dumb and dumber

george w. bush is dumb. his latest state-of-the-union speech was filled with parts that tried to justify his legacy of failure and how he ruined the american economy and made our nation less secure while running up huge deficits and mishandling wars and hurricane relief efforts and trashing the environment. he mentioned how "no child left behind" was a great bipartisan effort, and only the republicans applauded... i guess the democrats know that it is an unfunded mandate and costs school districts tons of money, which is not provided to them by the federal government. there were several good ideas in the speech, but none of them were conservative republican ideas, they were liberal democrat ideas. fighting the aids epidemic was one of them. another was an international treaty to reduce global warming. another was reducing the number of troops in iraq. all ideas that liberal democrats had proposed and fought for, which had been fought against tooth and nail by the republicans. i guess bush was just surrendering to us democrats in that speech, by agreeing to go along with several of our initiatives. it was interesting he had no new initiatives of his own. no proposals to send people back to the moon and on to mars. none of that stuff. he seemed to be borrowing rhetoric from john mccain, talking about vetoing spending bills full of pork-barrel earmarks and cutting government spending, and about how the surge is working. half bush’s new state-of-the-union speech appeared to have been lifted directly out of one of john mccain’s stump speeches for the 2008 election, albeit rephrased in different words. and the bit where he addressed the people of iran was a comedy bit bush had done in previous speeches, with all those jokes about how we respect the people and culture of iran. very funny stuff!

but guess who is even dumber than george w. bush? you will never guess... he was mayor of new york city when it was attacked by terrorists, and earlier he had moved the city’s emergency operations headquarters into one of the 2 buildings that collapsed after being hit by a plane. he was the one who gave the police and firefighters inadequate equipment, radios that didn’t work. and after 9/11 he was one of the people that said the air near ground zero was safe to breathe. yeah... rudy giuliani. he ran his entire campaign around the theme of 9/11, and when he lost one of the early primaries or caucuses he said that he wasn’t having any trouble dealing with doing so badly in the polls in those states since he had been in stressful situations before... like 9/11, which he specifically mentioned. and the most boneheaded thing he ever did had nothing to do with 9/11... it was where he chose to campaign. he only campaigned in florida, and ignored all the early primary states before florida. so he ignored iowa, wyoming, new hampshire, michigan, nevada, and south carolina, figuring he could lose badly in all 6 of those, then manage to somehow win in florida, and then he would have the momentum to win on “super duper tuesday”. okay, idiot... you sit out the first 6 of the 50 states’ contests, and lose badly in every single one, and the media spends the whole time focusing on other candidates and which one of them is winning... and think you can win #7 somehow, even though the other candidates are competing in all 50 states instead of just 1? that is by far the stupidest campaign strategy that any presidential candidate has ever had in the entire history of american politics, all the way back to when the constitution was drafted in 1789! george w. bush may be a dumbass, but even he is not this dumb! he never had such a boneheaded, retarded campaign strategy. oh, and what was rudy giuliani’s stance on social issues like abortion and gay rights and gun control? he had the exact opposite stance on them from 99% of the republican party! and he had been married and divorced several times, he had been roommates with an openly gay couple while mayor of new york city, he had dressed in drag for a comedy sketch, and his police commissioner bernie kerik who turned out to be a criminal was the person he nominated to be the nation’s secretary of homeland security! i mean, for crying out loud, rudy giuliani has liberal policies on everything except for national security, foreign policy, and economics, where his policies are ultra-right-wing. oh, and his city was a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, pissing off all the republicans who want to get rid of illegal “aliens”. now mitt romney had the exact same sort of policies as governor of massachusetts, at least when he first ran for governor, but mitt romney was smart enough to realize that it would be politically beneficial to publicly reverse himself on every major issue he had taken a stand on, other than economic issues, where he had been conservative all along. mitt romney was smart enough to realize that it is “better late than never” when it comes to being a conservative republican. and it seems to have worked! both tom delay and rush limbaugh support mitt romney and have publicly condemned john mccain as someone who would ruin the republican party. tom delay was the most corrupt american politician in history and has never shown any signs of remorse for his crimes, and rush limbaugh is likewise a criminal, a drug addict who condemns other drug addicts, who has also never shown any remorse, a radio talk show host with less-than-zero regard for the truth, who spouts nothing but republican political propaganda and religious-right nonsense about how science is wrong about everything. both of these amoral, worthless sleazebags who ought to be in jail for the rest of their lives have condemned john mccain and are supporting mitt romney. mike huckabee also was condemned similarly by rush limbaugh, as well as by phyllis schlafly, the leader of the anti-feminist-self-hating-bitch movement. so mitt romney appeals to amoral con men who believe their own lies... interesting. and all because he, unlike rudy giuliani, had the foresight to publicly reverse himself on almost every major issue in order to win votes. that is how mitt romney won the endorsement of the national review as a “full-spectrum conservative”. and why is mike huckabee doing so badly? well, the u.s. chamber of commerce vowed to bury any presidential candidate who had populist rhetoric (you know, the type of shit you hear from lou dobbs on cnn all the time), and both mike huckabee and john edwards have populist rhetoric. so, naturally, wealthy businesspeople are seeing to it that both huckabee and edwards are defeated badly. this leaves the republicans with 2 choices (since although ron paul is still running, the media is ignoring him and he has lost badly everywhere except nevada where he came in 2nd): john mccain and mitt romney. mitt romney is a flip-flopping wealthy massachusetts politician who has said that he is pro-abortion and pro-gay rights. in 2004 a flip-flopping wealthy massachusetts politician who has said that he is pro-abortion and pro-gay rights ran for president and lost. his name was john kerry. and this time john kerry is supporting barack obama, not mitt romney. if mitt romney cannot even win the support of a fellow flip-flopping wealthy massachusetts politician who has said that he is pro-abortion and pro-gay rights, what chance does he have? it is incredibly funny to me that republicans are reduced to the point where someone like mitt romney is considered the most conservative candidate left running... someone like mitt romney who has illegal immigrants as gardeners at his big mansion. and tom delay and rush limbaugh are lining up telling republicans not to vote for john mccain because john mccain is not a real conservative and mitt romney is. seriously... are these dudes on crack or what? john mccain is a staunch conservative republican and always has been... he has always been anti-abortion and always wanted smaller government, campaigned for george w. bush in 2004, the whole 9 yards, yet so many republicans consider him a traitor... makes no sense to me. john mccain supported campaign finance reform and immigration reform... so what? plenty of other republicans in the senate voted the same way on those bills. and how could anyone be opposed to “reform”? would they run as the “anti-reform” candidate? “read my lips: no new reform!” seriously... there is no evidence of any kind that john mccain has been anything other than a loyal conservative republican all these years, and he has actually been more conservative than most other republicans in congress, to be honest, opposing their deficit spending and pork-barrel projects and other things that violated the 1994 “contract with america” and the republican party platform. republicans are just the craziest people, how they eat their own, how they accuse their most loyal members of being traitors. when we democrats accused joe lieberman of being a traitor to the party, we had very good reason: joe lieberman was always pro-war and said the war was going well even when everyone else said it was going horribly. joe lieberman was the first and one of the few democrats in congress to publicly condemn bill clinton in the monica lewinsky affair. joe lieberman supports censorship of video games, is a hawk when it comes to war with iran, and adamantly condemns secularism while promoting the idea that people of faith should run the country. he ran for president as a democrat in the 2004 election without ever saying anything bad about the bush administration. and now in the 2008 elections he has proven his true colors by endorsing john mccain, which should not have been a surprise to anyone, since joe lieberman was the most conservative democrat in the senate, except maybe when zell miller was a senator. anyway, what is my point? my point is, rudy giuliani is a complete buffoon, dumber than even george w. bush. and the republicans are down to a 2-man race between john mccain and mitt romney, and mitt romney is probably going to get his ass kicked by john mccain, much to the dismay of rush limbaugh and tom delay and other immoral assholes like them who probably deserve eternal hellfire and are therefore lucky that hell does not exist.

