Et Tu, Geraldine?

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept ...

No I don't know where I got that, it's all over everywhere and you don't need the goddamn link anyway. I am so pissed.

You told me a few decades ago these women would turn out to be more than a disappointment, I would have jumped down your little sexist throat.

Course, the fact that Geraldine Ferraro happened to be very lucky to have been in her position—one that thrilled the bejesus out of us, I do recall that. You cannot imagine, if you are a man—or if you're one of the pups that do seem to becloud this Interwebs thing—what it was like. Sea after sea of male faces ... and for the first time, my god, there was a woman up there on the platform, running, as it were, for Vice President!

I think that was the moment that unlocked it, for America. The avalanche of feminine faces where the world had only seen men. Oh yes. The first female news anchors were an amazing sight. And we all gained authority. Why, it made me how I am today! (No remarks please.)

Sometimes this blog seems like nothing but questions. Why do people ... I'm sure there's a name for this, um, conversion reaction. (I didn't quite become a therapist. Is it obvious?) Where people cannot wait to accuse someone else of what they benefited from. Another goddamn sentence ending in a preposition. The world is going to hell, I tell you.

The good news: Intrade has Obama taking Hil and poor John McCain. Like I always say, Follow the money. This time, though, seems it just might have a happy ending.

Simply Irresistible

Reuters: “Campaigning on Saturday, in Mississippi, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama would be a dynamic duo, 'an almost unstoppable force.'”

Hm, yes. Especially since they will be running against a man in a (well-deserved) coma. (Has anyone the sense that John McCain wants to be President? Lusts after four years of epic work and nothing but hassle? I see the word Retirement writ large on his face.)

The question for today is, How screwed up are Hill and Billary—I mean, Bill and Hillary—really.

We're looking for signs of grace, folks. Humility. What have you done with that grotesque ambition of yours, and can a beast like that ever be whapped down to size. Does it happen.

Can Bill and Hil even conceive of themselves as vice-president of anything.

It's clear he was a spoiled-rotten kid, the kind who deploy their considerable charm and charisma in the interest of just plain survival. Has Bill gotten a grip on himself—or is he still in addiction's grip.

A glib little sentence, but no small question. For make no mistake, Monica-gate was total addict behavior. Something Bill Clinton absorbed at his mama's knee. The belief that people are objects, to be arranged at will. A deeply mechanistic view that cannot, by definition, ever approach the Moral, which is so Golden Rule: treat others as you would be treated. Far too fluid—and rather rules out that primary drive, to get.

My guess is that their lives, that family, are shot through with ordinary lies ... that they are nice folks, but are textbook Dysfunctional  I mean, Where the fork are her tax returns? Things like that.

It's a Shakespearean drama, unfolding on the national stage. What does the woman do when the Unstoppable is not her queenly, entitled self, but this Dark Prince out of nowhere, with all this Honesty crap, and you really cannot grasp the attraction. And people are watching.

Hillary genuinely strikes me as a born Vice-President. Just saying.

Cry If I Want To

“I certainly hope not, and if that is the dreary case, how the hell does she think she's going to keep Bill Clinton from horning in on everything (NPI.) Honestly, has the nation gone to sleep on ... oops, not my blog? 'KTHXBYE!”

... I was busily ranting away at Frank's place when I realized, tis only right, mete and just to confine one's rant to one's own blog. Especially when you exceed the comment box.

Based on the results of yesterday’s primaries we may yet see a former President as First Gentleman in the White House ...

Frank had writ (done wrote?) (writed?) and suddenly I was overcome, as if by fumes. So infuriating was the realization—and don't tell me America hasn't thought of this, although it is perfectly obvious it has not—Bill Clinton will no more stay out of the Oval Office than he successfully kept his pants zipped. (That sentence would be better in present tense, but it seemed crude; one does not really know. One did know, however—and however unwillingly—more about presidential ejaculatory matter and other grossities than we, as a nation, ever wanted.) (It stains.)

Did this not carve a deep enough rut in the national neocortex? Are not all, to a man and woman, sick to death of Bill Clinton and his close relations? (Oops, bad choice of words.) If the name Clinton be not anathema enough, take a gander, I dare you, at the worst, most devotedly unhip, glaringly 1995, clunky, unreadable excuse of a website ...

Do you know what youth for Hillary is called? (Hold your barf, please. We have bags.) 

“Hillblazers.” That's right, and anyone under the age of twenty found clicking that link will be promptly sent into treatment. I have monitors.

When the great culture war of the Sixties was over ... oh, sigh. Same old rift, nay, same old ne'er-to-be-bridged chasm. Between, you got it, the normal and Teh Square. 

Which is how she won Ohio.

(I wonder how the vote came down in Winesburg.)

Next up: Watch Barack Obama busta move.

Is It Over Yet?

I don't watch TV news, I don't turn on the radio ... and still I am just so bloody sick of the Clintons as people. Well, and as politicians, too.

Leaflets, FCS. Hillary waving a fistful of leaflets, and accusing Obama of some kind of betrayal, completely a video bite. Seeing as how said leaflets were identical to her own, and not particularly interesting at that.

After her immense graciousness on Monday night. Took, what, forty-eight hours for that to wear off.

