various topics

recently, a poll found that 22% of democrats want barack obama to withdraw from the race, 22% want hillary clinton to withdraw from the race, and the rest are content to see both of them continue duking it out. and a much larger percentage of hillary clinton supporters say they would either not vote or vote for john mccain in the fall if their candidate loses than barack obama supporters, according to another poll. why such animosity? well, if you support hillary clinton, you may have noticed that she personally has done plenty of negative attacks on barack obama, even ignoring all the attacks by others in her campaign, her surrogates, and her supporters in the media like james carville. she said that both she and john mccain are qualified to be commander-in-chief but barack obama is not, essentially endorsing mccain over obama. more recently, she has backpedaled from that appearance of disloyalty to her party, and said that her supporters should vote for the democrat in november rather than for john mccain. she hedged her bets on whether barack obama was a muslim, saying that she didn’t think he was one, as far as she knew, but you would have to ask him. and she said, regarding his pastor jeremiah wright, that rev. wright would certainly not be her pastor, and that you can’t choose your family but you can choose what church to attend. and remember her saying that he was the one who lied about nafta when it was really her, and saying “shame on you, barack obama!” during that episode? she has sent plenty of signals to her supporters not to support barack obama, but now seems to be sending mixed signals. maybe he is good, maybe he is bad. who knows? the funny thing is, i thought that once everyone knew barack obama’s pastor was a crazy radical christian, they would realize he is not a muslim, since after all, he has been attending this church with a crazy radical christian pastor for over 20 years. but no. they still think he is muslim. here is a direct quote from the pew foundation survey that found 23% of anti-obama democrats still think he is a muslim, even after all the controversy about his controversial CHRISTIAN church: “White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.”

now as for the real deal regarding rev. jeremiah wright, he is undoubtedly a controversial figure. and with comments like “god damn america”, he is certainly a radical (although i consider being a radical a compliment and not necessarily a bad thing). and why do i call him crazy? i think all religious people are crazy, and religion is a form of mental illness, and rev. wright is seriously afflicted with a severe case of christianity, one of the many religions out there, waiting to infect unprepared nonbelievers that have not already come up with a proof of the nonexistence of god. plenty of nonbelievers do not have sufficient proof to justify their position, meaning they are easy prey for those who want to convert them to join one of the world’s thousands of religious denominations. and plenty of religious believers (in fact, almost all of them) do not have sufficient proof of their religious beliefs, but most of them are armored with something else stronger than logical proof in keeping a person from changing their mind: faith. faith is the exact opposite of logic, and is actually much more powerful in making someone believe something, since many people distrust logic and reason since they have an anti-intellectual outlook and think of logic and reason as elitist and tools that satan uses. anyway, with regard to rev. wright’s controversial comments, many of them were taken out of context, and the ones that were not simply show him to be a leftist radical like ward churchill, noam chomsky, or many others who are critical of the united states government from a left-wing perspective. now there is nothing wrong with being a leftist radical, of course. i consider myself a leftist radical and so do many other americans, and i think that any nation that does not allow peaceful, nonviolent dissent is totalitarian, not democratic. moreover, dissent is crucial to the proper functioning of a democracy, because without anyone to criticize the government, any government will eventually get completely out of control. our freedom and democracy depend on the continued free speech given to nonviolent radicals of all political persuasions, from left-wing radicals like ward churchill and noam chomsky to right-wing radicals like ann coulter and rush limbaugh. rev. wright is well within the mainstream of leftist radicalism within the united states, a mainstream that rejects violence, rejects communism/marxism, but also rejects many u.s. government policies that there is a consensus in favor of among politicians in washington, d.c. he also belongs to the vast majority of african-americans who believe that the united states is still a racist country, that the wrongs of slavery and jim crow laws and segregation and support for apartheid south africa have not yet been righted, and that black people are victims of white oppression in many ways, resulting in them making much less money on average than white people, being much more likely to be in prison than white people, having lower test scores than white students, having a shorter life expectancy than white people, having more sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy and single mothers than white people, and generally being disadvantaged in many ways that can be shown with statistics. now, many right-wing commentators blame the problems faced by the black community on something other than a government that has historically oppressed them, or racism and discrimination: they blame black people’s problems on black people. if black people are more likely to be on crack cocaine or have aids or be in prison or be below the poverty line, this is their fault, and they should just STOP IT and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, have some personal responsibility, and stop asking the government for help since that is not the government’s role, it is the role of private charities. this conservative view of why black people have so many problems helps explain why most black people are liberal democrats, since conservatives do not give a damn about black people and always blame the victim. and sometimes it seems like liberals do not care either, so people either get disgusted with politics and become completely apathetic about it, or they decide to do something about it and become radical voices of dissent like rev. jeremiah wright. now as for him saying “god damn america” that one time: most christians in the united states assume that our nation has the blessing of god and that whatever we do is righteous and our enemies are always the evil ones. there is no biblical basis for assuming your favorite nation-state is morally blameless and that other nation-states or groups are evil. most fundamentalist christians are also extremely patriotic and refuse to admit that the united states is ever wrong. there are exceptions, like the westboro baptist church led by rev. fred phelps. that church goes much, much, much further than rev. jeremiah wright ever did in condemning the united states, and it is from the far right, not the far left. rev. fred phelps and the westboro baptist church think homosexuality is incredibly evil and that any nation that allows it must be completely condemned. rev. jeremiah wright and the trinity united church of christ open their doors to homosexuals and welcome them, without any condemnation, which is pretty rare among christian churches in the united states these days. and since homosexuality is condemned as evil by right-wingers, conservatives, and republicans, and considered an acceptable lifestyle choice by left-wingers, liberals, and democrats, naturally any left-wing radical would support letting homosexuals have equal rights alongside all other americans. that is a radical idea. you know, rev. martin luther king, jr. once denounced the united states of america as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, and said we had a thing-oriented materialistic society, rather than a person-oriented society that really valued human beings. rev. martin luther king, jr. was a left-wing radical in his day, speaking out against the vietnam war when everyone else thought that was unpatriotic and treasonous for him to do, and he was often accused of being a communist. so, when i say rev. jeremiah wright is a left-wing radical, i am saying that he is a left-wing radical in the tradition of rev. martin luther king, jr., and that is something he can be proud of. my only real disagreement with rev. jeremiah wright is over this whole “religion” thing and whether god exists and there is an afterlife and all that stuff. in fact, barack obama has proven himself to be nowhere near the far left, and he is much more centrist and moderate than i am. i still support him, of course. why should i waste my vote on a fellow far-left person like ralph nader? ralph nader, my fellow left-wing radical, who decided years ago that the democratic party is not left-wing enough and needs to be abandoned completely for its capitulations to right-wing corporatists. i am not quite that left-wing... i am more moderate and closer to the center than ralph nader, so i am moderate enough to support the democratic party rather than joining the green party, the workers world party, the socialist party, the socialist workers party, the socialist equality party, the democratic socialist party, or the communist party. by the way, notice how many socialist parties there are in the united states and how fractured left-wing radicals who reject the democratic party are? that is why they are all a complete waste of time, and if you want to get anywhere in american politics, you have to either be a democrat or a republican, or else be a billionaire who can finance your own campaigns. and that is why both democrats and republicans have party bases that have many radicals in them. radicalism is, essentially, a staunch rejection of the status quo. everyone is basically a radical in some sense, except those who want to keep things exactly the way they are right now and not change anything. you know, people who want to keep abortion legal like it is now, who want to keep the current tax system and regulatory structure exactly as it presently is, who want to continue the war in iraq forever, who want to do absolutely nothing to change anything. people who want to keep everything exactly the same do not exist. everyone rejects the status quo in at least a few ways; radicals are just people who find a lot more ways that they reject aspects of the status quo than the average person.