so what about hillary clinton and barack obama, as well as that 3rd person still in the democratic race, john edwards? well, hillary clinton won in florida, where the other candidates were also on the ballots, unlike in michigan, where she was the only major candidate on the ballots. but nobody was allowed to campaign in florida. and florida does not count, nor does michigan. both get zero delegates, according to a ruling from the democratic national committee, a ruling which, until recently, the clinton campaign completely agreed with. but earlier this month, the clinton campaign suddenly decided that michigan and florida both count, and both of them should get their delegates seated at the convention, the original number they were supposed to get before it was reduced to zero. now the republicans also punished michigan and florida, but by cutting the delegates in half, not reducing them to zero, and they also allowed their candidates to campaign in both of those states as well. anyway, hillary clinton is trying to change the rules halfway through the game. that is called “calvinball”, from the comic strip calvin & hobbes, a game where the rules can be changed at any time if calvin (or in this case hillary clinton) feels like it. if hillary clinton was fine with michigan and florida getting zero delegates a month ago, she ought to be fine with it now. why the flip-flop? in this race for delegates, every delegate counts, so winning the delegate count is more important than any “foolish consistency”. i would have to say things look about 50-50 for barack obama and hillary clinton right now, since barack obama is getting endorsements from edward kennedy, caroline kennedy, and patrick kennedy, to go alongside his endorsements from john kerry, oprah winfrey, jesse jackson, and al sharpton, as well as the endorsements of a large number of senators from red states, and former log cabin republican andrew sullivan. since people appear to be a lot more eager to endorse him than hillary clinton, perhaps this indicates that the american people at large are a lot more eager to support him than hillary clinton. yes, hillary clinton did get the endorsement of the new york times editorial board, but that simply proves that she is not a real liberal, since the new york times is the newspaper of judith miller and jayson blair and now william kristol. if she got the endorsement of the nation magazine, that would show she is a liberal... the new york times, not so much. besides, with arianna huffington behind barack obama, as well as most of daily kos, along with sites like buzzflash.com, who else is left to support hillary clinton? not very many people who have websites or blogs on the internet, that is for sure! hillary clinton does have her supporters, but i think the vast majority of them are not techno-savvy and do not really go online to look at news and blogs very much. her supporters tend to be older and female, and ever since the early days of the internet, internet users have tended to be younger and male, the demographic that goes for barack obama. so perhaps the seemingly overwhelming ratio of support for obama to support for clinton on the internet is an illusion, since the clinton supporters are from the non-internet demographic. we saw the same thing happen in connecticut in 2006. joe lieberman won re-election to the senate as an independent on the strength of voters who never, ever look at blogs on the internet. so the relevance of blogs is not really clear, even major blogs that a lot of people look at. this means that a very very minor blog like mine is of infinitesimally small significance when it comes to having any influence on elections, which is good. i do not want too many people reading what i have to say here. this is a private journal. go away. that was a joke, in case you don’t get sarcasm. anyway, i hope republicans nominate a wealthy flip-flopping massachusetts phony who has proven time and time again that he will say anything to get elected and tell people what they want to hear rather than the truth. it would be so easy for any democratic nominee to beat him, it would be ridiculous. mitt romney would be lucky to break the 1% barrier in the general election, once we get through with pointing out what a lying sack of shit he is and how he has no guiding principles whatsoever, how he is as fake as a mannequin and completely changes his message every week. john mccain, on the other hand, is giving the exact same speeches now that he was giving back in august when it looked like his campaign was finished. i would welcome the opportunity for our democratic candidate to run against an old washington insider whose own party considers him a traitor, who is beloved by liberals who do not yet know that he disagrees with them on every single major issue there is, whether it is the war in iraq, abortion, etc. i find it interesting that according to exit polls from various states that voted so far, the voters who chose john mccain tended to be those few republicans who oppose the iraq war or who are pro-abortion, even though john mccain is adamantly pro-war and anti-abortion. people who vote for john mccain in primaries seem to be incredibly mixed up about the issues. in a general election, we would have a chance to straighten people out about john mccain and let them know who he really is, not who he would like us to think he is (a straight-talking maverick and war hero who has the best qualifications, character, and judgment of anyone running for president, and who has been a republican loyalist when it mattered most but willing to stand up for what he believed in the rest of the time) or who the far-right has portrayed him as (a liberal republican-in-name-only trojan horse who agrees with hillary clinton on everything, who would give us open borders and free citizenship to all illegal immigrants, who would oppose the religious right’s agenda and probably support gay marriage, who opposed the bush tax cuts and would probably raise taxes, who is against “free speech” in the form of campaign contributions, and who would rather ally with democrats than with members of his own party). and, back to talking about the democrats, i really think barack obama has a better chance than hillary clinton in the general election, and bill clinton is more of a liability than an asset. for crying out loud, if bill clinton has proven to be more of a liability than an asset to hillary in the democratic primaries, just imagine what a burdensome liability he would be in the general election. we would re-ignite all the battles of the 1990s between the republicans and the clintons, and all loyal democrats would have to support the clintons. and this time, plenty of former clinton insiders like the amoral dick morris are part of the anti-clinton crowd and ready to go after clinton with full force... and yes, it was hillary clinton who convinced bill clinton to hire republican political consultant dick morris, a man who puts karl rove to shame, who has no loyalty to anyone, and who has devoted his life to destroying the clintons ever since bill clinton fired him. so anyway, electing barack obama would magically solve our problems and we would live in a perfect utopia... no wait, i have him mixed up with john edwards. well, just look at this video from theonion.com and you’ll see:


Mysterious Traveler Entrances Town With Utopian Vision Of The Future

also, if you are morbidly obese, you will like this video from theonion.com:


As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting The Fat Vote

and if you are wondering who really runs our country then look at this one:


In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

that kinda stuff really makes me think... which is better: robots or aliens? pirates or ninjas? that is the kind of issue we need to debate in this country. then we could make some real progress, and be really “progressive”. should we clone people and transfer their memories to the clone when they die, or just use necromancy and black magick to bring them back from the dead? we need an open, honest debate about these issues, and the media needs to put more focus on them as well. what should people focus on as a goal: becoming invisible, or developing the ability to fly? should we be telepathic and read minds, or use telekinesis to move objects with our minds? should we use time travel to go back in time and change things or go to a brighter future, or travel into parallel universes that are better than this one? should we go faster than the speed of light, or focus on visiting all 11 dimensions of m-theory? what about the “ring of power” from lord of the rings movies, or “the force” from star wars movies: which of them is real and which is fake? is the religion of scientology 110% true, or just 100% true? is tom cruise god incarnate, or just the awesomest person who ever existed or ever will exist? should we shoot laser beams from our eyes or from our fingertips? i think we need to take all the weirdest ideas from science fiction and combine them together into one really big, bad idea, a theory about nothing, just like seinfeld was a show about nothing. we need to develop the world’s first mad scientist stand-up comedy act, and then use those crazy ideas as the basis for a political campaign, and see how many people are stupid enough to sign up and vote for us. announce a new religion, disband it immediately, and label anyone still practicing it a heretic and excommunicate them. start a movement of people, each of whom declares themselves to be a self-governing independent nation who is not governed by any laws of other nations or any international treaties, who can move freely about within any territory claimed by other nations, using whatever territory of it they wish temporarily or as long as they like, without being subject to any laws whatsoever, and having the right to make their own laws and treaties for whatever territory they decide to govern, even if it overlaps the territory of others, and also having the right to unilaterally withdraw from any treaty or repeal any law, and have one person singlehandedly form all 3 branches of government without any help from anyone else. we need a mass popular movement of people who refuse to cooperate or communicate with each other, a disorganization of people, each of whom does their own thing, for the greater good. we need to declare war on pluto for its suspicious flip-flopping on whether to be a planet or not, and then launch every nuclear weapon on earth simultaneously, all aimed directly at pluto, blowing pluto to smithereens and forever proving the glorious magnificence of the human race by showing that we can blow up planets, or at least things that used to be considered planets until recently. all plutonium on earth belongs on pluto, or rather, ought to be used to help destroy pluto. these are the kind of radical ideas we need. we need change. and we need hope. not experience. i hope we can change. we need democrats and republicans working together to ignore the will of the voters and do something entirely different from what anyone in the public wants, infuriating everyone. we need the government to abolish itself, the police to arrest themselves and throw themselves in jail, and the military to blow itself up. and then the most radical of the anarchists can form a new ungovernment, a disorganization that prevents the emergence of any actual government, using illogical and nonsensical tactics to disrupt any attempts by anyone else to do or say anything the least bit logical or sensible. rogue philosophers can disprove the existence of science and technology, making all of our machines disappear into thin air, and then they can prove that we are still monkeys and have not evolved at all since then, and we can go back to living in the jungle. and a cat can prove the nonexistence of dog (not dogs, because monocanism, or belief in only one dog, will have replaced polycanism, or belief in multiple dogs, already, and if you can prove one dog does not exist, you can generalize this to any other possible dog). then cats will be acanists, believing in neither monocanism nor polycanism. then they will all be attacked and killed by nonexistent dogs. as you can see, my favorite ideas are all crazy, nonsensical ones... mostly because those are the ones promoted the most by pop culture and in the movies and on tv shows and in books and on the internet, and the more nonsensical something is, the better. to me, the highest form of art is a website made by a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks they have all the answers to everything, a website which is nothing but complete and utter nonsense, and full of text in a really large font that grabs your attention. i think we should find the funniest crazy homeless person on the street, and give them their own hour-long stand-up-comedy special on hbo that is later shown many times on comedy central. i have personally listened to the crazy ramblings of complete lunatics, and find nothing to be more entertaining, and i wish i could get up to their level of slapstick comedy. why else would i listen to christian radio all the time at work? their ideas on who gets into heaven and who goes to hell are the funniest thing i ever heard! i’ll be laughing all the way to hell! and the idea that this book called the bible is the source of all truth, that it is infallible, that all of it is literally true... i just love that idea! so classic! reminds me of tom cruise jumping up and down on the couch like the crazy cultist he is! the ideas of religious fundamentalists are so patently absurd, it amuses me to no end that people actually believe that stuff! the human race is full of such morons! even if you have a high i.q., that just means you are slightly less of a moron than all the other dullards in the human race! we are just another species of animal, after all. and everyone knows animals are stupid! these days, there is not that much punishment in evolutionary terms to someone who has a low i.q. or who has completely insane beliefs... they can still meet someone, fall in love, get married, and have kids. or they could just have casual sex with someone and have an unintended pregnancy that ends in kids being born. or they could be really really crazy and actually rape someone and have it result in childbirth. there are a lot of crazy and stupid people out there and i had a long telephone conversation with one of them on sunday. now, it was not too pleasant, because this person was a bit paranoid and thought i was part of a conspiracy against them. and later they called again and spoke to my mom and had a big argument with her. anyway, suffice it to say that both my mother and i had the opportunity to talk with a complete and utter certifiable lunatic on the phone, and it was very interesting, although it got a bit stressful for me and i have to admit i got a little scared, even though i knew the person was “mostly harmless”. this lunatic trusts very few people due to extreme paranoia and a hermit lifestyle, but among the few who are trusted is kevin trudeau, bestselling author of a book on “natural cures” for all sorts of diseases, and convicted felon. that is because kevin trudeau appears quite often on late-night “infomercials” on television, and his snake-oil-salesman pitch sounds very good, especially to conspiracy theorists who distrust pharmaceutical companies and the u.s. government. anyway, i love craziness. so naturally, george w. bush is a great president, and rudy giuliani had a really great strategy in running for president, so i heartily approve of them both.

oh this is just great...

dennis kucinich dropped out of the presidential race less than a day ago, on friday. so what, you are asking? he had zero delegates and no chance of winning the presidency and was excluded from all the recent debates and got no news coverage. even his dropping out of the presidential race has gotten zero news coverage from any major news network! just a few days ago, fred thompson dropping out of the race was big news! but the corporate media never gave dennis kucinich a chance. check out him dropping out of the race...



