events in Washington DC. These are some stories that caught my eye. What are you reading? Is there anything big happening in the Village that I missed?

First up: more evidence that Professors with Harvard degrees are no better than the rest of us regular folks.

From the NYT: Professor Said to Be Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama

Three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were shot to death, and three other people were seriously wounded at a biology faculty meeting on Friday afternoon, university officials said….a biology professor, identified as Amy Bishop, was charged with murder.

According to a faculty member, the professor had applied for tenure, been turned down, and appealed the decision. She learned on Friday that she had been denied once again.

The newspaper identified Dr. Bishop as a Harvard-educated neuroscientist. According to a 2006 profile in the newspaper, Dr. Bishop invented a portable cell growth incubator with her husband, Jim Anderson. Police officials said that Mr. Anderson was being detained, but they did not call him a suspect.

[….]

Officials said the dead were all biology professors, G. K. Podila, the department’s chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two other biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, as well as a professor’s assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo, are at Huntsville Hospital in conditions ranging from stable to critical.

This is a terrible tragedy that also demonstrates that academics are no more immune to rage, violence, or psychological dysfunction than anyone else. I was thinking about how horrible this must be for the students at UAH, and then I read this.

From MSNBC: Professor charged in university shooting

Gina Hammond, a UAH student, told WAFF that she lobbied the University of Alabama trustees to allow students with gun permits to carry their weapons on campus. She was turned down.

“I’m scared to go back to school,” Hammond said. “However, if they were to allow me to carry my pistol on campus, I would not be as scared.

“… I’m sorry that nobody in that room had a pistol to save at least one person’s life,” Hammond said.

OK, I’m not sure allowing everyone to carry guns on college campuses is the solution to this kind of tragedy. Maybe it would have been better if Dr. Bishop hadn’t had access to a firearm. Then maybe she could have calmed down a little bit, thought things over, and started looking for another job.

Here’s another odd, sad story along similar lines: Psychiatrist Tips Off Police about Her Husband’s Paranoia and Weapons Stockpiling

Gregory Girard, 45, is now being held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing tomorrow in Salem District Court, where he pleaded not guilty yesterday to multiple weapons charges.

Police arrested Girard late Tuesday night after a brief standoff outside the 23 Bridge St. condo where he had been living with his wife and their 16-year-old son.

Girard had a huge collection of weaponry in the family’s home and a shooting range in the attic.

On Monday, Girard’s wife, a psychiatrist, contacted police to express concern about her husband’s increasing paranoia and apparent stockpiling of weapons, Segal said.

Kristine Girard told police that while her husband hadn’t threatened her, she was afraid to return home after an argument.

She said her husband had recently told her, “Don’t talk to people, shoot them instead,” and “It’s fine to shoot people in the head because traitors deserve it,” Segal said, reading from a police report.

This guy is too old to have recently developed schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenics sometimes function fairly well. Perhaps he has suffered with the disorder for years and has taken medication that helped him, or perhaps he has some other type of bipolar disorder that can lead to psychotic episodes (bipolar disorder or major depression are possibilities).

Regardless, this man has some kind of severe psychological disorder that wasn’t caused by attending tea party demonstrations or admiring Sarah Palin as the prog blogs have been busy implying. More nutty interpretations of a psychologically troubled person’s motivations at TPM here and here. Meanwhile, right wing blogs are focusing on the fact that Girard’s wife is psychiatrist who works in Cambridge, MA.

Guess what you Obot morons, psychiatrists are subject to human failings just like Harvard education professors and all the rest of us “ordinary people.” Get a clue, why don’t you? This is a human tragedy, and the man has a 16-year-old son who is probably really upset right now.

Saturday Morning News and Views

Good Morning Conflucians!!!! It is 3 degrees here in the Boston western suburbs!!

Nevertheless, we are better off than you guys in the southern states where there is a winter storm going on. Yesterday, Texas and Oklahoma got about a foot of snow, and today the storm will move east into the Carolinas and Virgina and then out to sea.

California Conflucians are getting a break from the storms, but the state still needs more to end the long-term drought.

Our economics-challenged President is threatening to veto spending bills (except money for wars, banks, and insurance companies), because he thinks cutting the deficit is as important as creating jobs. I wonder when he’s going to figure out that the U.S. economy is dependent on consumer spending; and if people don’t have jobs, it’s kind of hard for them to buy things. Since he never held a full-time job before getting elected President and all his friends are rich corporate types, he doesn’t quite get what us ordinary people are so worried about.

“Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t,” Obama said. “And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will.”

In an effort to make a dent in the growing federal deficit, White House officials announced earlier this week that their budget proposal would keep non-military discretionary programs at fiscal 2010 levels (Greenwire, Jan. 26). The proposal would exempt some of the largest parts of the federal budget including defense and entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.