now, i would like to talk about china and tibet for a bit. china is a totalitarian dictatorship that still claims to be communist but has embraced capitalism completely, resulting in lots of economic growth and more people becoming prosperous, and becoming a major economic competitor to the united states. but they brutally suppress any opposition with violence and killing, and tremendous amounts of censorship in their media, just like they did back when they really did have a communist economic system. no dissent is tolerated in china. so any radicals either have to keep their mouths shut or they end up in jail or dead. but now, some radicals who staunchly reject the status quo in china are pushing for tibetan independence, and most of these radicals are peaceful, just like the person that most of them revere as their leader, the exiled spiritual leader of tibetan buddhism, the buddhist equivalent of the pope, namely the dalai lama. now the dalai lama does not want tibetan independence, and he supports having the olympics in china and does not want those olympics boycotted, plus he rejects using any violence when protesting. so, these tibetan radicals are refusing to take orders from their spiritual leader, since they want independence, they want everyone to boycott the olympics, and a very small percentage of them have even resorted to violence, in videos shown widely throughout the tightly controlled chinese media, as propaganda against these tibetan activists. now what do i think about this? well, i completely support the tibetan activists 100% in their struggle for freedom against an oppressive, totalitarian chinese regime that tolerates no dissent, censors everything, and uses violence against innocent people. i think everyone should boycott the olympics by not watching it on television, and giving it the lowest ratings that the olympics have had in many years. our athletes should still compete, though, and do their best to kick some chinese ass and win more gold medals than the chinese, since the chinese government tries to train as many athletes as possible as hard as possible in order to promote its national glory by winning lots of gold medals, and we need to try to undermine these efforts so that the government-controlled heavily censored chinese media has nothing to celebrate. the fact that the united states tolerates dissent is what makes us a great country, and china is not a great country because it is an orwellian dystopia of oppression, and china can never be great until its people have freedom and democracy. the chinese keep exporting us tainted products such as toys with lead paint and poisonous food. they may have embraced unregulated free-market capitalism, but that is unacceptable because it means their products have safety problems, they pollute the environment, and they have no labor standards to allow workers to have rights for collective bargaining. since they are a nation that tolerates no dissent, it is very hard for them to solve problems that arise such as unsafe toys or poisonous food, since the media tries to suppress anything bad and keep anyone from knowing about it, so problems like that get covered up. and that is why we should not buy their products: their products are unsafe for us, and we would do better to buy products made in our own country, or other countries that have labor, environmental, and safety standards, such as the european union or canada. of course, now that we have a weak dollar, the united states is the best wealthy industrialized country to manufacture goods for export in. we can flood the rest of the world with cheap american-made goods now that we have a weak dollar, just like the chinese have done with their weak currency. and that will hopefully create jobs and keep us from having an economic collapse like some people are predicting. now that we have a weak dollar, american-made goods are probably cheaper than imported goods, so buying stuff made here is a win-win situation. of course, we need to strengthen our environmental, labor, and safety standards, which have all weakened under the bush administration, since we do not want to end up like china. and we need to allow all types of nonviolent dissent, by radicals from all sides of the political spectrum, to avoid ending up like china. martin luther king, jr., once regarded as an anti-american communist, as a far-left radical, and classified by the federal bureau of investigation as a “black nationalist” (whatever that means), is now regarded as a great american hero, and has a national holiday dedicated to him, and we celebrate him every year. who was behind the movement to abolish slavery, the movement to give women the right to vote, the labor movement, the movement for food safety and workplace safety, the movement against child labor, the movement to create a social safety net for the poor in the 1930s, the civil rights movement to end jim crow laws and segregation and have affirmative action instead, the feminist movement for equal rights for men and women, the antiwar movements against both the vietnam war and the current war in iraq, and all of the other movements that have brought progress to our country? left-wing radicals, who were staunchly opposed to the status quo, who demanded change from our government, were the ones behind all those movements that brought positive change to the united states, who made our nation great. in our constitution, we have slavery, and black slaves count as 3/5ths of a person; this was later rendered null and void by amendments to the constitution by people who wanted to fulfill the great promise of our nation, as a nation by the people, for the people, and of the people, a nation founded by “we the people”, where everyone has the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, where we have a bill of rights. and our greatness as a nation is because, unlike china, we tolerate dissent, and dissent ends up bringing about movements that bring positive change to our country and leave our nation better than it was before. no nation is perfect, and no nation can improve itself if everyone keeps pretending their nation is perfect and blameless and is always right. the people have always been ahead of the politicians, throughout all of the historical movements that brought positive change to our country, ending slavery, letting women and black people vote, etc. but we have not yet completed our journey, since although women and black people can vote nowadays, every president so far has been a white male. we have not yet reached perfection as a nation, nor will we ever, because perfection is impossible. but we are trying to get closer and closer to it, just as previous generations have done throughout our history. and so there are competing narratives about who has it worse, black people or women, and which of those 2 groups deserves to have a president first, and that is all silly talk, because black people were slaves and wives were considered property of their husbands, and both groups have suffered oppression historically, so there is no real justification for saying one group deserves the presidency before the other. that silly sort of dispute renders identity politics absurd, especially if you consider that condi rice is a black woman, yet she is not someone most of these identity-politics people in the demcratic party would be willing to vote for, despite being both black and female, at the same time. how about if we just ignore the race or gender or religion of our candidates, and judge them based on whether we agree with their policies on the issues that affect our daily lives, or whether they are qualified to be president, or whether they have personal qualities like intelligence and honesty and integrity and humility and lack of a win-at-any-cost attitude and willingness to consider other points of view that are essential to being a good president. barack obama is my choice for his positions on the issues that matter and for his personal qualities. now, if you would rather have a president who needs an anger management class, or one who is willing to do or say anything to get elected, or one who gets a free pass from the media but they STILL haven’t realized it yet, or one who is tied to the past and not a candidate with a vision for the future, well, you have other choices. you could even waste your vote on ralph nader, who has run for president every election since 1992, and never won a single state in the electoral college or gotten more than 5% of the vote (i think 5% is the right number, but don’t have the time to double-check that right now). there are plenty of other choices, including not voting at all, or writing in your own name or the name of whomever you want. i am just saying, why not make the best choice? after all, nobody even knows which states will be swing states in november, so your vote may very well matter, depending on where you live. and there are other races besides president, like congress and the senate, and races for governor in some states, and local elections. those also matter, so even if your state is solidly red or blue, voting still matters in deciding these other races. if you are part of the vast majority of americans who do not approve of congress, it might be a good idea to actually vote in the congressional elections, or else, while you still have a right to complain, you also have only yourself to blame for your failure to do anything that might actually have a positive impact on what goes on in washington, d.c. now if you do not want to vote for democrats, go ahead, stay home, don’t vote, and do something else like go to the movies or watch tv or play a video game or get some exercise. whatever makes you happy, as long as it does not involve voting. but if you want a positive change, then do what i do: vote party-line democratic, unless you know one of the politicians is a real scumbag, and in that case, vote for the other person. in november of 2006, i actually voted for a republican, in the race for state comptroller, since the democratic incumbent was a crook. soon after the election, which the democratic incumbent won anyway, he was forced to resign after being charged with a crime, and i am proud to say, i did not vote for that crook. but that is the exception and not the rule, and usually, i vote for all the democrats. now, if hillary clinton is up for re-election to the senate in 2012, i am not sure how i would vote. she has completely alienated me with all she and her campaign have done in this election. personally, i now dislike both her and her husband bill clinton, and cannot stand either of them anymore, which is a shame, because i used to like both of them a lot back in the 1990s, and when i voted for hillary clinton in 2000. i will probably do what i did in 2006 with regard to hillary clinton: vote against her in the democratic primary for senate, but vote for her in the general election. in 2006, a much better candidate was running against her in the democratic primary: jonathan tasini, and i was proud to vote for him, since at that point, hillary clinton was still pro-war and had not yet decided that the war in iraq is bad. but he lost, since too few people knew about him, and everyone had heard of hillary clinton, and she won it based on name recognition and the power of incumbency. and you know what? she refused to have any debates with her primary opponent or her general election opponent in the 2006 race for the u.s. senate seat from new york. and now, running for president, when she is behind in the polls, she wants to have more debates. typical hillary. that is what you get from her. she agreed with the democratic national committee that florida and michigan did not matter and would not get any delegates until after iowa and new hampshire had both voted. voters in those 2 states are very protective of their first-in-the-nation status and would have been angered by her trying to let other states intrude on their terrain. so it was not until after iowa and new hampshire voted that hillary clinton changed her position on michigan and florida. in fact, she even waited until after michigan and florida both voted before saying both states should count, since if barack obama had beaten her in florida (where he was on the ballot, unlike michigan), she would probably have stuck with the position that neither state counts. and as for john mccain, he supports unlimited war in iraq, wants to do absolutely nothing to help the economy except make the bush tax cuts permanent so that our national debt gets even more out of control, and he is basically a conservative republican on almost all of the issues. the few issues where he disagrees from party orthodoxy are all issues where the vast majority of the public disagrees with conservative republican orthodoxy and agrees with liberal democrats: campaign finance reform, global warming, the need to reform immigration, not allowing torture, and the fact that don rumsfeld mishandled the war in iraq. in other words, john mccain is a political opportunist, only disagreeing with his party on issues where he knows for sure that the vast majority of the public already agrees with the “maverick” positions that he decides to take. john mccain and hillary clinton: both political opportunists, who do whatever they think will be popular. and as for john mccain continuing to support the unpopular war in iraq, that is part of his strategy to appeal to the republican base that still supports george w. bush, military voters, and voters concerned with “national security”, and it was how he tried to distract attention from his support for immigration reform that turned out to be unpopular among the republican base. however, more active-duty soldiers gave donations to ron paul, the lone antiwar republican, than to john mccain or any other republican, so you can see what our troops think of john mccain’s pro-war policies.