now why, you ask, is he dropping out of the race? is it because he had no chance to begin with? no. he never cared about that. he wanted to get some delegates for the convention to help shape the party platform in a more progressive direction and maybe his delegates could throw their support to one of the more popular candidates like clinton, obama, or edwards, in exchange for something. he wanted to help shape the debate and keep it from being some bullshit democratic-leadership-council-style centrist competition for corporate dollars. he probably did help shape the debate and get everyone else in the democratic field to come out strongly against the war in iraq (although it sure took hillary clinton a helluva long time to come around on the iraq issue). anyway, what the flop is going on with dennis kucinich dropping out of the race? guess what: some corporate asshole is challenging him in the democratic primary, not for president, but for congress, in dennis kucinich’s home district of cleveland, ohio. and dennis kucinich is basically the leader of the progressive wing of the democrats in congress. you know, the ones who are willing to stand up to bullshit like giving bush a blank check on the war in iraq. check out what his message is now:



isn’t this just great? the fat cats are trying to buy out the democratic party and keep it from actually doing anything to help working-class people, to make it into another corporate party like the republicans that only cares about the wealthy. they are trying to increase their control of congress, since they already own 100% of the republican party but they are trying to increase the share of the democrats they own, and thereby eliminate any voices of dissent for their plutocratic agenda. they are trying to get rid of the congressman who led the fight against the u.s.a. patriot act from the beginning, led the fight against the war in iraq from the beginning, and led the fight against the bush administration from the beginning. so... now in the presidential race, we really are down to 3 democrats: hillary clinton, barack obama, and john edwards, the only ones the media was giving a fair shot to in the first place. i admit, i have been manipulated by the talking heads in the media, and all of the fighting between the hillary clinton and barack obama campaigns, playing right into the hands of the republicans. well not any longer.

