I am the parking attendant. And you’re bothering my customers.
So proclaimed Howard Fineman at MSNBC after the Democratic candidates debate last night in Nevada.
I can dig it. Check out the rest of today’s hot fire:
This isn’t new but it’s great that the lobbyists admit that they’re scared of John Edwards.
The WGA doesn’t care about foreigners but does care about black people!
John Edwards is going to be dropping some science in Los Angeles tomorrow at the offices of SEIU Local 721 at 12:30 pm. If you’re planning on voting for the illusion of change (Hillary) or the idea of change (Barack), I suggest you go and listen the man talking about real change. The event is free and open to the public, you just have to take a moment and RSVP here.
In other appearance news, cinetrix has the plumb duty to cover Mike Huckabee’s rally at Clemson tomorrow. I won’t lie. I love the folks associated with Huckabee. How can you not love the Christian, white-boy karate, stylings of Chuck Norris? Their alliance finally explains why Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution (we just belong to a list of creatures that Chuck Norris allowed to live).
Or how about the limousine ridin’, jet flying, kiss stealin’, wheelin’ and dealin’- WOOOOO!-16-time-champion-of-world, Ric Flair?
Hell, the poet of post modern irony, Stephen Colbert, is his “running mate.”
Besides, don’tcha just love that his name is so ammenable to making those celebrity marriage combo names? Chuckabee, Rickabee, Huckabert.
And it’s for this reason that jhk endorses Mike Huckabee. I want a celebrity marriage combo name like Kongabee.
Well, that and the fact that Huck can’t win a national election for garbage man because no matter how many “rangers” he’s got working for him, that dude is out of his goddamn mind. To that end, there’s going to be a whole lot of crazy on sale tomorrow at Clemson and cinetrix gets to see it firsthand.
I’m jealous.
I, for one, am glad that this whole gender/race cold war has begun between the Clinton and Obama camps.
First, It was bound to happen. Forget about the requisite low level of discourse in politics, to think that these primaries would have gone on without talking about gender, race, and all of the other stuff we’re not supposed to talk about because we’re perfect little liberals, is just asking too much of us petty ass men and womyn.
If you think that there won’t be a unending barrage of ambiguous, thinly (or not so thinly) veiled attacks on Clinton’s gender or Obama’s race if one of them is nominated for the general election, you’re painfully mistaken.
Second, it allows me to to point out that while everybody’s been writing about what this dustup means – about America, gender politics, race relations – most of them miss the point.
Here’s what they’re saying:
Sexism? Sucks. Womyn have it bad. Shit isn’t equal. It’s gotten better but sexism still exists.
Racism? Sucks. Blacks have it bad. Shit isn’t equal. It’s gotten better but racism still exists.
So, do womyn have it worse or do blacks?
I don’t know but the point is nominating either Clinton or Obama won’t make sexism or racism magically disappear. Listen, I don’t want to pick a president based on whose historical victimization I think to be more worthy. And I don’t think should you either.
Nominating – and possibly electing – one of them might force us to begin seriously addressing these issues but I doubt that.
Fuck, we’re not even talking seriously about it now. This current debate between the Clinton and Obama camps is about symbols and words, not substance.
A true debate on the issues of substance would be too dangerous, too volatile for them to engage in because it would mean that they – and us as the electorate - would have to wrestle with the ”C” word.
Yes, they’d have to start talking about Class, which trumps even gender and race.
Look, the “Man” no longer oppresses black people or women like he oppresses poor people. And being poor cuts across race and gender. There are millions of poor ass white people, black people, men, and women.
This article about the gender/race war has a simple thought experiment in which he asks whether or not you want to be born in America as a white woman or a black man. How about this: Would you rather be born in America as a rich black woman or a dirt poor white man? Would you rather be Oprah in Chicago or Bobby Ray in the backwoods of Alabama?
The Man would rather be Oprah. Now, if I told you 40 years ago that The Man would rather be a black woman than a white man, you would have flipped out.