It will be up to Congress to decide whether to comply with this request in its spending bills, and Obama pled with them last night to toe the line — addressing critics from his own party and calling the effort vital to keep markets in line and avoid increases in the cost of borrowing.

I guess Obama thinks he can solve our economic problems by creating jobs in the military and defense industries. Maybe he is hoping a lot of us will go to work for Blackwater? I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I like Joseph Cannon’s idea of replacing Geithner with our own Dakinikat.

Eric Holder has been taking a lot of criticism from the right for locating the 9/11 conspiracy trial in New York City, and now he will be getting critiques from not non-Obots on the left. The Justice department review has cleared the Bush torture memo writers of professional misconduct.

Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.)

By this time everyone should be aware that the Obama administration is not going to hold anyone accountable for planning or participating in torture.

A Couple of Brave Souls Dare to Praise Hillary Clinton

Ben Smith, a pudgy little man filled with bile

For the past few days, the Villagers and their media buddies have been poring over the trashy new book by John Heileman and Mark Halperin, Game Change. The person who seems to be having the most fun with the book is Ben Smith at Politico, who seemingly has been in the throes of an extended orgasm as gloating again and again in print about the supposed demise of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Smith’s ravening, slavering hatred of the Clintons reached a climax today when he vomited out this repulsive bile-filled piece: Game over: The Clintons stand alone According to Smith, there is no one left who will stand up and defend either Clinton. They are universally and resoundingly hated and despised by everyone in politics and “journalism.” Here’s an example of Ben Smith’s putrid prose:

“Game Change” peels back a decade of careful renovations off Hillary Clinton’s carefully constructed public face, casting her in the terms that defined her at her lows in the mid-1990s: scheming, profane, sometimes paranoid, often tone-deaf.

The authors report that Clinton and her aides plotted behind allies’ backs to enter the 2004 presidential contest and that Clinton herself favored some of the nastiest tactics, such as suggesting that then-Sen. Barack Obama had been a drug dealer, in the 2008 campaign. And she continued to believe — without evidence, and long after her concession — that he had, in effect, stolen the Iowa caucuses by importing out-of-state voters.

Her husband, the former president, is depicted as canny, but flawed as ever: making key errors, as has been widely reported, in South Carolina, and raising his own aides’ suspicions that he was reprising the extramarital wanderings that exploded during his presidency.

“Everybody talked. Anybody that tells you they didn’t are lying to you,” lamented one former top Clinton aide, who mused that perhaps for the first time in a career of leaks and betrayals, the Clinton’s innermost circle of loyalists been breached.

The result leaves the Clintons exposed and isolated, their darkest suspicions — “us against the world” — validated.

Excuse me for a minute. I think I’m going to be sick.

OK, back. Today a couple of courageous people did come forward to praise Hillary Clinton–and lo and behold, they did it under their own names, rather than hiding behind anonymity, as most of Heilemann and Halperin’s sources did.

First up, Peter Daou, who was communications director of the Clinton campaign.

…this is not about psychoanalyzing Hillary Clinton or probing her personal attributes — others have made a living doing that. It’s not about making her out to be a saint. Nobody is. This is about describing how she ran her campaign and how she treated her opponents when the cameras and microphones were off.

Was I on every call and at every strategy session? No. Can I vouch for every single thing said and done at the campaign. Of course not. But having participated in countless senior strategy meetings, crisis management and rapid response drills and emergencies, “war rooms within war rooms” (a term used by Heilemann/Halperin), debate prep, calls, emails and private conversations with the candidate, and having slept with my BlackBerry under my pillow and been stationed at the center of her communications operation for the duration of the campaign, I can confidently state that Hillary Clinton did not push for ‘vicious’ or dirty tactics against any of her opponents, nor did she encourage or ‘cheer on’ that behavior from her staff. The ethos of the campaign, which she conveyed in word and deed, was that she would win because she was best prepared, worked the hardest and had the most compelling ideas.

She was centered, dignified and focused throughout, although her frustration and pain did show through at some moments. She knew the media environment was stacked against her, against any woman. She knew what she was up against and drove forward into the furious headwinds of sexism and rightwing-fueled Clinton-hatred.

Daou also speaks to the gloating media critics who want to muddy the Clintons while pretending that Obama is pure as the driven snow.

…I have little tolerance for critics who simplify the whole election as some sort of reflection of the supposedly terrible character of Bill and Hillary Clinton, conveniently ignoring the Obama campaign’s brutally effective hardball tactics and overlooking the infinite dimensions — and messiness — of a presidential image/message war.

Next to stand up for Hillary is MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in a piece called “The True Character of Hillary Clinton.”