there is no point in saying anything bad about one democratic candidate for president in order to make another look better by comparison. all that does is help republicans. my thinking on this was a bit cloudy before but now i can see clearly. i may not see eye-to-eye with hillary clinton or her husband bill clinton on everything, but we have got to win this thing in november against the republicans, no matter which candidate we choose! among republicans, hillary clinton is viewed as some ultra-left-wing librul extremist who would basically implement communism and have us all reading quotations from chairman mao while she has a tea party with hugo chavez, fidel castro, and kim jong il. on the other hand, i have observed her carefully over the years and found her to be a “triangulator”, that is, a centrist, whose positions on the issues are carefully crafted to appeal to the broadest possible percentage of eligible voters, and have no basis in any sort of ideology, just pure pragmatism and desire for victory. there are some advantages to this approach. unlike president dumbya, she would never ignore the will of the electorate, if mass popular opinion on an issue went in the opposite direction from her policies. she would actually respond to the will of the people, and would probably be doing enough polling so that she knows what we want even better than we do ourselves, since each of us only knows our own opinion and those of a few other acquaintances, but she would have mass aggregate data of everyone’s opinions. the only real drawback to this approach of hers is, sometimes i believe the majority of the public actually is wrong. and during campaigns, people are voting with their money, and the more money you have, the more your vote counts. but wealthy interests are backing all of the major candidates. they are also putting money into the obama campaign and even the edwards campaign. john edwards especially gets support from trial lawyers, and i have never been able to figure out whether that is good or bad. i mean, we kinda need to have a judicial system where there are fair trials in order to have a free country. but all 3 of the democratic candidates left are lawyers who went on to have careers in the u.s. senate. they all have very similar positions on the issues. now i think barack obama makes decisions in a different way from the others, because when he publicly declared his opposition to war in iraq, this was not a very popular view at the time. but history proved he was correct to argue against starting a costly and bloody war based on lies against a nation that had not done anything to provoke it. now, it is too late to go back and undo the war ever happening in the first place. hillary clinton and john edwards both voted in favor of authorizing war with iraq, which at the time, seemed like the “safe” thing to do, since it would make them look “tough” on “national security”, an “issue” that democrats are supposedly “weak” on. remember that the vote to authorize the war happened in 2002, just a bit over a year after september 11, 2001, and the public overwhelmingly supported republicans in the 2002 midterm elections on the fake-ass issue of “national security”. it is wonderful that now in 2008 someone like rudy giuliani who is running on 9/11 and national security is getting his ass handed to him on a stick in these elections, and is probably going to lose florida badly, even though that is the only state he has campaigned in for the last month and a half. in 2002 the republicans won the midterm elections by exploiting the public’s fears about terrorism and insinuating that democrats would fail to protect the nation and wound surrender to the terrorists. that is also the technique dumbya used to win the 2004 presidential election, portraying john kerry as a wishy-washy french aristocrat weakling who would surrender to osama bin laden and let al qaeda take over the entire world. both of those elections were about spin and propaganda and bullshit, not about any real issues. and now we have an election where the 3 democratic candidates left in the race have basically the same positions on all the major issues, at least right now. there are a few minor differences, but nothing of any real significance. all of them want to end the war, all of them have the same position on illegal immigration, all of them want a better economy with more jobs that are better paying, and everyone gets a pony. on the republican side this time around, there are some actual differences. john mccain and ron paul both oppose torture, but the other guys think that to be tough on terrorism, we ought to basically set fire to the constitution and ignore the writ of habeas corpus and geneva conventions and everything. rudy giuliani is pro-abortion, mitt romney used to be adamantly pro-abortion when he ran for office in liberal massachusetts but is not adamantly anti-abortion in conservative republican primaries for president, and all the other republicans are adamantly anti-abortion. john mccain opposed the bush tax cuts but now supports them, rudy giuliani supported them from the beginning, ron paul supported them from the beginning, and who knows what mike huckabee or mitt romney thought about those tax cuts? republicans salivate when they hear the name ronald reagan the same way pavlov’s dogs salivated when they heard a bell, whereas to mention the name ronald reagan to a democratic audience elicits disgust and contempt for the former president who left office when i was 6 years old. anyway, each of the republicans running for president is bad, but in a unique way. i saw an interview of john mccain’s mother on c-span and she is just... indescribable. she made a bit of a political misstep by saying john mccain has zero support from the republican party base or the republican establishment. but mostly she just seemed incredibly old-fashioned, but in a way that made her an endearing and likable character. a very old lady who is still vivacious, but not everything she says makes perfect sense (like when she was talking about why john mccain went to the naval academy she became a bit perplexed about why he went there, since at the time he really did not want to go there and she could not remember why he ended up going). she just says whatever she thinks without questioning whether it is a good idea to say it or not, who apparently used to be a very submissive wife but is now quite independent as a widow. i don’t think that she is senile or has dementia per se, but i have noticed that older people tend to get a bit more set in their views and stubborn and outspoken, and not make quite as much sense. like presidential candidate mike gravel on the democratic side, who seems like a pretty stubborn and outspoken fellow who says whatever he thinks and does not care about polls or stuff like that. he was a u.s. senator, like, 100 years ago. and left-wing intellectual noam chomsky (professor at m.i.t. and bestselling author and popular public speaker) is also like that, very stubborn and outspoken. i think that may also be what is wrong with ralph nader; he just has grumpy old man syndrome. but maybe these people are onto something, and maybe the rich corporate bastards are trying to buy out the democratic party the same way they did to the republicans. who knows? since edwards, obama, and clinton have pretty much identical positions on all the major issues, who is writing their position papers, and why do they all end up with the same results? could it be the same wealthy bastards who write the position papers for the republicans? now the candidates all have different rhetoric and campaign styles, and present themselves differently, and have different life stories, different races and genders, and appeal to different demographics of voters. but it is like they are all different-looking boxes with the same exact present inside each box, waiting for you to open it. on the outside, these candidates may seem different, but inside, they are all the same. so really, when it comes down to it, i am supporting barack obama because i like the way he is packaged and marketed better than the way hillary clinton or john edwards is packaged and marketed. i am well aware that all 3 are the same product. i don’t think hillary clinton or john edwards has a message and a public image that would do as well in a general election as barack obama. i have observed politics and figured out that image is everything, that making yourself look good and your opponents look bad is everything, and that if people in the media swoon over one candidate and spew venom towards another, the one they are swooning over has a much better chance of winning than the one all the venom is spewed onto. a public figure who is already despised by half of americans and has been well known for years, such as hillary clinton, is not able to position themselves and market themselves in whatever way they choose. someone like barack obama, whom nobody ever heard of until a few years ago, can position themselves however they want and market themselves however they want; however, conversely, there is the danger that their opponents can caricature them in whatever negative way they want, and what really matters is who has a better p.r. campaign, rather than any issues. it is more like a beauty contest or popularity contest than a decision based on any actual issues. that is how george w. bush won 2 presidential elections (although he did lose the popular vote the first time, even though the electoral vote is the only one that matters in picking a president). if any significant portion of the electorate actually gave a flying fuck about the issues, dennis kucinich would be the front-runner for president of the united states, rather than fighting to keep his seat in congress. but what do people care about? nothing but the horse-race, handicapping, predicting, seeing who outperforms predictions and who underperforms, seeing who does the best job portraying themselves well and their opponents poorly, and focusing on any conflicts and magnifying their importance while ignoring any signs of agreement. i have realized that this whole debate about the first female or black or mormon or whatever president is nothing but complete and utter bullshit. i don’t give a flying fuck if the next president is black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, or purple. i don’t care if they believe in god, allah, “bob”, vishnu, the flying spaghetti monster, the invisible pink unicorn, or magic underwear, as long as their beliefs do not undermine their ability to competently govern in the national interest or their ability to be inclusive towards others who do not believe in the same bullshit as them, but rather different bullshit (since everyone believes in some sort of bullshit). i want someone who can win the general election and then take this country’s policies on a left turn without pissing off enough people to lose congress back to the right-wingers. i want someone who can help decrease the amount of people killing other people, whether it is americans and foreigners killing each other in war, or americans killing other americans in crime, or foreigners killing other foreigners in genocide. i want a leader that does not automatically piss off half the people in the country as soon as that person’s name is heard. and i do not want democrats attacking other democrats in an election year such as this one. i have criticized bill clinton recently, which i think might be ok, since he is not running for office and probably never will. but maybe that was a bad move, since it might make his wife look bad. whatever... she already looks bad anyway, and i doubt anyone cares what i think, or would quote from my blog in campaign commercials. i am just an anonymous internet nobody, after all. i just wish we democrats could win, and we could tell the corporate lobbyists the same thing dick cheney told a senator he didn’t like: “go fuck yourself!” i wish people like dennis kucinich had a chance, and did not have to fight so hard for political survival against the monied interests of the rich and powerful, the special interest groups who hate the idea of ordinary americans having a say in anything, who just want more money and power for themselves and don’t care about anyone else. and i wish the republicans would let people of principle like ron paul take over their party, rather than simply catering to the same special interests as usual and ignoring the people. ron paul actually believes in the things other republicans claim to believe in, like smaller government, freedom, etc. the other republicans are just completely full of crap about everything, but crap is what the public wants, and what wins elections, so it is what the public gets. i see commercials on tv for ditech.com advertising refinancing for home mortgages, commercials with the slogan “people are smart”. hah! if “people are smart”, how come the housing and credit markets are in complete collapse? aren’t companies like ditech.com partially to blame for that shit? but shouldn’t some of the blame also go to the “people” who are really not very “smart” after all when it comes to their financial decision-making? and if people suck ass when it comes to dealing with their own money, how on earth do we expect them to be able to decide who to entrust with dealing with billions of taxpayer dollars? it turns out the financial wizards of the big banking companies were actually major league dumbasses when it came to these mortgage-backed securities, a complicated scheme that was supposed to eliminate risk, where they completely miscalculated everything, assuming housing prices would never, ever decrease, among many other boneheaded assumptions. the same types of miscalculations and secret financial shenanigans led to the downfall of enron and the accounting firm arthur andersen. and perhaps, complicated financial shenanigans by unscrupulous politicians could lead to the entire united states government going bankrupt. for crying out loud, the only candidate who actually understands what the federal reserve system is is ron paul, and his view is we have to get back to the gold standard, although perhaps his view is a bit out there. but we have other politicians saying that federal reserve chairman ben bernake was right to cut interest rates by 3/4% the other day. why do we even have a central bank in the first place? centralized control of the economy, or a command economy, is a prominent feature of communism. now we have a mixed economy, neither capitalism nor communism... true capitalism can never really exist because there must always be a government to protect the wealthy from the poor, and collect taxes for this purpose. under anarchy, people would simply steal whatever they want, and property and theft would be one and the same. property is theft and theft is property. it takes a government to keep property in the hands of one person and out of the hands of some other person, by making theft into a punishable crime and protecting property rights. law enforcement requires taxation to pay for it. the primary purpose of government is to subjugate the masses with a complex set of laws and regulations that favor the rich and powerful. and the corporate media is trying to divide the democratic party by race, by gender, and by class, and promote divisions in order to help the republicans win, since republicans always are on the side of big corporations. and by the way, big corporations have nothing to do with capitalism. big corporations are protected by the government from competition by upstarts who wish to compete. if it weren’t for the government, big corporations would not exist in the first place, and they are dependent upon the government to continue rigging all the laws and regulations in their favor, and continue funneling them taxpayer money. now john edwards is very vocal in his opposition to big corporations, and i agree with him completely. however, i do not underestimate the big corporations at all, and i think someone with a message like him has no chance in a corporate media that controls the debate, so if he were to get the nomination, the media would stop at nothing to make sure he loses the general election. big corporations would never allow a president who openly opposes them, unless they are sure that it is just bullshit, just meaningless pandering that will not be accompanied by any action against them. who was the last president to stand up to big corporations? theodore roosevelt. in fact he was the only president who ever really stood up to them. and he was a republican! however, he did end up leaving the republicans and founding his own party, which he called the progressive party. and today, we liberals like to call ourselves progressives, in that proud progressive tradition going back to the first decade of the 1900s. that was when we first had child labor laws, workplace safety laws, food safety laws, antitrust laws, and other sorts of good laws that actually protect people from the corporations. but one of the biggest problems nowadays is the decline of labor unions. i have never been a part of a labor union, nor have i ever had the chance. are labor unions becoming unnecessary, a relic of the past? or is it more important than ever that more workers in more industries unionize so that they can collectively bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits, and working conditions? free-trade agreements are making jobs go to countries that don’t have labor unions, and the entire labor union system is collapsing. without labor unions, the democratic party will be in a much more weakened position, and the corporations will be able to dominate the economic policymaking in both political parties. and the republicans will always end up winning in the end, since the people with all the money will spend a lot of their cash on advertising to make the rest of us support the same candidates as them, giving us a plutocracy. just look at mitt romney and how he, a wealthy businessman, has attracted so many donations from other wealthy businessmen. he is the most corporate of all candidates, by far. he changes his message every week, and his speeches always sound like advertising pitches thought up by someone on madison avenue who writes commercials. he spent most of his career as a management consultant for large corporations. it is very obvious whose side he is on. we already have a c.e.o. president and his name is george dumbya bush, and look at where that has gotten us. by the way, the wealthy corporate interests would never let mike huckabee win, because he uses economic populist rhetoric just like john edwards. if he is the nominee, they will make sure the democrat wins, unless the democrat is john edwards. mike huckabee’s plans like the “fair tax” would actually benefit the wealthy, but since he promotes his plans using rhetoric that appeals to lower-income people, the wealthy are very distrustful of him. and if the wealthy actually believed in capitalism they would support ron paul, but it is obvious that they want big goverment around, to help out big corporations with corporate welfare and with regulations too complicated for small businesses to comply with. big business might lobby against regulation, but really, regulation is the best thing that ever happened to large corporations, because it makes it impossible for small businesses to compete with their larger counterparts, even if that is not the intention of the regulation. everything is quite paradoxical in a way, and each of the candidates in both parties is a paradoxical mystery wrapped in a riddle hidden in a secret encoded message in a language that doesn’t exist. nobody can really tell what any of the candidates would do if they became president. but we do know what dennis kucinich has been doing in congress for years, and we know that he needs to stay there and keep fighting the good fight inside congress for the rest of his life, until he dies of old age, many, many years from now. locally in upstate new york we have a similar progressive democrat with a very, very impressive voting record for years, who has turned out to be right about pretty much everything, and his name is congressman maurice hinchey. i am in the district of a newer congressman, mike arcuri, who has just been in congress for 1 year so far, and he has a voting record that is sort-of progressive, and he joined the blue dog coalition right at the time he entered congress, which is considered a coalition of the most conservative democrats in congress. mike arcuri, a democrat, replaced sherwood boehlert, a republican, in the 2006 elections. and rep. boehlert was one of the most centrist or even left-wing republicans in congress, perhaps the 2nd most left-wing republican after rep. chris shays of connecticut. our local congressman maurice hinchey has pretty much the same voting record of dennis kucinich on everything, since they both represent what howard dean called “the democratic wing of the democratic party”. anyway, we need to stop letting the media dissect the public into different racial groups, genders, age groups, and religions, when looking at voting results. and the media should stop being provocateurs that try to stir up trouble between the candidates. the whole aim of the media is to control who we vote for by telling us what to think and what to believe about each of the candidates. i am sick of this whole expectations game! hillary clinton winning new hampshire was only a big surprise to people whose expectations were way out of whack after iowa and a few polls showing barack obama having a bounce, but her win there should not have been a surprise to anyone, given the fact that she had held a major lead in the polls there for many months prior to less than 1 week with obama ahead. and there is no such thing as a “must-win” state for any candidate. candidates can stay in the race as long as they want, and to hell with any pundits who tell them to drop out of the race. we do not need people in the media prejudging the outcome of elections before the elections even happen. how about just reporting on things that actually happen, for a change, instead of having wild speculation? leave the wild speculation to bloggers like me! i predict barack obama will win south carolina today, hillary clinton will be second, and john edwards third. i predict john mccain winning florida, mitt romney second, rudy giuliani third, mike huckabee fourth, and ron paul fifth. see? i can make wild predictions too! both of those will probably turn out to be wrong, since i predicted way too much, especially on the republican race in florida! oh, and i also predict rudy giuliani and john edwards will both drop out of their races, before any other candidates in either of their parties. of course all of my predictions here are bullshit and i just made them up and they have no relevance to reality whatsoever, and are no better than fortunetelling or horoscopes. but all it takes to be a pundit is to be able to make shit like that up, out of thin air, and have some sort of silly justification for it, so i am eminently qualified. oh, and as for dennis kucinich’s race to be re-elected to the u.s. house of representatives? he will win. easily. yet another prediction i am making, based on my pure gut feeling, rather than any solid evidence of any kind. maybe i could go on cnn to replace james carville or paul begala, who were both kicked off recently for being clinton supporters. (cnn’s reasoning: they cannot be trusted to provide objective analysis of the campaign if they openly support one particular candidate. cnn wanted to have pundits who, like wolf blitzer, are capable of at least pretending to be neutral.) i can pretend to be neutral too. i am completely neutral about president george w. bush. is he a good president or a bad president? i have no feelings one way or the other. i would make a perfect objective news pundit! which is worse: racism or sexism? i don’t care, because i am completely neutral about everything, and i am probably from switzerland because i am so goddamn neutral! make me a pundit already, cnn!