Don’t get me wrong, he used to hella oppress black people. Enslaved them, even. And The Man didn’t treat women much better. It was all bad. But The Man has changed. He’s no longer a racist or a sexist because he knows that those minorites can make his ass money.
The Man? He’s a motherfucking classist.
Dear Michigan Primary voters,
As many of you know, your state Democratic party has chosen to take control of your disenfranchising.
Simmer down. You’ve been disenfranchised before in the primaries. In 2004, you were disenfranchised because by the time you had your primary in March, the race had become academic with John Kerry already crowned as the candidate.
Wanting to become as “relevant” as Iowa and New Hampshire, your state legislators went against the powers that be and moved up your primary so that your vote would matter. This really p.o.’d the national party and it took away your state’s delegates so now your vote doesn’t matter.
Yes, folks, tomorrow, at the polls, you’ll be participating in some good ol’political Kabuki.
You’re gonna have four choices: Hillary Clinton, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Uncommitted. Obama and Edwards dropped out which begs the question why Hillary is still on the ballot. If you write in Obama or Edwards, your vote will be thrown away but hey, what the hell does your vote mean anyway since your state ain’t got no delegates?
The prevailing notion is that once the Convention rolls around, the delegates will be reseated, that’s fine, but to whom, especially if “uncommitted” wins?
The irony is that with three viable candidates in this year’s race (and don’t let the media tell you anything different – seven delegates separate first, Obama, and third, Edwards), some of the later primaries may matter more than in the past.
So…what to do?
Here’s jhk’s advice on how to take back the night on your disenfranchisement:
Vote Dennis Kucinich. That dude has run two presidential campaigns, spending like a buck-ninety-nine, eating nothing but vegan cookies. As many of you know, I can’t stand vegans (like the French, I think they’re rude), so this is no small endorsement.
If you help him “win” your state, you will:
1) Give the media something else to stew on for a few days
2) Help him raise some money so he can buy some Leaf Cuisine. For vegan fare, that shit is actually pretty good
3) Say something true and honest about the need for change in American politics
If you can’t get it up vote vegan, at least vote uncommitted. The last thing we need is for Hillary to make some robotic, blustery speech where she apes John Edwards’ themes, with scary ass Madeline Albright and that cross-eyed dude standing behind her and creeping us out. Please, please, save us from that.
Kisses,
jhk
The cooks in Nevada can’t smell what The People’s Candidate is cooking. The culinary union’s secretary treasurer just had to go make it all racial by calling the folks in Iowa and New Hampshire “Wonder Bread,” while noting the Nevada has a “pumpernickel; we got whole wheat; we got rye” and bunch of yeasty candyass jabronis with anosmia, apparently.
White bread John Kerry can’t smell what Edwards is cooking either. I’m not surprised by this. It was clear 3 1/2 years ago that Kerry blamed Edwards for not delivering the South and therefore, the White House. Kerry better start with the man in the mirror if he wants someone to blame for not being president. Shamon, motherfucker.
I say whatevs because the People’s Candidate doesn’t need any of you fuckers – Bill Richardson just dropped out of the race and all of his support will come power the People’s Elbow like a fucking tidal wave. Just you wait and see.
I’ve still got some smoke coming out of my ears on this whole media thing. If this is true for you and you haven’t been following Glenn Greenwald on Salon, you’ve been missing some good stuff.
Here, he recounts an exchange between Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw regarding Tiresia’s error in predicting Oedipus would claw his eyes out the polls’ error in proclaiming Clinton’s loss.
MATTHEWS: Tom, we’re going to have to go back and figure out the methodology, I think, on some of these [polls].
BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?
MATTHEWS: Yes sir?
BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.
MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.
BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.
But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.
Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.
As Greenwald points out:
But Matthews’ response to Brokaw is perfect in several ways. The very idea of discussing issues, examining the candidates’ positions, or even analyzing voter preferences does not and cannot even occur to Chris Matthews. That — the most elementary nuts and bolts of standard, healthy journalism — is way, way beyond the scope of what our media stars are able to do or want to do.