…what I saw throughout Hillary’s 2008 campaign was a candidate who kept fighting back even after being badly wounded in Iowa, negligently served by her staff, and treated miserably by a biased press corps….

I thought the 48 hours before the New Hampshire primary were the most humiliating any national figure of Hillary Clinton’s stature had to endure in recent political history. It was a political execution that was broadcast across the world in slow motion. And it was ugly.

But Hillary Clinton had other plans. The New York senator shocked every pundit and pollster from Manchester to Manhattan, outperforming the final NH polls by a dozen points or more.

For the next few months, the Clinton campaign took one body blow after another. The media coverage was deplorable. In fact, it was so biased in some quarters that more than a few living legends of broadcast news privately shared with me the embarrassment they felt toward their own profession.

Still, Clinton kept fighting on.

Scarborough goes on to enumerate the many times Hillary fought back during the 2008 primaries, and finishes with this high praise for Hillary’s character:

Character is rarely revealed in its sharpest contrast after a glorious victory. Instead, you find out what a person is made of after they sustain a soul crushing defeat. In her long, tortured march toward Denver, Hillary Clinton showed more character, more resilience, and more true grit than any presidential candidate I can recall.

And in that losing cause, Secretary Clinton served as a great example of character not only for my young daughter, but for us all. It is that type of strength that we need in our leaders now more than ever.

Thank you Peter and Joe for being unafraid to stand up to the slick, slimy Villagers and their ugly, envious, bile-ridden media courtiers. I salute you both!

God Forbid we Should Change the Status Quo

Jake Tapper of ABC News had an “exclusive” interview with President Obama today. The first part of the interview was shown on ABC News hour tonight, more will be shown on Nightline tonight, and the rest on Good Morning America tomorrow. Tapper asked the President about the abortion language in the “health care reform” bill passed by the House on Saturday night.

“I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” Obama said. “And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.

Saying the bill cannot change the status quo regarding the ban on federally funding abortions, the President said “there are strong feelings on both sides” about an amendment passed on Saturday and added to the legislation, “and what that tells me is that there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo.”

Call me crazy, I thought Mr. Hope ‘n Change was elected because he wanted to change the status quo. Can someone please explain to me why it is so important to make absolutely sure there is no change in the status quo on funding abortions? And furthermore, doesn’t the Stupak amendment already guarantee a very big change in the status quo? So does that mean Mr. Obama will do something about the Stupak amendment to return us to his beloved status quo? It’s not really clear, but no, I don’t think he plans to do anything but sit around waiting for someone else to take responsibility for this ongoing nightmare of a health care bill.

Obama told ABC News’ Jake Tapper that he was confident that the final legislation will ensure that “neither side feels that it’s being betrayed.”

“I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” he said.

I don’t know what the heck that means except that Mr. Obama is not going to take any kind of stand. He’s going to carry on with the “on the one hand…on the other hand” crap until someone else take responsibility for limiting women’s rights so dramatically that many of us are still in shock. But Mr. Bipartisanship is still trying to please both “sides.” Of course both of those “sides” are mostly made up of very rich, old men.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today that the President is not going to “take sides” on the Stupak amendment controversy.

The White House on Monday signaled it would keep its distance in the increasingly vocal debate over whether health insurance reform should include language related to abortion.

When asked whether the president supported Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) amendment to prohibit the public insurance plan from covering abortion services, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dodged the question — multiple times.

“Well, ask me that right before Christmas and the end of the New Year,” Gibbs said during today’s press briefing, noting the president still expected to sign a healthcare bill before the year’s end.

The press secretary later clarified, “We will work on this and continue to seek consensus and common ground.”

Now there’s a surprise. Has Barack Obama ever taken a stand on anything? I don’t think so. And once again he’s going to vote “present” while women are stripped of what reproductive rights they had left. Good luck finding “common ground” on the abortion issue. If there is any common ground, it’s a very small strip of land indeed.

Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the house bill *only* makes older people pay twice as might for health insurance as older people. These are the figures:

under the House’s 2-to-1 cap, a 20-year-old would pay $3,169 in annual premiums and a 60-year-old would pay $6,339 for comparable plans, if they both had incomes above the subsidy-eligible level. Under a bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee, which had a 4-to-1 age-rating ratio, the 20-year-old would pay $2,258 and the 60-year-old would pay $8,357.

I have never in my life had to pay more than $2,000 for health insurance. The idea that I could ever afford to pay more than $6000 or $8,000 per year is unimaginable to me. What have these so-called Democrats done to us?!!

We are so screwed. I guess I should be grateful that I’m past menopause, so at least I won’t be needing an abortion. It looks like some young women are going to be finding out what it was like when I was in college. No birth control, no abortion, no help for women in crisis.

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