dirty politics

well lately i have been paying a great deal of attention to the news surrounding the presidential campaigns and primaries and caucuses, and there is a great deal of dirty politics. there was a long list of comments from people in the clinton campaign insulting or denouncing barack obama in various ways, from calling him a kid to a drug dealer to the hip black friend people wish they had to calling voting for him a roll of the dice to calling the media/public perceptions of barack obama a fairy tale. a great deal of these negative attacks were done by former president bill clinton. you know, a lot of people are talking about ronald reagan nowadays for some reason. the republican candidates are all claiming to be the most like ronald reagan and the ones who can unite the reagan coalition of the 1980s. barack obama made the news for praising how ronald reagan was able to get his message across and win elections using charisma and sounding positive. hillary clinton has also praised ronald reagan for the same thing, and lists reagan as one of her favorite presidents on her website. yet we have bill clinton denouncing barack obama for saying the exact same stuff about ronald reagan that hillary clinton said. basically, bill clinton is the king of dirty politics, and has demonstrated that all of the dirty political attacks against him over the years convinced him that he had to resort to the same sort of dick morris/karl rove-style dirty politics that the republicans use. i have lost all respect for bill clinton, whom i wtill admired a great deal when he gave my commencement speech at cornell in 2004 when i graduated. i know the truth about bill clinton: he is and always has been a centrist, a master of propaganda (i remember being completely awed and mesmerized by all of his state of the union addresses), and he does not care about the democratic party. he is leading the charge against barack obama and treading very dangerous waters with some of the things he says, which threaten to break apart the coalition of the democratic party. and what is the dirty campaign tactic that the clintons used in nevada? well, several clinton supporters were part of a group of democratic party officials in nevada who approved the caucus process for the 2008 elections which would have 9 caucuses held at casinos, and the votes of the people voting in the casinos, who would all be shift workers, 40% hispanic, would count 5 or 10 times as much as people in the other caucuses held elsewhere in the state of nevada. the clintons and their supporters had absolutely no problem with this system which was basically rigged in their favor, since these shift workers were part of the culinary workers union that was expected all along to support hillary clinton. then, earlier this month of january 2008, the culinary workers union unexpectedly endorsed barack obama, and the very same clinton supporters who originally helped devise this caucus plan immediately filed a lawsuit to prevent the shift voters from voting at all and shut them out completely. this lawsuit thankfully failed, but bill clinton led a campaign to court the members of the culinary workers union and try to convince as many as possible to go against their union leadership and vote for hillary clinton. on the day of the caucuses, he went around to all of the 9 caucuses at the casinos for the shift workers, and personally campaigned for his wife, while people were voting, using every last ounce of his charisma. and it worked. the people in the 9 caucuses for shift workers that the clintons had tried to shut down favored clinton over obama in 7 out of those 9 caucuses, despite the fact that the clintons had tried to prevent them from having the opportunity to vote at all. hillary clinton won in the las vegas area where most of the people of nevada live, but all across the rest of the state, where there is low population density, barack obama won. most disturbing of all, african-americans voted for barack obama over hillary clinton by more than a 6 to 1 margin, while hispanics voted for hillary clinton over barack obama by over a 2 and a half to 1 margin. through their race-baiting campaign against barack obama, trying to pigeonhole him as “the black candidate” like al sharpton or jesse jackson was successfully pigeonholed, they managed to alienate black people completely, despite bill clinton’s record of being someone black people used to love, who was nicknamed the “first black president” by one of his black supporters. and as for why hispanics overwhelmingly favored hillary clinton, i really have no idea why that happened, but it seems like a bad thing, like racial tensions between black people and hispanics that we do not need right now. white people, of course, were split, favoring hillary clinton but not by any huge margin, which seems much more healthy. and there were the same generational and gender divides of before, with women favoring hillary clinton and men favoring barack obama, and with old people favoring hillary clinton and young people favoring barack obama. i suppose that since i am young and male, i fall perfectly into the demographic of people who support barack obama, and yes, i do support him. anyway, i certainly hope barack obama can win south carolina and go on to win the nomination and the general election to become the next president of the united states. his chances in south carolina look very good, given the race-baiting of the clintons that has made them rapidly become very unpopular among african-americans after being very popular among the same group less than a month earlier. and let us not forget how hillary clinton won in new hampshire by playing the gender card. and she won nevada since almost all of the population resides in a very small geographic area and her husband campaigned there and he is still quite popular among democrats. barack obama supporters like me have been very vocal about the dishonesty and dirty politics of the clintons, but barack obama himself has remained above the fray and almost entirely avoided saying anything negative about the clintons. this guy has a lot of class, and is trying his best not to hurt the chances of the democrats in the general election, while it seems the clintons are hell-bent on creating divisions within the party and having negative campaigns against fellow democrats which undermine the party in the general election. so if you are someone concerned about democrats winning in november, i would not recommend supporting a candidate who is trying to create divisions within the party and tear other democratic candidates down. if you watch barack obama’s speeches, not once does he ever have a negative attack on a fellow democrat, except on very rare occasions where he does not even mention them by name, and only criticizes them very mildly. he is the polar opposite of bill clinton, the man who lost congress for the democrats in 1994 and rendered the democratic party completely impotent for an entire decade, who turned the party from a party that stood for principle on liberalism even if sticking to principle meant losing elections sometimes, to a party that had no principles and was republican-lite centrism disguised with sophistry. only after george w. bush proved himself to be the worst president in history did the democratic party really regain its values and principles, only after michael moore made the film fahrenheit 9/11 that woke this country up. and michael moore had voted for ralph nader rather than al gore in 2000. why? because bill clinton tried to kill liberalism and lost congress to the republicans and then went on to help them end welfare, pass nafta, and betray the liberal/progressive movement in many other ways. he had people like me fooled, but not anymore. i have found out more about president clinton and learned he was not as great as i thought, not by any means. his only major plus was his oratory, his ability at giving great speeches, something that barack obama can do but his wife can’t. but barack obama has other assets besides giving great speeches. he is a true liberal/progressive who can get independents and republicans to vote for him and vote democratic. he can help realize the dream of martin luther king jr., and bring unity to this nation and end the bitter divisions we have. and he is not burdened by all of the clinton baggage that would have us re-fighting all of the battles of the 1990s and make our party lose people to the republicans. just look here to see how many people are willing to bolt the democrats to vote for the republicans or a third-party candidate or stay home if hillary clinton is the nominee. that link is from a liberal blog that always supports democrats and opposes republicans, and you can see the poisonous atmosphere that the clintons have created if you look at all of the comments people posted there. although i would vote for any of the democratic candidates if they are the nominee on the ballot in november, i cannot speak for all of my fellow obama supporters, and it seems many of them are so disgusted with the clintons’ karl rove-style attack machine that they are willing to vote for third-party, independent, or republican candidates. i have also seen this phenomenon of people in the democratic party who refuse to vote for hillary clinton on the site huffingtonpost.com, ever since she first announced. and i see it at dailykos.com, even though that site officially claims to be 100% committed to helping the democratic party win elections, and people who do not share that goal are unwelcome at dailykos.com. now huffingtonpost.com is run by arianna huffington, who, like hillary clinton, is a strong woman who got a career in politics by being the wife of a prominent politician. and arianna huffington, while she used to be a republican, has been a liberal/progressive for years now, although not really a staunch supporter of any party, and she famously ran for governor of california against arnold schwarzenegger and many other candidates after governor gray davis was “recalled”. virtually nobody voted for her, since she was an independent and her only prominent backer was herself. i am a big fan of arianna huffington, and she, like me, supports barack obama. she also really really hates hillary clinton, which seems odd coming from a strong woman and a progressive like arianna huffington, but what it really shows is how a lot of people like ms. huffington and myself are smart enough not to just blindly support whoever happens to have the same gender or race or religion as themselves. and up until recently, the majority of african-americans supported hillary clinton, rather than just blindly supporting barack obama, which shows that they, too, are thinking seriously about things. but the major shift away from hillary and towards obama among black people shows how badly her campaign has alienated black people. and none of this was done by the barack obama campaign. it was brought up by individual people like myself and many others who support barack obama, most of whom have no ties whatsoever to the barack obama campaign. we are just sick and tired of all the negative attacks on him by people who claim to be democrats. now it is fine and well and good to attack him for not being liberal or progressive or left-wing enough, to say that he is republican-lite or a centrist. why? this kind of attack does not damage someone in a general election, and may actually help them win a general election. i am trying not to damage hillary clinton in a general election, by only criticizing her from the left. i am not resorting to personal attacks or trying to stir up racism or sexism or other prejudice. and i have absolutely no problem with a black president, a female president, a mormon president, a catholic president, a jewish president, a buddhist president, a hispanic president, a native american president, an atheist president, an asian president, or a subgenius president. i would have a problem with a muslim or a hindu or a scientologist or another christian fundamentalist president, though, since those belief systems completely go against my beliefs. muslims believe in jihad, hindus believe in the caste system, scientologists are a dangerous cult and actually kill people, and christian fundamentalists believe in sexism and homophobia and using the government to force their religion down everyone else’s throats. actually, muslims also believe in sexism and homophobia and using the government to force their religion down everyone else’s throats, at least in all the countries they run. so they are a lot like christian fundamentalists. in the “culture wars” between fundamentalists and secularists, the islamic and christian fundamentalists are both allies in the fight against modernity, science, human rights, and basic human decency. christian fundamentalists like mike huckabee are little different from their islamic fundamentalist counterparts. we democrats need to stop these dirty politics against each other and focus on winning the general election against the republicans. if only bill clinton would just STFU and stop making more and more people dislike both him and his wife. i mean, sometimes it seems like bill clinton is actually trying to sabotage his wife’s campaign and make her lose. i really do not understand what the hell is wrong with bill clinton, but he needs to keep his mouth shut and let hillary do the talking.