why i have not blogged in a while

i have been suffering from numerous panic attacks for approximately the last month or so. sometimes, i have a panic attack after doing something or at a certain place or in a certain situation. after one of my most recent blog posts, i was quite angry at hillary clinton. i had actually not had any sleep at all the night before, since it was the night hillary clinton won primaries in rhode island, ohio, and texas. the march 4th primaries. and i had no sleep that night and was very upset. i ended up in the emergency room the next day with a panic attack, and they actually had 2 cops take me there, since i had called 911 and it was a mental health concern (a panic attack), and apparently nowadays the police answer all mental health calls, rather than sending an ambulance. that did save money, but the police did scare me, since they had guns, and i had a panic attack and thought i might be going crazy or dying. you see, ambulances cost a lot of money and they bill you. the police did not send me a bill for taking me to the emergency room, and i am grateful to them for that. since march 5th, and that major panic attack then, i have had some more problems. i scheduled a meeting with my psychiatrist the next monday (march 10th). on march 10th i was feeling that my life was falling apart and panic attacks were ruining everything and i was totally losing control of my life, that panic attacks were ruining my life completely, and i felt totally helpless. so i got put on a new drug, an ssri (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), and since i complained that my benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug no longer seemed to work, he decided i should gradually get off it. 2 days later (march 12th), things seemed worse than ever, the new drug was not working at all, and it turned out i really needed my benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug, despite the fact that it had been gradually becoming less and less effective. so i called him on the phone that day and he said i could actually increase my dosage of the benzodiazepine drug. but i was having more and more problems with insomnia (most nights i would get maybe 4 hours of sleep, different hours each night, or day, or whenever i managed to catch sleep, with no regular schedule, and the harder i tried to control my sleep, the less i could do it and the less sleep i got), and i was having trouble eating (i would lie awake in bed most of the day trying to sleep, and not leave my room to eat or go to the bathroom unless absolutely necessary). increasing the dosage of the benzodiazepine drug helped for a while. but then on sunday march 16th, i was increasing the dosage of my new ssri drug that i had started the previous monday, according to the plan he had laid out 6 days earlier. and the insomnia and problems eating got worse. i started to feel nausea and feel like i was unable to eat without throwing up, but i did not actually throw up because i just avoided eating until i felt like i could hold it down. and of course, all month long, along with the increasing insomnia and uncontrollable anxiety, i developed more and more diarrhea, so food would go through my system quite quickly and not get digested much. on wednesday march 19th, after another night with zero sleep whatsoever, after not having gotten more than 6 hours of sleep in 1 night for several weeks, and having worsening panic attacks that eventually turned into nonstop anxiety 24/7, i was scheduled to meet with my psychologist (not psychiatrist), but i tried eating some food in the morning, and then i threw it all up. i could no longer eat or sleep, and my life was completely out of control. so i called up my doctor’s office, my psychiatrist, and my psychologist. i scheduled an appointment at my doctor’s office to check out my physical health. my psychiatrist told me to stop taking the new ssri drug immediately and that it was probably behind my insomnia, nausea, vomiting, and nonstop anxiety. and i told my psychologist that i wanted to go back to the emergency room, but he convinced me to go to his appointment first instead. then, when my mom was driving me to the psychologist (because i did not feel up to driving, obviously), i decided that i really did need to go to the emergency room after all, and my psychiatrist had recommended it as a good idea, as had the nurse i talked to over the phone at my doctor’s office. so, i had my mom drive me to the emergency room instead, and used her cell phone to call up my psychologist and cancel the appointment at the last minute, after agreeing that i would be at that appointment maybe an hour earlier over the phone with the same psychologist. this time, the people at the emergency room actually seemed to solve the problem. they gave me a double dose of my anti-anxiety benzodiazepine drug, and put me on a new drug as well, one called “vistaril” that i can take 3 times a day for anxiety or i can take 2 pills at bedtime to fall asleep if i haven’t taken any of them all day. i immediately began using vistaril to fall asleep that night, and also got off the new ssri, and i was feeling much better the next day and the next few days, getting much more sleep, having much less anxiety. this 2nd visit to the emergency room on march 19th sure did the trick! and it was exactly 2 weeks after the 1st visit. in the last day or two, my anxiety has started to return, and i am not getting quite as much sleep as right after i started this new medicine to help me sleep. but i am getting 6 or more hours each night, around the same time each night, so that is still much better than before, when i would get 4 hours, maybe, at some random time during the day or night when i would finally run out of energy. anyway, i have been avoiding blogging the last few weeks because i found that politics and political news has been a major contributor to my anxiety, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and started my very bad anxiety attack on march 5th that put me in the emergency room after i called 911 since i had hypochondria and thought i was dying. but lately (at least prior to the most recent emergency room visit solved things) it has seemed that pretty much anything causes anxiety. whenever i took a shower i would have my heart race and i would often get the urge to suddenly escape, like i needed to get out of the shower and was in danger. and a few times, i actually did run out of the shower, sometimes out into the hallway, and then suddenly ask myself, “what the hell just happened? what the fuck is wrong with me? am i going insane or am i going to die?” going to my job would stress me out and i would get panic attacks at work, and always have to control myself to avoid public embarrassment in front of all my co-workers (we all work in small cubicles and there are like 50 of us all there at once in the same large room, sitting at our cubicles typing away like monkeys). and i was afraid of writing anything on this blog, especially anything political, because that kind of stuff has upset me so much lately. however, lately, the political news has started to seem more reassuring. like the fact that barack obama is virtually guaranteed the democratic nomination and hillary clinton has almost no chance whatsoever of winning. i am still worried a bit that hillary clinton will continue her pointless attacks on barack obama and damage him enough so that john mccain wins in november. but her campaign increasingly seems like it is in its last throes, especially with geraldine ferraro and james carville making fools of themselves with their remarks, and hillary clinton being discovered to be a liar about a whole host of things, not just nafta (she claims to have opposed it when she actually supported it strongly in the 90s), but also a visit she had to bosnia (she claims to have come under sniper fire and had to run from the plane into a waiting vehicle, but video footage of her calmly coming off the plane with chelsea and being greeted by a little girl shows quite the opposite occurred). and i was concerned about rev. jeremiah wright, barack obama’s former pastor, undermining the obama campaign, but it seems that barack obama’s speech about race last week was so amazingly good (at least according to the pundits) that it basically cancels out the negative publicity from the jeremiah wright scandal. in any event, it is pretty much mathematically impossible for hillary clinton to win now, the same way it was for mike huckabee when he stayed in the race for so long despite john mccain having way more delegates than him. hillary clinton has been reduced to a faith-based mike huckabee-style campaign based on denial of reality, except of course, she resorts to negative attacks on the presumptive nominee of her party and mike huckabee did not, so she is actually worse than mike huckabee. and i still have an eliot spitzer bumper sticker on my car! i tried to peel it off many times in the last week or two, but it just does not come off. it seems to have melded with my car at a molecular level, and it is now part of the car. so i crossed out eliot spitzer’s name several times with a black permanent marker, since i could not get his stupid damn sticker off my car. the sticker says “spitzer paterson: bring some passion back to albany”. very embarrassing to still have that on my car. but i am okay with it. i don’t need to let things like that worry me anymore, because i can move on with my life, i can eat and i can sleep, and i can decrease the number of panic attacks i have and their severity. i can get my life back together. there is no reason to worry about politics. after all, i have survived over 7 years of having george w. bush as president. nothing could possibly be any worse than having him as president, so the future looks brighter, no matter who takes over. now i have been a bit concerned that we are having complete economic collapse, but i have started to view that more optimistically as well. i have lived through previous recessions and i can hardly tell the difference between recessions and economic booms, except for what i hear in the news. in everyday life, it does not affect me too much, since i am not involved in the stock market, in construction, in mortgages, in banking, or any of the other industries affected by this economic downturn. gasoline does cost more than ever before, but that is the only real thing i have noticed about the economy affecting me. the company i work for is not having any problems at all, and they are making more profits than ever. and my boss is understanding and knows all about my anxiety disorder. so, things are not that bad. sure, my health insurance does not cover mental health at all, so i have to cover all the costs of psychologist and psychiatrist and emergency room visits related to mental health myself. but, i have another insurance policy besides by crappy health insurance that hardly covers anything that i pay monthly premiums for: i have my parents, i live with them, and they can bail me out if i can’t afford mental health services on my own, by sharing some of the cost with me. of course, i do want to be financially independent and not rely on them, but i do not want to go into debt and have a negative net worth. so ultimately, i want a better-paying job. but for the time being, i have pretty good job security, my boss is nice and understanding, and my employer is a company that is doing fine in this economy. my health insurance does cover stuff related to physical (not mental) health, so if i have problems with my physical health, i should be fine as far as paying for it. and anyway, whenever my anxiety gets out of control, i can just take a benzodiazepine pill to calm down. and i have learned that the physical symptoms of anxiety are not dangerous to me, and i am still basically healthy. so as long as i continue to believe that, i should not have hypochondria that makes me think i am dying, at least not too often. i just need to bear in mind that i am young and physically healthy (and have gone down from obese to overweight thanks to my recent food deprivation). sometimes my anxiety does get out of control. but usually i deal with it pretty well, and am able to control myself, and keep from doing things like calling 911 or screaming at the top of my lungs or running around like a madman. i have had a lot of panic attacks, and only really lost control of myself badly in a very small percentage of them. and that was only when i lost control of my beliefs, and really started to believe that i actually was in danger. as long as i can continue to believe that i am safe, the anxiety will probably not be so bad that i lose control of my behavior. usually, i deal with panic attacks quite well, and do not let them get to me too much, and i allow myself to move on instead of letting the negative thoughts about medical problems or dying or losing control or going crazy to take over and make me actually believe those catastrophic thoughts. usually, i deal with it quite well. and i think i will probably be better in a month or two and stop having so much anxiety, and so many panic attacks. and i will be able to eat and to sleep. i might even start exercising! exercise sometimes causes anxiety for me, so it is one of the many anxiety-causing things that i have been avoiding lately, but apparently exercise only causes anxiety because i am not used to the physical sensations when i am exercising and afterwards, and some of them are similar to the physical sensations i feel during panic attacks. but if i learn to distinguish between the 2, i should be able to end this false mental association between exercise and anxiety. i have already been able to end my anxiety attacks that happened every time i took a shower, and now i can take showers without panicking at all, and even relax a bit during showers. and i used to find social situations and talking to people to provoke huge amounts of anxiety, but that has gradually gone away pretty much completely over the last few years. even these last few weeks, i do not find social situations to cause any panic anymore... other things have always been the cause of the panic. so now i am posting on my blog again, kind of just to show that i can do it without causing any unnecessary anxiety. and it seems to have worked. i feel fine right now. and now anyone who reads this blog regularly knows why i have not been posting lately. so it is a win-win situation.