We all been wretched, we all been fools when the dream love walked out. Not going to tell you what I've done. But that's what campaign managers are for! Keep you from being foolish on national TV! What the hell are those people doing besides billing her astonishing amounts of money. Truly record-breaking amounts. I smell cross-purposes.

Latest foolishness, circulating this photo of Obama, on a visit to Kenya, wearing Kenyan dress and headwrap.

Oh my god, he's wearing a TURBAN, people! You know what TURBAN means!

The reason I don't watch TV news is because stupidity hurts, and political campaigns are stupidity bronzed.

Drudge : Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: ‘If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed.’

Doin' the double-smack, what, me, swift-boating?

Oh yeah. Way to win superdelegate hearts and minds.

Speaking of heads, mine hurts. Do campaigns have to be this way? Mr. Obama says no, and it's that as much as anything that attracts so many of us. To listen to Barak or Michelle speak is balm to the listening mind. Never mind they so cute to look at. I think my heart would just burst to see them on the stand, taking the oath.

Even with me being so epitome of white. Doesn't matter. It's been along time since that kind of excitement's been around. Since Jack Kennedy's campaign and election, to be exact.The excitement of, Something different's going to happen.

I think we are all excited over the idea of something different, something better, and I think the name of that excitement is Hope.

How Can People Be So Stupid?

Okay, maybe that isn't the line from that heartbreaking ballad in Hair. Maybe it is. Like I am under some obligation to google every detail this constantly-associating, hard-at-work mind spits out? Hey, this is the land beyond right and wrong!

Clever, wot? But them's the perks—and there ain't many, honey—of being a writer. The privilege of defining your own turf, which you had fucking better well do. Be you writer or woman. Swim out beyond the breaks.

So listen, you really want a president who has so much integrity, he can't discern right from wrong when it comes to a piece of ass? As my dearly beloved ex used to say?

Hell, no. We already had Billy-boy, and that was way-annoying enough. Besides (oh, right, Zo, like this matters) McCain has a pretty young wife, yes? Talk about stupid: when have I ever seen the ass-chaser who thought that one was enough.

Or perhaps this evening's chautauqua should be entitled: A Sex Addict? In The White House? Again?

So here's my beef with the New York Times: I don't like the style with which they pussyfoot. I believe it could be done better.

As his relationship with a female lobbyist underscores, John McCain’s confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potential conflicts of interest.

Talk about oxymorons. Jesus, I got whiplash.

360 Diggs For God

And no, I don't mean Teh Ceiling Cat. Sober up. (Slaps readers upside head.) Concentrate! Noam Speaks:

Power resides in the hands of those that Madison called “the wealth of the nation.” The primary responsibility of government is “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” Madison declared. That has been the guiding principle of the democratic system from its origins until today.

Read it again. Prescient old fart, however inadvertently: (Madison, not The Noam!) the Opulent Minority is going to need protection one day. Man them barricades, you lazy-ass—Oh. Well, whenever and wherever the barricades go up, see you there.


To watch the whole (short) lecture, go here. | digg story

Our Keef, v.2

So Keith Richards says he snorted up a bit of his Dad, in an interview in the guardian.uk, one nicely Brit upon Brit ...

Why is it so reassuring these days to see people of foreign lands get along perfectly well without us. Yawn, how tiring to think of the way these eight years will clog histories for eons to come, when in fact the living of it—unless Neil Young releases a war album (so cool) or there's a really ghastly oversight revealed, or an astonishing truth comes out (like, Condi Rice may actually be accomplishing something?) —is so tedious, exactly the sort of exhausting banality about in the land one would expect from absurd High Crimes. Where was I.

Keith says he ground up a bit of bone himself; the resulting high was neither here nor there, but what a wonderfully atavistic act. He liked his old man. Which I think we knew; those indefatigable wacky good spirits.

I love the way he says to the interviewer, “ ... shit, Keith Richards has got to do everything once.”

A model boy. As we know.

"Gonzales Said He Would Quit"

And the downside of this would be?

Snorts

Thanks to Terry Frazier's good eye, for the list on Security from which the following wondrous facts were drawn:

More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

(Now reread the post title. Think “Jaws.” I crack myself up.)

Did you ever wonder why tweezers were confiscated at security checkpoints, but matches and cigarette lighters—actual combustible materials—were not? ... If the tweezers lobby had more power, I'm sure they would have been allowed on board as well.

This one ought to be filed under Follow The Money, that long and endless blog that flows, past and future, through all of human history ... Except, have you noticed, those who really do, the real experts at keeping their eye on the bottom line, or the profit margin, or their own wizened little black hearts of self-interest ... And yes, the viciousness of pure, unadulterated self-interest does have this curious anatomical effect; when they open them up, the Dick Cheneys of this life, for the autopsy, there's this little dried up fig-like object, where something vibrant, full and beating used to be. Is, in normal human people. The blood has gone elsewhere, perhaps toward their pocket, or a bit further south than that. It's very sad, and of course they die of it, there's only so far you can take this imitation-person thing. I read where there may be soul-transplants, someday in the future. Modern medicine is a marvel, but I do believe this is an example of wishful thinking on the part of those who have so lost their faith (with which we assume all children are born) that buying and selling, accumulating, keeping can almost ... it must seem so close ... so nearly within reach ...