as for the republicans... they have all been breaking what ronald reagan called the 11th commandment, namely “never attack a fellow republican”, which hurts their chances in a general election just like the clinton-obama infighting and attacks hurt the democrats. mitt romney won by a huge margin in nevada and ron paul surprisingly came in second in that state. half of the people who voted for mitt romney were mormons, but he would have still won by a large margin even without them. so since he has won wyoming, michigan, and nevada, that is 3 out of the 6 states so far. not bad! his negative attacks against mike huckabee and john mccain really seem to have worked... just not in south carolina, where john mccain won and mike huckabee was second, and even empty suit fred thompson beat mitt romney in south carolina. so mike huckabee has iowa, which is one, john mccain has both new hampshire and south carolina, and mitt romney has the 3 i mentioned earlier. fred thompson went on the attack against mike huckabee, ignoring the other candidates, which helped john mccain win south carolina. many pundits claim fred thompson likes john mccain and is trying to get john mccain elected. i am not sure about that, and it seems kind of dubious, but if it is true, that is very good news for john mccain. however, i would much, much prefer mitt romney as the republican candidate, as opposed to john mccain, mike huckabee, or any of the others, except for ron paul. ron paul would be the best republican candidate to run against. fred thompson would be 2nd best, rudy giuliani 3rd best, and mitt romney 4th best. mike huckabee would be 5th best, and john mccain would be the worst. what i am talking about is, the best candidate to run against, namely, the one most likely to lose big time. mike huckabee is the only candidate who really scares me about what he might do if elected, but john mccain is the only one who i worry might actually win a general election. john mccain would do especially well against hillary clinton if she is the nominee, since she is running on “experience” as her campaign theme and he has a hell of a lot more of it than her or anyone else running. john mccain would kick her ass so bad it wouldn’t even be funny. his one weak point that i can think of is how old he is. but i do not think his support of the war in iraq would hurt him at all. john mccain opposed the rumsfeld strategy and then supported the “surge” from the beginning. everyone in the news media seems to think that the surge is a brilliant success and that all the naysayers were wrong. john mccain did say he would be willing to have our troops in iraq for 100 years, which could hurt him, but he explains his position on iraq much better than hillary clinton, who was for it before she was against it. remember john kerry? and john edwards? they both did the same thing as hillary clinton when it comes to iraq. and so did bill clinton, despite all his false claims of opposing the war from the start. voters want someone who has the courage of their convictions. barack obama opposed the war in iraq from the start and never wavered. that makes a lot more sense than hillary clinton. oddly enough, john kerry is supporting barack obama. i guess after seeing how “flip-flopping” on the war in iraq hurt him, he did not want another democratic presidential candidate in the general election who had made the same mistake as him, and wanted someone who had shown better judgment. even though john mccain’s support of the war is unpopular and people think the war is wrong, john mccain has the courage of his convictions and can defend his point of view quite well. voters do not usually vote based on the issues, but on personalities and media hype and spin. so out of the leading republican contenders, i think mitt romney is the best poised to win his party’s nomination and then go on to lose badly in the general election. rudy giuliani would probably do even worse, but he has no chance, and will probably not even be able to win florida, despite campaigning there and nowhere else. i hope rudy giuliani does win florida, to keep the republican race wide open and as many candidates as possible still sniping at each other. it is very bad that just as the democratic party is being torn apart over racial and gender divisions, the republicans have no problems with these divisions since all their candidates are white men. the republicans are very divided over religion, which is good. and although i think mike huckabee would lose badly in a general election, i do not want to risk it, because victory for him in either the nomination or the general election elevates the religious right fundamentalists to greater heights of power and influence within the republican party. also, he is charismatic and funny, despite his radical beliefs, and people may be drawn to both his personality and his “fair tax” proposal. mike huckabee has a bigger sense of humor than any other candidate in either party, which could help or hurt him, since people relate better to someone with a sense of humor, but they might be turned off by someone who acts like running for president is just one big joke. but remember that mike huckabee, mitt romney, and rudy giuliani have absolutely no foreign policy experience or experience with the military or defense matters. they all have weaker records on this than either hillary clinton or barack obama, and especially much weaker than john mccain. so i really hope john mccain loses or that the other republicans manage to attack him quite harshly. and as for the issue of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, john mccain’s position on illegal immigration is indistinguishable from that of hillary clinton or barack obama, so that would not be an issue at all in a general election, although it might make anti-illegal-immigration folks like the tom tancredo/lou dobbs crowd stay home or vote for a third-party candidate. anyway, my thinking is this: john mccain must be stopped, and the only person who can do it is mitt romney. john mccain is the only republican candidate with lots of support among independents and democrats. and he has joe lieberman behind him, with all of the might of “joementum”! i have learned to never underestimate joe lieberman. while an endorsement from joe lieberman would be a kiss of death to doom a democrat, it can be very helpful to a republican, because republicans do not think of joe lieberman as a traitor. many of them do think of john mccain as a traitor to his party, though, which is very good. hopefully they will continue to think he is a traitor to his party, and they will nominate an inferior candidate who will easily lose. i am continually perplexed by all the hero-worship of ronald reagan. the hero-worship of martin luther king jr. actually makes sense, because he really was a hero, despite the fact that i disagree with his religious beliefs. ronald reagan was more a villain than a hero. remember george orwell wrote a book called 1984 about a totalitarian new world order? and in 1984, ronald reagan won 49 out of 50 states? that is no coincidence. never forget what happened in 1984! by the way, the real 1984 is actually in the future, since the things in george orwell’s book have not happened yet, but they will someday, and we will call that year the true 1984. similarly, the real 2001 has not happened, since the events of the movie 2001: a space odyssey have not happened yet, with evil robots trying to kill people in space. oddly enough, 2001 may come before 1984, and we may have evil robots on the international space station killing our astronauts before a totalitarian new world order takes over the planet earth. anyway, enough joking around. i was just saying, i do not get what the big deal is with ronald reagan. he did not end communism. islamic fundamentalist terrorists ended communism, with the help of the united states, saudi arabia, and pakistan. it was called charlie wilson’s war, not ronald reagan’s war. and charlie wilson was a democratic congressman from texas, who helped organize the united states government’s covert support of islamic terrorists in afghanistan back in the 1980s. thank you charlie wilson! i am very grateful for how you helped create al qaeda! good job! and all of this happened under ronald reagan’s watch, run by a cia whose director was appointed by ronald reagan. ronald reagan was president when i was born. i knew absolutely nothing about him when he was president, and never heard of communism until it was over. but from what i have heard, ronald reagan was no good, especially for poor people and minorities. ronald reagan is said to have put together the coalition of the religious right (a.k.a. social conservatives) and big business (a.k.a. fiscal conservatives), and his coalition even included democrats and libertarians. he piled up massive amounts of national debt and spent ridiculous amounts of money on the military when we did not need it and were not even at war. he supported right-wing fascist dictatorships like the one of general augusto pinochet that carried out programs of genocide against their own people (if killing thousands rather than millions can be considered genocide). and there was a big mess with iran-contra, where it turned out the united states was actually helping out our sworn enemy, iran, which had taken all of the hostages that got released the day ronald reagan took office because of a secret deal ronald reagan made with the iranians to help him get elected and defeat jimmy carter. jimmy carter put solar panels on the white house roof and ronald reagan took them off. that is all i need to know to know that ronald reagan was a bad president. we need clean, renewable sources of energy like solar energy. anyway, i wish all the republicans except john mccain the best of luck in winning their nomination. and i know the republicans were involved in plenty of dirty politics against each other, doing push-polling and other such shenanigans. i hope they continue to trash each other. we cannot afford another republican president at this time, one who will continue all the policies of george w. bush and keep many of the same people from his administration. i “hope” that we can “experience” “change” by having a democratic president and having an even more democratic congress. now some people might claim that real change only happens with the green party or the libertarian party or the reform party or the communist party or with independents, and that democrats and republicans are the same thing. but those people are nuts. we have winner-take-all elections in this country, which means only a 2-party or 1-party system can work unless the rules for elections are completely changed. and the 2-party system is obviously much better than a 1-party system. it would take a lot of work changing the laws to make more than 2 parties viable... not going to happen any time soon, especially with people from those 2 parties in charge of everything and not wanting more competition. so we need to accept reality and work within this system we have. and just think... the clintons tried to stop their own supporters from voting in las vegas. what other crazy shenanigans will happen in this election between now and november? what if ron paul somehow magically wins based on his strength among conspiracy theorists? what if jesus comes back from the dead and publicly endorses mike huckabee? what if dennis kucinich manages to win based on his support for single-payer health insurance for all americans? what if ronald reagan comes back from the dead and endorses someone? what if mike bloomberg spends 1 billion dollars of his own money to win and it works? and who will be vice president? it could be anybody. probably someone with a lot of vice. like people in las vegas. i bet the vice president will probably be a prostitute from nevada where it is legal. that will get a lot of people’s attention. or maybe a space alien. recently the good people of texas saw some ufo’s in the sky. it reminds me of my favorite ufo cult that started in texas, founded by j.r. “bob” dobbs and currently run by the radical fundamentalist end-times preacher rev. ivan stang. or we could have a robot as vice president, and the robocratic party would make a comeback after losing in 2004. or we could just have a dumb animal as vice president. like my dog. except my dog is really smart, so that wouldn’t work. maybe paris hilton’s dog tinkerbell would be a good vice president. or, since vice presidential candidates are traditionally supposed to trash-talk their opponents, how about white rapper eminem for vice president. or even president! marshall mathers would make a great president. or we could have the first black president: calvin broadus for president. you have probably never heard the name calvin broadus, but he is the greatest rapper in history, calling himself snoop doggy dogg or snoop dogg. or how about the first asian president? alex chiu for president! if you vote for alex chiu you get a free immortality ring and then you get to live forever, absolutely free! satisfaction guaranteed or your $0.00 back! or, even better: dr. gene ray for president! dr. gene ray is the wisest human, although he is not human. just ask him! dr. gene ray is also above god! i wonder how many other presidential candidates can make the same claim. of course, dr. gene ray and alex chiu are both paranoid schizophrenics. here is a video from theonion.com about how the government needs to spy on paranoid schizophrenics like alex chiu and gene ray:


In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?

victory for kos in michigan!