time to resign, governor eliot spitzer

dear governor eliot spitzer, i wanted you as governor, even as president of the united states, back when you were new york state attorney general, because i admired how you fought corporate corruption and other forms of big-scale crime while the federal government under george bush junior was deregulating everything by not enforcing laws on the books (environmental laws, food quality laws, antitrust laws, etc.) and trying to force the states not to regulate any industries either. i admired you more than almost any other politician: you were in the same leagues as governor howard dean, senator russ feingold, and congressman dennis kucinich. although i never met you, your wife came to binghamton, new york to the spiedie fest and balloon rally during the summer before you were elected governor, and i was one of the low-ranking democratic party operatives there at the spiedie fest, and i met her and she said what a great person you are and how you really care about helping people and just how wonderful you are. and i know you have some wonderful daughters as well. you have done many great things for this state during your 8-year tenure as state attorney general, and probably did a better job than any other state attorney general in the nation at that time. andrew cuomo, son of former governor mario cuomo, is continuing that legacy as the new state attorney general, and he is doing a fine job, just as you did. but as governor, there have been some problems. i still have a bumper sticker on my car that says “spitzer/paterson: bring some passion back to albany”. i supported 100% you when there was a big dispute between you and state senate majority leader joseph bruno (that crazy old man). i supported you after you proposed giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants, despite disagreeing with that particular policy choice, and after you withdrew the proposal, i was pleased and thought it indicated that you were willing to admit to making a mistake and move on, unlike certain other people who refuse to ever admit to being wrong, such as our senator, hillary clinton, or our president, george w. bush. your ongoing dispute with state senate majority leader joseph bruno has paralyzed the state government for more than half a year, more than half your tenure as governor so far, and made it impossible to get anything done, and i think joseph bruno deserves most of the blame for that. but now that the new york times has disclosed that you have been having sex with high-paid prostitutes, and using the alias “george fox” instead of your real name when doing business with them, that is the last straw. george fox was the founder of quakerism, the religion i grew up in, and you are dishonoring his memory by using his name to have sex with prostitutes. so i have decided to withdraw my support for you and i want you to resign and let our african-american, legally-blind lieutenant governor david paterson become the new governor. as an added bonus, state senate majority leader joseph bruno would become the new lieutenant governor automatically, and since that position has zero authority whatsoever, we would finally be rid of the bastard, and maybe the new york state government might actually start getting things accomplished again, since joseph bruno has been the biggest obstacle to getting anything done ever since you became governor. if you stay on as governor, eliot spitzer, i doubt that we democrats can win back control of the new york state senate. you have had sex with multiple prostitutes on multiple occasions. you have violated the law and the public trust. and just like sitting republican senator david vitter (who had sex with prostitutes just like you), and sitting republican senator larry craig (a closet homosexual bible-thumping fundamentalist who hates all homosexuals, including himself, and who publicly promised he was going to resign after he was caught breaking the law but then changed his mind), you ought to resign. governor spitzer, you ought to resign because you broke the law, you violated the trust of your wife and your family, you would hurt the democratic party if you stayed on as governor, and your tenure as governor so far has not been going so well so you might as well just call it quits. and if you resign, we will have the first african-american governor ever for new york state, david paterson (and he is also a big hillary clinton supporter). and i want david paterson as governor and barack obama as president, and eliot spitzer as someone who actually resigns due to a sex scandal (unlike, for instance, former republican congressmen henry hyde and former house speaker newt gingrich, who cheated on their wives but led the effort to impeach president bill clinton). politicians who stay in office after sex scandals end up tainted, especially if they did illegal things like paying for prostitutes instead of just having sex for free, the legal way. it was bill clinton’s sex scandals that helped put george w. bush in the white house. anyway, i am going to finally take my eliot spitzer bumper sticker off my car. and once the democratic party chooses a nominee for president, i will put their bumper sticker on instead. and i am keeping on the bumper sticker for congressman mike arcuri. but anyway governor, just please go into early retirement. “REPENT! Quit Your JOB!   ¡SLACK OFF!” as the old subgenius saying goes.

why hillary won 2 (not 3) states on tuesday

ok... so guess what happened on tuesday. hillary clinton won 2 out of 4 states: ohio and rhode island. barack obama won 2 out of 4 states: texas and vermont. what the hell are you talking about, you ask? the media has been saying that barack obama lost texas and hillary won there. well, that is partially correct. if you listen carefully, they say that barack obama lost the texas PRIMARY and hillary clinton won the texas PRIMARY. but texas ALSO had a CAUCUS, later the same night, and barack obama won that, according to npr and the texas state democratic party. and according to current projections, barack obama’s win in the texas caucus was big enough to cancel out hillary clinton’s win in the texas primary, thus earning him more delegates to the national convention from texas than hillary clinton. convoluted? yes. fucked up? yes. but that is the “texas two-step” that i and others, including many in the media, have warned you and everyone else about, beforehand. why do hillary clinton’s supporters tend to be less likely to go to caucuses than barack obama’s supporters? well, clinton supporters are generally less educated, and a lot more of them are elderly. obama supporters are generally more educated, and a lot more of them are young. people who are well-educated and/or young are more likely to use the internet a lot. and that means, they are more likely to find out about something like the fucked-up system they use for voting in texas. luckily, barack obama seems to have won more delegates in texas, so he won 2 out of 4 states on tuesday. but the media gets a lot of things wrong, including who won texas on tuesday. now, the current projections for the caucus in texas could still turn out to be false, and hillary clinton could end up winning more delegates from texas. apparently we will not have the final results on the pledged delegates from texas for several weeks, in fact! texas really is fucked up, i mean, seriously. now they are not the only fucked up state when it comes to voting. florida in 2000, ohio in 2004... and this year, on super tuesday, new mexico was really fucked up, and they took like, a week or two before they finally figured out who won. new mexico also had no idea who won in the general election in the year 2000 for a few weeks after the election took place. so, we have several states with voting problems. of course, we cannot exclude my own state of new york, which was the only state that failed to comply with the help america vote act, or h.a.v.a. new york will still be using old machines that do not comply with the new law, in the 2008 election. after that we will transition to newer voting machines. luckily, only one county in new york state has opted for the touch-screen electronic voting machines with no paper trail (or maybe these ones actually do have a paper trail, i am not sure). the rest of new york state will use the same punch-card system florida used in 2000! except we will use optical-scan machines. still... kinda fucked up. anyway, my point is, texas is fucked up in how it votes, but so are a lot of other states. oh, and did i mention the state of washington? it held both a primary and a caucus, with the caucus a week before the primary. oh, and michigan and florida both illegally violated the rules of both the democratic national committee and the republican national committee by holding their 2008 presidential primaries too early. republicans penalized both states by giving them only half the normal amount of delegates. democrats penalized both states by giving them zero delegates. those are the rules. those 2 states violated the law, and now they are being punished for their crimes. lately, the idea has come up to have a re-vote in both michigan and florida for the democrats, where both barack obama and hillary clinton would compete. but the states both refuse to pay for the primaries or caucuses that would take place. and of course, hillary clinton refuses to have caucuses, and only primaries will do for her. and howard dean and the democratic national committee have refused to pay. the reason? the democratic national committee is flat broke. ok, they have like 3 million dollars right now, but re-doing the primary in florida would cost like 50 million dollars. so there is no way in hell the democratic party is going to finance this. so who is left to finance it? the 2 candidates. they could both evenly split the cost, using money from their campaigns. everyone else has refused to pay for this, so the only way left to finance re-votes would be for hillary clinton and barack obama to evenly split the cost of paying for re-votes in florida and michigan. the governors of florida and michigan are being real assholes about this by refusing to pay. it was their state legislatures that passed the bills changing the primary dates to be so early they violated the rules of both parties, and both governors signed those bills into law. the governors and state legislators of florida and michigan, in an ideal world, would have to pay for the costs of these re-votes out of their own personal bank accounts, and they would have to sell off their second homes, or their expensive paintings they collected. this problem is entirely their fault, and they need to fix it. they decided to disenfranchise the voters of their own states, because they knew the rules going into this. and hillary clinton also agreed to those rules, but after winning both states (and being the only major candidate on the ballot in michigan), she changed her mind and decided fuck the rules, i want the delegates from both florida and michigan seated, because those 2 states voted for me and i want more delegates. me, me, me!

but her wins on tuesday were not all about her, her, her. sure, her “kitchen sink” strategy did some damage, but most of the damage was done to the democratic party, not to barack obama. you see, according to a new poll, 90% of barack obama supporters would vote for hillary clinton if she were the candidate in the general election (myself included in that 90%). but only 75% of hillary clinton supporters would vote for barack obama if he were the candidate in the general election. i think the main reason for the disloyalty of hillary clinton’s supporters to the party is, she has viciously attacked barack obama, and her supporters like her and find her credible, so when she says he is not qualified to be commander-in-chief and john mccain is, her supporters agree with her, following her blindly like sheep. not all of her supporters, mind you. only 25% of her supporters are lemmings jumping off a cliff for john mccain. but hillary clinton is the one who put that disloyalty into their heads, by attacking barack obama instead of focusing her attacks on the real enemy, john mccain. that is why hillary clinton is now john mccain’s best political ally, for the time being. just as john mccain teamed up with loser mike huckabee to get rid of mitt romney in the republican primaries and caucuses, john mccain is teaming up with loser hillary clinton to get rid of barack obama in the general election. hillary clinton cannot win pledged delegates at this point, since it would require her to win almost all remaining states by huge margins, and the superdelegates will flock to whomever wins the pledged delegates, as i have heard many superdelegates say on news shows on tv. so really, hillary clinton is only in this race for one reason: to sabotage barack obama’s chances for 2008 and help john mccain win so that she can run for president in 2012 and be the great savior of the party by defeating the very same john mccain that she is trying to help get elected in 2008. why do you think party leaders such as howard dean and nancy pelosi, or former candidates such as john edwards, joe biden, bill richardson, and dennis kucinich have not endorsed either clinton or obama? it is because they are superdelegates, and they will follow the will of the people as expressed through the pledged delegates! which means this: obama will win and clinton will lose. but it will be, as don rumsfeld would call it, a “long hard slog”.

now why did hillary clinton win in ohio? she was probably going to win that state anyway, since she had been ahead in the polls there all along, but the gap had been narrowing somewhat. it was never a state obama expected to win, but he was trying to close the gap so they would split the delegates evenly. he did not succeed in this, and hillary won ohio decisively. it is because of nafta. now, at first, when the news of the canadian memo about barack obama saying one thing to the people of ohio and another thing to the canadian government surfaced, and hillary clinton and john mccain were both all over this story, i thought the clinton campaign was behind it. it turns out that i was wrong about that. she did not really stoop that low. the canadian government was behind it, not hillary clinton. the government of conservative prime minister stephen harper of canada was behind this attack on barack obama. and the attack on him was entirely 100% false. he did not lie about nafta, and the canadian government has now publicly admitted to making false accusations against him and apologized for it. now, as for their past positions on nafta, hillary clinton did point to nafta as a success in one of her books, so her position on that has changed quite dramatically, although it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. anyway, the hillary clinton campaign jumped all over the canadian reports that barack obama sent an aide to meet with a canadian envoy in chicago to give assurances that he was just telling lies about what he would do about nafta. these canadian news reports turned out to be complete lies and fabrications, made up by officials within the administration of canadian prime minister stephen harper. and, i am sure that the canadian prime minister will have whoever is responsible for this fired, in order to keep diplomatic relations nice with the united states. anyway, without further ado, here is the newer, accurate canadian news report that corrects the erroneous previous canadian news reports:



those damned canadians! i think we ought to invade canada, like in that “south park” movie! i hate canada! no... just kidding. i love canada. i would never want to invade such a great country as our next-door buddy canada. now guess who really lied to us about nafta? i’ll give you a hint: hillary clinton. check out this video from keith olbermann:



okay, so let’s just ignore the fact that the clintons lied to us yet again, and move on, for the good of the democratic party... anyway, can you guess why hillary clinton won rhode island and why barack obama won vermont? in both cases, it was because neither of them was doing much campaigning in either of those small states, and barack obama was way ahead in the polls in vermont because they are antiwar just like him and do not like hillary clinton’s centrist triangulation, and hillary clinton was way ahead in the polls in rhode island because they respect her record as a former first lady and a senator from nearby new york and they thought barack obama was an unqualified upstart who should wait his turn. in other words, both rhode island and vermont voted in a democratic process and were not overly influenced by lies or shenanigans.

now what about texas? hillary clinton won texas’s primary because of shenanigans. what shenanigans, you ask? again, it was not her doing at all. and this was not the canadian government. no, friends, the reason hillary clinton won the primary in texas was none other than radio talk show host rush limbaugh. yes, things like the “3 am” fearmongering ad also helped. but barack obama had a lot more ads on tv than hillary clinton. that may be why, in all likelihood, he was probably still able to win the caucus and thus win more delegates. but anyway, here is the reason hillary clinton won texas:



rush limbaugh has a lot of listeners in texas, that state is full of dittoheads, and republicans were allowed to crossover and vote in the democratic primary. and many did. and unlike previous states that allowed this crossover voting, barack obama did not win among republicans by an overwhelming margin. the reason is: despite the hatred republicans and people on the right-wing have towards hillary clinton, they love the idea of a long, drawn-out fight between barack obama and hillary clinton. so now that barack obama is ahead, they are doing what rush limbaugh suggests and voting for hillary clinton in the primaries. these are the shenanigans i was talking about. in earlier states where barack obama held a commanding lead among republicans, i think this was partially due to republicans hating hillary clinton very much, and partially because hillary clinton was originally the front-runner and they wanted to knock her down a peg or two. but also, there are many disaffected republicans who are actually willing to vote for a democrat, and a significant percentage of republicans who voted in democratic primaries were undoubtedly voters who were actually serious about supporting whomever they voted for, or who at least saw that person as the “lesser of two evils” between hillary clinton and barack obama. oh, and another thing: many people in the united states who are registered in one party are not actually loyal to that party, and there are actually a number of people who are registered in one party since they registered that way a long time ago and never changed it, but who have completely changed their political beliefs since then and now support the opposite party. and there are people who are just registered in the opposite party so that they can vote for the candidate they dislike the least, in case the party they support loses. and a very large portion of voters are actually not strongly ideologically aligned with either party, and so even referring to these voters as “democrats” or “republicans” because of their party affiliation is a big mistake, because they vote for whomever they think is most qualified, or whoever they like the best, regardless of which party the person comes from. but in any event, the rush limbaugh dittoheads in texas all voted for hillary clinton in the primary, although most of them were probably not smart enough to show up for the caucus. and since hillary clinton won texas by such a small margin, perhaps rush limbaugh is the one who gave her just enough votes to beat barack obama a tiny little bit in the texas primary.