blogger markos moulitsas zúniga has succeeded in getting his buddy mitt romney elected in michigan, in a crazy scheme he proposed back on thursday january 10th! this is wonderful news! now the republicans are in disarray, since mike huckabee won iowa, mitt romney won wyoming (a contest which nobody in the mainstream media noticed because they are a bunch of dumbasses), john mccain won in new hampshire, and mitt romney has just won in michigan. so mitt romney has won 2 out of 4 contests so far and come in second in the other 2. brilliant! as the weakest of the republican candidates, a flip-flopper who will say anything to get elected, who does not really have any principles he staunchly believes in other than his very unpopular religion of mormonism, mitt romney is the best choice to run in the general election. and rudy giuliani is betting everything on florida, and we need to make sure that happens too, in order to keep the republicans in disarray. watch an attack ad made by one of the kossacks (kos’s brainwashed zombie cultist followers) about how awesome mitt romney is:



as for the democrats, i think i have been a bit too tough on hillary clinton. all of my attacks on her have been from the left, not the right, saying that she is too right-wing, too much like a republican. of course, i still think she is far better than any republican and would definitely vote for her in the general election. i already voted for her for senator from new york. twice. i just wish she were a bit more progressive with her voting record in the senate, a bit more popular in the polls, not someone despised by so many people, with all this baggage from a previous administration that was plagued with scandal. sure, most of that scandal was just republicans playing politics, but i still think that bill clinton has become something of an embarrassment to the democratic party, and we should not have him out in public flapping his mouth and saying things that make him and other democrats look bad in an election year. of course bill clinton has been an embarrassment to the democratic party for years, causing us to lose control of congress in 1994, and getting impeached in 1998. sure he got re-elected in 1996, and that was impressive, but it is very telling that bill clinton only knows how to win elections for himself, not for other democrats that he supports. hillary clinton has not exactly distanced herself from her lying, cheating husband, but i suppose she would rather have him on her side than have him as a scorned ex-lover denouncing her and campaigning for her opponent. anyway, i am still hoping we can move on from these scandals of this past and find someone new to run this country, but not a republican. i personally support barack obama but the other candidates left in the race are also ones i like. now sometimes i get upset about things people say about the other candidates besides the one i support. like this post on huffingtonpost.com is really outrageous in what it says about john edwards, and is patently undemocratic in trying to deprive voters of a choice. i have also been quite impressed with dennis kucinich lately. you know the guy, he voted against the patriot act and the iraq war just like ron paul, except dennis kucinich is a liberal democrat. and like jimmy carter and ronald reagan, dennis kucinich claims to have seen a ufo, which makes sense, since it is hard to identify every flying object you ever see in the sky. dennis kucinich is the only candidate proposing a single-payer healthcare system, which 70% of the american public supported back in 1992, before hillary clinton ruined everything with her healthcare proposal that was developed behind closed doors in secret, the same way dick cheney operates. many countries have a single-payer system, including every other wealthy industrialized nation besides us, and it works, because they spend a lot less on healthcare but people live longer in those countries. in the 2004 election, dennis kucinich stayed in the presidential race all the way up to the conventions, despite obvious evidence john kerry had won a clear majority of delegates. he is someone who will fight to the end no matter what happens. dennis kucinich is financing a recount of the results in new hampshire’s democratic primary, with his own money and the money from his supporters, because the results did not match any of the polls conducted prior to the election, and while barack obama won in precincts where ballots were hand-counted, hillary clinton won in precincts where they were machine-counted. this reminds me of how in 2004, the green party and libertarian party co-financed a recount in ohio of george w. bush’s defeat of john kerry in the general election, which was quite a noble effort by the greens and libertarians, who had nothing to win or lose, except their money to lose by spending it on this. anyway, dennis kucinich was shut out of the most recent msnbc debate that happened tonight, after originally being invited. he had sued in nevada state court to force msnbc to let him in the debate, and won. msnbc appealed to the nevada supreme court and won, limiting the debate to hillary clinton, barack obama, and john edwards, which was patently undemocratic and similar to what fox news did to ron paul. i am all for including as many candidates as possible. anyway, hillary clinton has won michigan, which had zero delegates because the state violated the rules of the democratic national committee (the republicans only gave michigan half its delegates). she won easily, since she was the only name on the ballot. it was about as reliable an indicator as the election results from when saddam hussein ran iraq, where he got 100% of the vote in every election. oh great! who cares? the same kind of fixed election pervez musharraf used to win in pakistan. but whose fault was this? well, barack obama and john edwards had both taken their names off the ballots in michigan and florida, after being pressured by howard dean and the democratic national committee. hillary clinton was the only “top-tier” candidate who refused to follow the democratic national committee’s bullshit orders to take her name off the ballots. a lot of people did vote “undeclared” in michigan, which basically meant they do not support hillary and their candidate was not on the ballot. hopefully the national party will not seat delegates from michigan or florida at the convention, because neither of those states is having any real contest, and they both get zero delegates under the current rules. if the rules are changed to give those states delegates, that amounts to handing out free delegates to hillary clinton unfairly. then again, barack obama and john edwards were gullible enough to agree to take their names off the ballots in both states, not realizing what it would cost them. still, nobody is perfect.

if we used instant runoff voting, we could combine the primaries and general election into a single day, and that is the system i advocate. all the candidates from both major parties and all third parties would be listed on a ballot, and you would number them in your order of preference. the results of each individual’s preferences would all get combined together in a nationwide popular vote but not a winner-take-all vote, rather an instant runoff voting vote. on websites about instant runoff voting you can find out more. the point is, with this system, everyone could have their say, no matter what state they live in, and they could list all the candidates in the order of their preference, in essence voting in both parties’ primaries at the same time, while also having a system that makes it much easier for a third-party or independent candidate to win, breaking up the two-party monopoly on the system. nationwide instant runoff voting. now we could use the condorcet method instead, but it involves matrix math, and, speaking as someone with a mathematics degree from cornell university, i do not think most people are willing to trust mathematicians.

anyway, i am very pleased with the work of markos moulitsas zúniga to get his friend and mine, mitt romney, elected president of the united states, by helping him win the michigan republican presidential primary. it was a brilliant plan and it worked perfectly. now i only hope we can keep fred thompson in this race as long as possible, because recently he has started making lots of attacks on his fellow republicans, although he was mostly focusing on mike huckabee, who in my view is the wrong target, and the real target ought to be john mccain. we have got to defeat john mccain, more than anyone. and as for the democratic race, i have gotten sick of this fighting between hillary clinton and barack obama and the accusations of racism and sexism. even if some people may or may not be racist and/or sexist, those are mainly supporters of the candidates, and not the candidates themselves. although hillary clinton herself did trivialize the work of martin luther king jr. and especially the work of millions of supporters of the civil rights movement, buying into the false theory that history is made by a small number of great leaders rather than mass movements of the public, that will probably not hurt her in the general election. mike huckabee has said he wants to rewrite the constitution to match god’s law. mitt romney is a complete phony and flip-flopper. rudy giuliani’s campaign is entirely based on how he failed to protect his city from terrorists, but then rallied public opinion behind himself afterwards. and john mccain... well it is hard to think of much bad to say about john mccain, since the media loves him so much, and there are hardly any negative stories about him that ever get reported. the worst thing john mccain ever did was support the re-election of george w. bush in 2004, but there are some people who still think it was right to re-elect dubya and not a mistake. campaign finance reform was spearheaded by john mccain and my hero russ feingold. among republicans, john mccain is unpopular for certain things like campaign finance reform, giving illegal immigrants a path to earn citizenship, and other instances of cooperating with democrats, since democrats are seen as some sort of evil enemy that nobody should ever cooperate with. among people who are actually sane, this makes john mccain the most palatable republican, for precisely the same reasons he is disliked among republicans. i was hoping that the kiss-of-death from joe lieberman would doom the candidacy of john mccain, but joe lieberman is very popular among republicans, just like previous traitor zell miller. now it could be argued that just as zell miller and joe lieberman are traitors to the democrats, john mccain is a traitor to the republicans whom they should disown, but it is simply untrue, since john mccain has always supported his party and endorsed and campaigned for fellow republicans. and, as we are seeing with joe lieberman, sometimes if you disown someone and try to kick them out of politics, they come back with a vengeance and help out the other side for revenge. the voters of connecticut were quite wrong to re-elect joe lieberman, and should have known better, as a liberal blue state that usually votes for democrats, and a place with a lot of anti-war sentiment that totally went against joe lieberman and his pro-war neoconservative foreign policy. i suppose the greatest problems for john mccain in a general election would be how he is a pro-war neoconservative himself, espousing neoconservative doctrines in his speeches, and how he (just like every democratic candidate for president) supports letting those illegal “aliens” become citizens. and the religious right does not like how he, a long time ago, denounced people like pat robertson and jerry falwell, even though in recent years, john mccain has cozied up to those same leaders of the religious right and apologized and tried to curry favor with them. mike huckabee, the theocrat, would go down in flames, since the plutocrat wing of the republican party would refuse to support an anti-plutocratic theocrat like him. that is why the daily kos blog endorsed mitt romney for the michigan primary, since he is just the most obvious liar and phony imaginable. since romney belongs to what the religious right considers a cult, they are unwilling to support him. and everyone else will see right through all of his bullshit. i leave you now with an incredibly accurate news report about mitt romney from the world’s most reliable and trusted news source, theonion.com:


Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance

some links regarding the last post

now, most of what i say here is not original thought, which would be much more obvious if i provided hyperlinks to where i actually get my ideas from, usually on other websites, but sometimes not from the internet. anyway, i thought it might be instructive to try to come up with some links that back up what i said in my last post, either things that i read prior to posting it, or things that i have found online since then which reinforce the points i was trying to make.