anyway, i think hillary clinton made a big blunder the other day when she said that both she and john mccain were qualified to be commander-in-chief but barack obama was not. but then she repeated it! she seems to have a pattern here... just look at her supporting john mccain while denouncing barack obama:



i hope that she corrects this misstatement, and i really believe she probably would support barack obama if he were the general election candidate, and probably demand to be his running mate. and if barack obama chose someone else as his running mate, hillary and bill clinton would probably still support barack obama and campaign for him. it is the least they could do, after all the bad karma they have been accumulating so far this year with their campaign, and all the divisiveness on both sides in the democratic party (mainly stoked by the clinton campaign). whoever loses the democratic nomination needs to endorse and campaign for the winner, and tell all their supporters to vote for the democratic nominee. and i will heed that call, because i am a loyal democrat and fiercely partisan. in the end, we must unite to do everything possible to keep john mccain out of the white house! and on that note, i give you the latest map of which states hillary clinton won and which states barack obama won, with hillary’s states blue, obama’s states red, and the states hillary won that don’t count are both light blue (or cyan, if you prefer):



and as for me marking texas as an obama win instead of a clinton win, DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS! i already explained why he is the overall winner in texas, if you look at both the primary and the caucus, and the total number of delegates for each candidate. call me biased. i am biased. but i calls it as i sees it. i ain’t no objective journalist. i’m an anonymous blogger. at least i can freely admit to all of my biases, unlike reporters who have to pretend not to be biased even though they are full of just as much bias as anyone else. so, since i actually admit to my biases, i am much more honest than some news reporter who pretends to be completely objective but then does a story that makes one candidate look good and another one look bad. now even the news media admit to being biased. victory is mine!

the kitchen sink strategy

first, a bit of news to get out of the way: john mccain beat mike huckabee in all 4 states that voted today: vermont, ohio, texas, and rhode island, and now has enough delegates to win the republican nomination, officially. mike huckabee conceded the election and endorsed john mccain, and john mccain had a big victory speech. whoop-dee-doo! who cares? we already knew john mccain had this thing wrapped up weeks ago, after super tuesday.

anyway, let’s talk about the contest between hillary clinton and barack obama for the democratic nomination. barack obama has a significant lead in delegates as well as the popular vote among people who have voted so far, and he won 11 contests in a row, every primary or caucus held after super tuesday but before not-so-super tuesday (march 4). he has won more than twice as many states as her. and lately he has even been catching up among superdelegates, and has almost as many as her now. but tonight, she beat him in rhode island and ohio, and he beat her in vermont. nobody knows yet who won in texas, because of the convoluted system there, the “texas two-step” of a primary and then a caucus on the same day. how did she win? fearmongering: her campaign ad about what would happen if someone called the president at 3 a.m. with a crisis, and who would answer the phone. check out this parody of her ridiculous fearmongering ad, featuring msnbc host keith olbermann:



or here is another remix of that ad, showing real clips of her from the past that seem to contradict her message in this fearmongering ad:



barack obama swiftly responded to that ad with one of his own, but the damage had already been done, because negative attacks work. and she also won based on nafta: although hillary clinton was once a supporter of nafta, she managed to use bullshit, by producing a memo that supposedly proved that barack obama had told ohio voters he was opposed to nafta and would renegotiate it, while someone in the barack obama campaign had secretly met with someone in the canadian government and privately assured them that this was just empty rhetoric and that barack obama would not do anything to change nafta. but guess what? the memo was a lie! someone from the barack obama campaign did indeed meet with someone from the canadian government, and they did discuss nafta, but the obama representative told the canadian official the exact same thing that barack obama told the people of ohio about obama’s position on nafta. check out this video to see how the canadian parliament got the canadian prime minister to apologize to barack obama for participating in hillary clinton’s smear campaign:



so the leaders of both major political parties in canada agree that canada’s government inadvertently became involved in a smear campaign by hillary clinton against barack obama over the issue of nafta, over a false claim that barack obama said one thing to people in ohio but told another thing to the canadian government. now, maybe the people in the clinton campaign believed that memo was genuine, or maybe they forged the document themselves. either way, it is a lie.

and what about the issue of plagiarism? hillary clinton accused barack obama of plagiarizing lines from massachusetts governor duval patrick. well, for a response to that argument, look at this video to find out the truth:



and remember the “shame on you, barack obama” outburst by hillary clinton recently? during that outburst, she was full of lies. look at this video for proof that she was a complete liar, and also proving herself to be emotionally unbalanced or having multiple personality disorder:



and hillary clinton says that both she and john mccain are more experienced and more qualified to be president than barack obama, showing her complete disloyalty to the democratic party, and the following video also gives an example of how her experience has guided her decisions in the past:



and remember how someone in the hillary clinton campaign released a photo of barack obama dressed in traditional somali garb when he was visiting somalia, and had it posted on the drudge report? here is a video from fox news (i can’t believe i am actually showing a video from fox news, but apparently the other news networks may have been smart enough not to cover this bullshit from the hillary campaign):



and the chain email about barack obama being a muslim continues to circulate, and many people believe it to be true, and are voting for hillary clinton because they have been deceived. look at this (very different) video from fox news, back when this accusation of him being muslim first came out last year, and fox news totally bought into the idea of him being a muslim (or at least raised as a muslim), and also mentioned him doing cocaine:



and remember the attacks on barack obama by hillary clinton, about his association with the slumlord tony rezko, a big campaign contributor to many politicians (especially chicago democrats) who is now on trial for being a criminal? look at this video from the today show on nbc, where you hear a lot of doublespeak from hillary clinton and also see a picture of her with tony rezko along with her husband bill clinton:



and back in early january, remember the attack bill clinton made on obama, the whole “fairy tale” incident? bill clinton was actually talking about how it was a fairy tale that barack obama opposed the iraq war from the beginning and continues to oppose it. that is actually a lie, and bill clinton was mischaracterizing barack obama’s words from 2004, which were actually barack obama trying to justify john kerry’s position on iraq, because barack obama, as a loyal democrat, was trying to get john kerry elected president, and barack obama was defending john kerry, not george w. bush. but anyway, here is the bullshit from bill clinton back in january:



here is some more bill clinton, later in january, after barack obama won south carolina, where bill clinton compares barack obama to jesse jackson, trying to pigeonhole barack obama as “the black candidate” and stoke up racism among voters, so that white people will not vote for barack obama:



one last example of a patently dishonest attack: hillary clinton’s campaign in new hampshire convinced pro-choice activist groups to attack barack obama for not supporting a woman’s right to choose, claiming that he was not a reliable defender of the right to have an abortion and hillary clinton was. this was dishonest on 2 counts: firstly, barack obama has always been a staunch defender of abortion, and never wavered in this position, and he worked closely with abortion rights groups while a state senator in illinois to help win legislative victories for them. he even supports late-term abortion, and opposes requiring parental notification. secondly, hillary clinton has at times publicly wavered in her support for abortion, and a few years ago made some statements where she waffled on the issue and said she respected the position of religious-right zealots who want to eliminate abortion completely, and wanted to work together with them to help reduce the number of abortions in this country to be as close to zero as possible. so, on abortion: barack obama says “yes we can!” and hillary clinton says we that abortion should be done seldom if ever. and she accuses barack obama of being the one who wavers on the issue of abortion when really it is her? what a liar.

and so we have many, many instances of hillary clinton or surrogates such as her husband bill clinton making scurrilous and baseless attacks against an honorable and decent man, barack obama. they are basically throwing “everything but the kitchen sink” at obama and seeing what sticks. they do not care whether their attacks are truthful or not, only that they work, and get voters to vote for hillary clinton instead of barack obama. this is why hillary clinton is a divisive figure. it is because she actively tries to divide people and turn them against each other, inside the democratic party. bill clinton does it too. and so do other people in their campaign. hillary clinton cares more about winning the democratic nomination for herself than about having a democrat elected president in november, and she has shown that time and time again with her repeated nasty attacks on barack obama, attacks that john mccain and his supporters will be sure to repeat.

what makes barack obama any better than hillary clinton? well, for starters, he does not run a negative campaign based on fearmongering and lies and vicious rumors. his campaign is positive and he inspires people and gives great speeches. and tonight on national public radio’s “all things considered” news show, i heard some book reviews by people who had read the books written by barack obama, hillary clinton, and john mccain. they all thought barack obama’s books were the best, and that the first book by john mccain was also pretty good, but that hillary clinton’s books were boring and had nothing interesting in them, and were not written very well, and the 2nd book by hillary clinton, living history, was mostly focused on burnishing the legacy of the clintons, rather than actually opening up as a human being. and they also mentioned that all of john mccain’s books had been written by the same ghostwriter, who worked with john mccain to put his ideas into prose, whereas both barack obama and hillary clinton wrote their own books without any help from others. and that turned out to be a bad decision for hillary clinton, since both her books pretty much sucked, according to these professional book reviewers who had read all of the books by these 3 candidates.