in the last post i did a bit of attacking of the record of the clinton administration that was in office from 1993 to 2001, you know, the one with bill clinton as president and hillary clinton as first lady. my point was, the clinton administration managed to get itself elected in 1992 and re-elected by a much wider margin in 1996, and also managed to avoid having the president removed from office after his impeachment, but other than this, their record is fairly lackluster. this is not entirely their fault, of course, since after republicans were elected to congress in 1994 and took over in 1995, they had no control over legislation. but the clintons did a horrible job in getting fellow democrats elected to office, both to congress and to governorships, as well as passing on the presidency to a fellow democrat, former vice president al gore. they screwed things up for the democratic party big time. and as for leadership on the issues, they certainly provided some, but not the right way, not a liberal or progressive way. the clintons were centrists and have always been closely associated with a centrist organization known as the democratic leadership council, whose goal it is to put an end to liberalism and turn democrats into republican-lite, into centrists. anyway, here is an article about all that.

now, a few days ago, a leading feminist, an old white lady named gloria steinem, wrote a very sexist op-ed for the new york times. how is it sexist? well, she urges people to vote for hillary clinton, just because hillary clinton is a woman, and talks about how we need a female as president. what if i wrote an article about how important it is to keep electing males as president? that would be sexist, right? we should not judge candidates based on their gender, or race, or anything else of that nature. the article is also racist because she makes light of the struggles of african-americans and claims that women have it much worse when it comes to discrimination. we should not have any sort of discrimination olympics where different groups claim they are the worst oppressed. what about homosexuals, or native americans, or people whose religious beliefs or lack thereof are unpopular with the society of their era? look, the way i see it is this: there are plenty of very wealthy women out there, and women usually inherit what the husband owned, and women live longer than men, plus wives are usually younger than husbands, so most wealthy men will leave behind wealthy widows, and wealth equals power, and there are plenty of influential female celebrities in hollywood, and women are increasingly elected to political offices, and economically speaking, women have it much better than african-americans in the united states, if you look at the average woman compared to the average african-american. and african-american women are doing better than african-american men economically. a lot less women end up in jail than men, so do people go around calling the criminal justice system sexist and accuse it of discriminating against men all the time? in recent years, the percentage of people in jail who are female has been increasing, and i think this is a good sign because it shows people are no longer stuck in traditional gender roles as much as before. anyway, i think it is absolutely ludicrous to claim women have it worse in the united states than african-americans... women make up more than half the population, and are not even a minority, so if they really wanted to run this country, they could do so, with the power of the vote, and elect one of their own, which could very well occur with hillary clinton. now of course i do not advocate electing her solely on the basis of her gender, or otherwise ann coulter would also be equally qualified to be president of the united states. you have to look at the whole picture of a presidential candidate, holistically. i think a lot of feminists like gloria steinem simply have a vested interest in the success of their gender, at the expense of the other gender, in what amounts to a zero sum game, and they are unable to see that perhaps the best way to advance their cause would be cooperation rather than competition between the genders. maybe if we work together instead of fighting, things would work out better. i do not believe in fighting on behalf of one group of people against another group of people just because you happen to belong to the first group of people instead of the second one. the majority of people graduating from college nowadays are women, so in a few decades, if we have not already destroyed humanity through nuclear war or some other madness, and society continues its progress, the majority of highly-paid professionals will be women, since they were the ones who got all the advanced college degrees and worked harder while guys were slacking off and having fun instead of getting any real work done. now of course that is a stereotype too, and i am sure there are also lazy women and hard-working men in my generation, but the majority of people graduating from college are women, and i have read stories about how in many urban areas, the majority of high-paying entry-level jobs for people right out of college are held by women. so i think the idea that women get paid less for doing the same work as men might have been true in the past and might still be true today in the macroeconomy as a whole, but it seems like a problem that will eventually correct itself, although it may take a few decades... but when it does correct itself, i think women will end up earning a lot more money than men, because the trend of increasing female wages and decreasing male wages will not suddenly stop once wages become equal. i think feminists of the gloria steinem variety are dinosaurs, relics of the past, just like racial advocates like jesse jackson and al sharpton, just like people who advocate white supremacy or male dominance over women, neoconservatives, communists, and religious fundamentalists from every religion. all those groups will eventually fade away into obscurity, although the religious fundamentalists might last the longest, because they are so effective at spreading their message to new people and indoctrinating children from an early age with their mind-killing propaganda. i do not believe in any absolutist ideology such as those listed above, since ideologies are imperfect creations of the finite human mind trying to understand complex phenomena in an infinite universe, and they always oversimplify things and always get some things wrong, and unless an ideology is adaptable and able to change with the times, it is headed for the rubbish heap of history. most ideologies classify some things as good and others as evil, on a fairly arbitrary basis that is completely different from one ideology to the next, and there are ideologies that are almost the exact opposite of other ideologies, where what is good in one is evil in another and vice versa, and ideologies of this sort are what most people use to distinguish between the subjective categories of good and evil. so, as i do not subscribe to the ideology of feminism, the whole idea that women are all victims and this victim mentality is quite foreign to me, not being a woman myself, and i am not sure i can sympathize, given the resources at the disposal of many women in the united states and all the equal rights they have, most notably, the fact that they make up a majority of registered voters. now there may be discrimination against women, but as i see it, this is behavior done by individuals against other individuals, and they ought to be held personally accountable for their actions if they discriminate, but we need not accuse everyone in the entire society of being sexist if there is not adequate evidence to prove such an explosive charge. and the same thing goes for racism... racism is merely a pattern in the behavior of certain individuals in society, and does not include all members of society, and those individuals whose behavior is racist ought to be held personally accountable for their actions. slavery used to be legal in the south, but not everyone owned slaves. you cannot blame slavery on people who did not own slaves, unless they advocated slavery or participated in the slave trade or otherwise helped advance the cause of slavery. when nazi war criminals were put on trial, saying that they were only following orders was not a viable defense. people are responsible for their own actions, and so the nazi war criminals were treated as individuals, rather than as mindless cogs in a machine. so if women are unable to unite behind a female presidential candidate just because she is a woman, that is a good sign, because it shows they are operating as individuals and thinking for themselves, rather than mindlessly engaging in groupthink. men certainly do not unite behind a single candidate either, which is good. anyway, there are some critiques of gloria steinem’s narrow-minded op-ed here and here.

there is also a pro-hillary post here that i found to be full of bullshit here. first it raises the issue of bill clinton’s comments about barack obama that included the bit about it being a “fairy tale”. the video no longer works there, but basically it was not actually a racist thing (as the pro-hillary post agrees), but rather says that barack obama’s unifying and uplifting rhetoric about bringing people together, as well as the media portrayal of him as someone who could actually do what he says in his speeches, is a complete fairy tale. and it also includes a vicious attack on barack obama for comments he made in 2004 in support of the kerry-edwards presidential ticket that were trying to give john kerry and john edwards political cover for the fact that they both voted in favor of war with iraq, like hillary clinton. and bill clinton claims he opposed the war in iraq from the beginning, which is a lie. if so, why did his wife hillary vote in favor of war? anyway, barack obama has always been a staunch opponent of the war in iraq from before it began and he still does oppose it; he just thinks he has to vote in favor of funding for the troops now that they are already there, which hillary clinton also agrees with. so, if the clintons are arguing barack obama is wrong, they are also arguing hillary clinton is wrong, since obama and clinton have the same position on funding the troops now that they are already in iraq. or are the clintons saying it was wrong for barack obama to try to help the kerry-edwards ticket in 2004 defeat george w. bush? hillary clinton recently made some comments about how martin luther king jr. gave some good speeches, but it took president lyndon johnson to pass the voting rights act (which was unimportant according to feminists like gloria steinem who claim blacks got the right to vote 100 years earlier in the 1860s in order to claim women have it worse than black people). it seems hillary clinton and gloria steinem are trying to trivialize the struggle of african-americans and the work of martin luther king jr., and say it takes a white politician like lyndon johnson to actually get anything done.

someone who actually has a sensible opinion of all this is bob herbert of the new york times. he points out how people in the clinton campaign have spread rumors on the internet that barack obama is a muslim, which is a complete and utter lie, since barack obama has always been a christian and is a member of the united church of christ (one of the few churches that is actually tolerant of homosexuals). he also points out that people as highly ranked in the clinton campaign as campaign manager mark penn have said that barack obama was a drug addict or even a drug dealer, doing cocaine. well george w. bush also did cocaine and he got elected, so they had better learn from history. and bill clinton smoked marijuana but “did not inhale”. what a liar! bill clinton has absolutely zero credibility as far as i am concerned. he does not even know what the meaning of the word “is” is, if you recall his testimony before the impeachment hearings. bill clinton may have been a better president than ronald reagan or either of the george bushes, but that is not a very high standard. the whole lot of them are a disgrace to this country! ronald reagan was president when i was born, and i have to say, every president i have ever lived under in my entire life has been a miserable failure, though none nearly as bad as george w. bush. and now it is rev. dr. martin luther king jr. day, and it is time for us to reflect on how hillary clinton has disparaged that man and trivialized his memory and his struggle for civil rights. i am not black or a woman, but i do empathize with both of those groups’ struggles, and i am saddened that the leaders of both of those movements today have lost their way. not only feminists like gloria steinem, but black leaders like jesse jackson and al sharpton, all of whom are people nobody elected to be their leaders. in the case of jesse jackson for instance, he had a sex scandal a while back, and he was one of the few liberals who campaigned to have the government try to keep brain-dead terri schiavo alive despite the fact that when terri schiavo was still a sentient human being, she had expressed to several people that she did not want to be kept alive if she were in a coma for a long time, and would rather have them pull the plug. the terri schiavo case was a symbol of how conservative republicans completely threw all their principles about a smaller government that does not interfere in people’s private lives under the bridge. all of those principles can only be found in libertarians such as ron paul, not in the vast majority of the republican party (except for those few republicans who are like ron paul). but i personally am a liberal democrat, not a libertarian, so i support barack obama. he is not a democratic leadership council triangulating pro-war centrist like hillary clinton. and unlike hillary clinton, he never tried to give political cover to president george w. bush and his war in iraq.