so, okay, hillary clinton is nasty and divisive and does not care about the democrats winning in november unless she is the candidate, and she is not a gifted author, you say. but so what? maybe she would still be the best president. she is the most experienced, or so she claims, with her 35 years of experience. but “35 years of experience” is complete bullshit! it includes being first lady of the united states and first lady of arkansas, and sitting on the board of wal-mart, and having jobs outside the government, that were not elected office, not appointed office, not in the government at all! how many years of experience does she actually have in elected politics? seven. she was first elected to office in 2000 and took office in 2001 as a united states senator from new york. and i have watched her closely for those 7 years and been sorely disappointed, again and again, by her voting record. she voted in favor of the u.s.a. patriot act, in favor of invading iraq, in favor of using cluster bombs and land mines, and on many other issues she has voted the same way as conservative republicans, instead of voting the same way as a liberal/progressive democrat and true american hero, senator russ feingold of wisconsin, who has a far better voting record than any other senator. hillary clinton’s voting record closely matches the voting record of senator joe lieberman of connecticut, who was the 2nd most conservative democrat in the senate until zell miller left, and then he was the most conservative democrat in the senate, and then he got kicked out of the democratic party and became a member of the newly formed “connecticut for lieberman party”. many times, liberal bloggers have said she is just like joe lieberman except in a pantsuit, and i think there is a lot of truth to that; she is from the centrist, corporate wing of the party, the democratic leadership council wing of the party. contrast that with barack obama. according to the national journal, barack obama is the most liberal member of the senate. as a liberal, i think that is awesome! now i am not exactly sure the national journal is correct about its rankings, since either russ feingold or the self-proclaimed socialist from vermont, bernie sanders, would obviously be the most liberal, if the rankings were done in an even remotely sensible way. prior to the 2004 election, the national journal said that john kerry was the most liberal member of the senate, which seems odd for someone who voted for the iraq war, when russ feingold was in the senate at the time, googolplexes of times more liberal than john kerry. anyway, hillary clinton’s voting record is pretty lousy for a democrat, but republicans are glad to have people like her vote the same way they do on important issues. and what the fuck is up with the following video, where hillary clinton claims that based on her interpretation of the book of genesis, she has decided to become a white supremacist?



now ok, maybe her comments in the last video were taken out of context, but still... jeez. anyway, i would like to close with the now classic youtube video “vote different”, showing hillary clinton to be a 1984-style propagandist.



and the message at the end is clear. vote for barack obama. unless you want another candidate for the general election who flip-flopped on the war in iraq like john kerry. remember what happened to john kerry and why he lost. the same thing will happen to hillary clinton if she is the nominee. and you know what is funny? who is doing the swift-boating now? hillary clinton is swift-boating barack obama, right out of the karl rove-style mark penn playbook. she is trying to destroy barack obama politically, so that if he does end up as the nominee, he will be so damaged by all of her relentless negative attacks that republican john mccain will be able to win just by replaying the attacks hillary clinton used against barack obama. that is how michael dukakis lost to george bush sr. in 1998. bush senior just replayed the same attacks against dukakis that had been used against him in the democratic primary: the case of willie horton. bill and hillary clinton are part of the self-destructive wing of the democratic party, the wing that either wants everything for themselves or else wants to help the other party win. they do not care that barack obama will very likely be the democratic nominee and that any attacks they do against him will help john mccain win. so, in a sense, the clintons are john mccain’s ultimate weapon to defeat barack obama in the general election. the clintons are basically traitors to the party, like joe lieberman and zell miller. they may pretend to be loyal democrats, but after all that the clintons have said and done in this election, why the hell would anyone trust them? i have no problem attacking the clintons now, because i am confident they will lose. barack obama is way ahead in delegates, and texas and ohio will not change that very much, nor will any future primaries or caucuses. it’s over, both for the clintons, and for the quixotic campaign of mike huckabee. too bad the clintons refuse to admit it is over, and will continue to trash barack obama harder and harder, and do everything they can to ruin the democratic party’s chances of winning back the white house. these pyrrhic victories for hillary clinton in the march 4 primaries will not get her many delegates, and barack obama will remain way ahead in delegates, all the way until he is nominated. and then, i assume the clintons will openly campaign for john mccain, since they have already said he is more experienced and qualified than barack obama. i am sure the republican party will be happy to welcome the clintons onboard as its newest high-profile members. because how on earth could they remain democrats and support barack obama, after all the bad things they have said about him? that would make no sense whatsoever. but then again, hardly anything the clintons do makes any sense.

oh, and one last thing: fuck saturday night live. seriously. i am so pissed, i would rather watch mad tv on fox than watch saturday night live on nbc, after what they just did. saturday night live recently did 2 parodies of the 2 most recent debates between hillary clinton and barack obama, and both sketches were completely biased in favor of hillary clinton and against barack obama. and tina fey and amy poehler both offered their support to hillary clinton. hillary clinton even came on the show after the 2nd debate parody, alongside amy poehler, and they had some girl talk about what a great impression amy poehler does, and how wonderfully hillary clinton’s campaign is doing. and on weekend update, tina fey said, in support of hillary clinton, “bitch is the new black”, basically saying that bitches are awesome, bitches get shit done, we need a bitch in the white house as president. and on monday, the day before the 4 states voted, hillary clinton came on the daily show with john stewart, and half of the show was devoted to an interview of her, where jon stewart just lobbed her softball questions the whole time. hillary clinton is trying to win the votes of young people who watch comedy shows. as a young person who watches comedy shows, i refuse to go along with what my comedy overlords command me to do through their political humor and parodies! i will not obey the dictates of stephen colbert, no matter how much i would love to be a part of “the colbert bump”! stephen colbert made mike huckabee, and mike huckabee promised to make stephen colbert vice president if he got to be president, thanks to the colbert bump. now mike huckabee is out of the race, all thanks to conan o’brien at nbc, whose late night comedy show claimed to have made stephen colbert, and jon stewart, who claimed to have created conan o’brien. the 3 late-night hosts ended up settling their dispute over which one of them created mike huckabee through good old-fashioned violence, and what happened? mike huckabee lost the nomination to john mccain, thanks to those jackasses. enough of this madness! i blame it all on the comedy writers, for going on strike, and then recently coming back to work all disgruntled and full of venom towards a news media they considered to be biased in favor of barack obama. i hope the news media gets back at these comedy writers, by doing news reports on how they are losers and still live with their parents and have never had any girlfriends and are stuck in dead-end jobs. oh wait, that’s me. whoops.

self-hating woman writes for washington post

read this bullshit. isn’t it incredible how self-hating the woman who wrote that article is? she has got to be the most sexist, pro-male, anti-female person ever. and the article is from sunday’s washington post! i mean, ann coulter, a so-called “woman”, says that women should never have gotten the right to vote, among many other ridiculous things she has said. but this lady at the washington post really puts that paper to shame. not that the washington post was ever that good... it has always been fairly right-wing, supporting the war in iraq, having many conservative columnists writing for it. and people complain of a “liberal media”! sure, the new york times endorsed hillary clinton, but hillary clinton was the most right-wing out of all of the democrats running for president in 2008: more right-wing than barack obama, john edwards, dennis kucinich, joe biden, chris dodd, bill richardson, and mike gravel. hillary clinton ran on “inevitability” and a bullshit claim of “35 years of experience” that had no basis in reality, and her top campaign staff was always infighting and was woefully unprepared for any of the contests after super tuesday. and hillary had to fire her campaign manager (someone she had known and trusted for years but who was unqualified for the position of campaign manager) because the campaign manager, patti solis doyle, lied to her about the financial situation of the campaign and said they had plenty of money when they were basically broke, forcing hillary clinton to loan $5 million to her own campaign just to keep things afloat. but up until barack obama’s upset win in iowa, the media was trying to force-feed hillary clinton to us, saying that she was inevitable and nobody else had a chance. of course, after iowa, things changed a lot, since hillary clinton came in 3rd place there! after that, the media decided they liked barack obama best, and they wanted to finish hillary clinton off in new hampshire. hillary won there by crying and getting the sympathy vote, and then the media was all like “wtf?” since obama had been ahead in the polls in new hampshire. since then, the media has been perpetually confused about things; they decided that women all should vote for hillary and black people should all vote for obama, and kept raising issues of racism and sexism. and for a while, anyone not supporting hillary clinton was sexist and anyone not supporting barack obama was racist, at least according to the memes propagated in the media. that sort of delusional thinking in the media started to fall apart in late january, and the media started to get more realistic about things around the time people voted in florida. but the media was now really buying into a new argument, the change versus experience argument, which is a bullshit argument, for several reasons: john mccain has the most experience out of the 3 candidates left (him and the 2 democrats), so if hillary tries to win the nomination on the basis of experience, she is done for in the general election. barack obama introduced the meme of change and every single other candidate in both parties decided to copy him and talk about change, including all the other democrats, as well as all the republicans. change happens all the time whether we like it or not and there is good change as well as bad change. the idea of change is bullshit. but barack obama brought it into the debate and everyone else copied him, including hillary clinton, and she ought to have known better than to fall for that. also, change versus experience is bullshit because of another word barack obama decided to emphasize: judgment. usually he uses this to discuss his opposition to the war in iraq before it even began, and how hillary clinton, john mccain, and george w. bush all supported the war in iraq. hillary clinton’s position on the war in iraq has gradually changed over the years from 2002 to 2008, which i have observed as a new yorker having her as my senator. and in the 2006 election to re-elect her to the senate, i was very unsatisfied with what i had heard from her regarding the war in iraq, and she was still unapologetically pro-war. i voted for her anyway, but voted against her in the democratic primary for united states senate, since there was a real anti-war democrat running against her named jonathan tasini, and i knew all about him and voted for him instead. but in the general election for the senate in 2006, it was either hillary clinton, a conservative republican, or some wacko 3rd party candidate with no chance of winning, so i voted for hillary clinton, very reluctantly, only because she was a democrat. anyway, since super tuesday, barack obama has won 11 primaries and caucuses in a row, and hillary has won 0 contests since then. zero. and while the media does bring this up, they ought to make a much bigger deal about it than they do, because it is a fact, and it matters, and it is the truth, and the voters are speaking loud and clear. and the message from the voters is: after observing all of the campaigning from iowa all up through super tuesday, and all the debates, and being better informed than people who voted earlier since more information is available now than before, they chose barack obama over hillary clinton. barack obama is ahead of hillary clinton in total delagates, and has a wide lead among pledged delegates. it is almost impossible for hillary clinton to win at this point, since the democrats use proportional representation in caucuses and primaries, instead of the winner-take-all system. so even if hillary clinton wins ohio, texas, and later pennsylvania, a 51% or 52% win just isn’t going to cut it, because it will do very little to decrease barack obama’s delegate lead. she has to win those states by wide margins to win the majority of pledged delegates. so this leaves 2 more tricks: either let florida and michigan send droves of hillary clinton supporters to the convention, or have the “superdelegates” overturn the will of the people by overwhelmingly supporting hillary clinton after barack obama wins most of the pledged delegates. or, hillary clinton could simply do the honorable thing and drop out of the race, once it becomes mathematically impossible for her to win the majority of the pledged delegates. but this article in the washington post, written by a woman, about how women are inferior to men, it is just ridiculous nonsense to me. i think the author of that article is correct about herself when she denigrates women: she personally is mentally inferior, not only to most men, but also most women. but as for other women? i don’t think so. i think when women show they are willing to support barack obama instead of hillary clinton, they are showing true signs of intelligence: they are willing to vote for the best candidate even if he or she is not one of their kind, not from their group. the majority of college students are now women, and someday, the fact that more women than men will be well-educated will mean women will dominate in high-paying professional jobs. that is unless men catch up and more of them start going to college too, or if discrimination keeps women from getting high-paying jobs. but as for hillary clinton being better qualified than barack obama? completely untrue. being first lady does not count as experience, nor does being on the board of wal-mart while not having a day job and being the wife of the governor of arkansas. barack obama has spent more years in elected public office, you know, as an actual politician that people voted for. now john mccain has both of them totally beat on this experience question. but when it comes to judgment... john mccain thinks good judgment means supporting the iraq troop surge and supporting 100 more years of war, as well as other wars that will also come. and when it comes to change... john mccain agrees with president bush on pretty much every major issue, including illegal immigration, abortion, the war in iraq, taxes, and everything else. so electing him would not be a change at all... it would be more of the same crap we have been getting from bush. but back to what i started with... the author of that article at the washington post is a prime example of how that newspaper is full of completely idiotic editorials. now the washington post is nowhere near as bad as the washington times, the wall street journal, the weekly standard, or the national review, when it comes to really really bad right-wing bullshit editorials. but the idea that men are inherently superior to women, that is a typical right-wing, conservative position, and it is the position that bible-believing christian fundamentalists all have to believe, if they interpret certain key bible verses literally instead of explaining them away. sexism, racism, homophobia, discrimination based on religion, and many other forms of prejudice are actively promoted as good things in several key bible verses. and modern conservatism is basically jesus wrapped up in an american flag, holding a machine gun, taking bribes from rich people who tell him which foreigners to torture and then kill. so william f. buckley, jr., the man who wanted to tell history to “stop!”, who was opposed to desegregation (and thus a supporter of racism and oppression of black people), the founder of the national review, a man born into wealth and luxury as the son of an oil baron, he is a prime example of why conservatism is wrong. and he is dead now, and let us hope that conservatism dies along with him, soon, because conservatism is a morally bankrupt ideology of hatred, greed, prejudice, fearmongering, warmongering, and oppression. when the civil rights act was voted on by congress over 40 years ago, a higher percentage of republicans than democrats voted in favor, because republicans had not yet been taken over by conservatives, and most southern conservatives were actually democrats at that time. conservatives were on the wrong side of history then, and they still are now. the only difference is, now the conservatives all support republicans and oppose democrats, whereas, several decades ago, there were liberals and conservatives in both parties. of course, some right-wing nutballs like rush limbaugh and ann coulter like to pretend they support hillary clinton, as some kind of sick joke to gain publicity. but really, they are conservative republicans and they will vote republican no matter who the candidate is, and they are lying if they say otherwise. and if not, they are even stupider than i thought they were, because by helping to destroy their own republican party, they are helping to destroy the conservative movement. and the washington post has proven to be another right-wing rag by publishing such sexist tripe, and the author is basically trying to be another ann coulter. 1 ann coulter is already 1 too many. if women want to be sexist, i would prefer them to be “feminist” sexists like gloria steinem who support hillary clinton just because hillary clinton is a woman, rather than sexists like ann coulter or this woman at the washington post, both women who think men are superior to women. why? because i think it would be more interesting if women rose up in open revolution against us men than if they all decided to stay subservient to us men and do whatever we say. i do not know what would happen, and it would be very interesting to see if women succeed in overthrowing men and then installing themselves as a matriarchy to replace the patriarchy, and have all of the great presidents, inventors, and business tycoons of the future all be women. i would be willing to let that happen, to let women take over everything, without resisting at all, because i have such a great sense of humor that i think it would be the funniest and most ironic and unlikely thing ever. and whoever is in charge of things at the top, regardless of their gender or race of whatever, it does not really impact me personally at all, since i am just a lowly peon, a peasant, a commoner of no great import. i am not a wealthy aristocrat like william f. buckley, jr. was. the united states is turning into a 3rd world country, our economy is collapsing, and the world is more chaotic than ever. turkey has invaded northern iraq, israel has invaded the gaza strip, colombia has invaded ecuador, venezuela’s dictator is vowing war against colombia, iran’s dictator is best friends with the iraqi government, north korea’s dictator just enjoyed a show put on by the new york philharmonic in pyongyang, pakistan’s american-backed dictator might be forced out of office by the newly elected parliament, and russia just had a sham election to choose its new dictator, a mindless drone who will do whatever vladimir putin says. in iraq the surge seems to be working, only because militia leaders like muqtada al-sadr have ordered their followers not to fight for the time being, to blend in with the civilians, in order to wait for u.s. troops to leave so they can have a really bloody civil war. we did not defeat the enemy in iraq; they just decided to temporarily stop fighting and become civilians. and many of them are actually joining our side, temporarily of course, and getting weapons and training from us, but they have no real loyalty to us and may very well use those same weapons against our soldiers someday. and this chaos and destruction is what you get in a world ruled by men. would women do things any differently? probably not. not if women like margaret thatcher are any guide. but really, this is a generational divide, not a gender divide or a racial divide or a religious divide. the world is ruled by old people and middle-aged people, and they have screwed things up completely. it is time to let some of us younger people screw things up even worse. it’s not like things are going to get better any time soon. that reminds me of that other word barack obama likes to use, besides change and judgment: hope. hope is not something that i have much of at all. i hope that barack obama will win. but i am not hoping for much. i think our country is already totally screwed no matter who the next president is, and we just need to focus on choosing someone who will at least partially solve a few of the problems we have and avoid creating too many new ones, instead of making the problems we already have much worse and also creating lots of new problems, as george w. bush has done. i am proud to be an american, in the same way that a passenger on the titanic is proud to be on that sinking ship, a ship that everyone thought was the greatest ship ever. and it is people like the author of that washington post article that help convince me that the united states is a sinking ship like the titanic. if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! that means, do not vote for anyone who voted in favor of war in iraq, or else the united states will get even more screwed up than before, and we will also screw up as much of the rest of the world as possible too, with our delusional foreign policy, our brain-dead “intelligence” agencies, and our overextended military might. as a whole, humanity is headed down a path towards extinction, and the united states is leading the way. does mutual assured destruction work on terrorists? we will probably find out someday, when humanity destroys itself. it is only a matter of time. but according to people who study the drake equation, humanity will almost certainly destroy itself within a few thousand years, possibly much sooner. i learned that in an astronomy class at cornell, the same course that used to be taught by carl sagan. and having idiots write complete garbage at newspapers like the washington post does not help our chances for survival. we should have a woman president. someday. but it has to be the right one. and i have not been pleased with the junior senator from new york. but there are other women in politics who are very good, like house speaker nancy pelosi. anyway, that is enough for this blog post.