Here, Greenwald writes about the role of political reporters. This one hits me in the gut because it speaks directly to the unreported Edwards bounce nationally.
[According to the Rasumussen daily tracking poll] Edwards — who, just one week ago, was 10 points behind Obama nationally among Democrats — is now only two points behind him. Less than a month ago, he trailed Clinton by 29 points. Now it’s 13 points. He is, by far, at his high point of support nationwide. Apparently, the more exposure Democratic voters get to Edwards and his campaign positions — and that exposure has been at its high point during his surge — the more they like him. By contrast, Obama is more or less at the same level of support nationally, even having decreased some since his Iowa win (for most of mid-Decemeber, he was at 27-28 points).
Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn’t even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead — after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.
There are certainly horse-race counterarguments to all of this. This is only one poll. Obama is ahead in New Hampshire, where his support has increased, etc. etc.
But I’m not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored. Their predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage — the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing — which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Why the hell do we let the media do this to us?
Because we’ve let the major news media and all of their celebrity pundits, anchors, journalists, etc. become experts and we are nothing if not a nation obsessed with abnegating our responsibilities to consider, choose, and act in making decisions, instead allowing, nay, thirsting for “experts” to tell us what to do.
Mary Milan and I were actually talking about this very subject last night. It was in the context of Dr. Phil being called in by the Spears family to consult on the Britney.
You have a family in deep, deep trouble and of all the fuckers you call, you call a TV psychologist? That’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard.
It has now caused a Spears-McGraw family feud.
But Dr. Phil is ”an expert” in this field. Is your kid acting crazy? Dr. Phil knows what to do and he will not only cure the kid on TV, he will cure your family too.
You don’t know what to get for Christmas? Wait for the annual Oprah Christmas list.
Don’t know what to eat? Here’s a meal replacement bar with all your essential vitamins and minerals.
It’s sad. We’re a confused nation because we’ve let experts obfuscate our essential, inborn, precious, guiding light – our common sense.
And it makes me mad. These fuckers depend on us to be confused and scared. We’re better than that.
The next time someone says to me, “Well, Oprah says…” without a trace of irony, I’m going to slap that fucker in the face because it’s time for tough love.
The press is in a tizzy over Hillary’s “shocking win” in New Hampshire. Every news story I’ve read today seems to be a riff on one of the following themes:
While most journalists only had the fortitude to wrestle with one of these themes but Brian Williams’ is no mortal man. His MSNBC story, “New Hampshire voters defied polls, media” managed to cram all of those themes, and some lyrical prose, into 1500 muscular words.
Seriously…
Can we fucking relax?
Maybe dial down all this CAPSLOCK JOURNALISM?
You know what would have been shocking? Like a real, searing middle finger to the polls and the media?
If John Edwards won. Or Bill Richardson. Or Dennis Kucinich. That would have been shocking and truly exemplary of the independent character of the New Hampshire electorate.
Nothing like that happened.
Was Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire a rebuke of big media who had gleefully signed, sealed and delievered her death warrant? No.
New Hampshire was not even a “market correction”. Obama got a push from Iowa which made the results in New Hampshire much closer than anybody expected. Clinton strategist Mark Penn was both right and wrong when he asked, “Where’s the bounce?” Obama got his bounce, just not as much as the polls indicated.
And yet, there’s part of me that’s still dubious about whether or not all of that was staged. Clinton decides to bag Iowa, the press says she’s finished, Penn says there was no bounce, there was, the “stark reality” of being the third leg in the race makes her cry, she wins New Hampshire by a hair and the press says, “Magical! Heartwarming! What a great story!”
Kind of sounds like Seabiscuit.
Now, back to your regular coverage of the People’s candidate on today’s edition of johnnyhongkong: ELECTION FEVER.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that my open letter to the fuckers in New Hampshire didn’t reach more people and deliver the 40,000+ votes to swing the election in our favor. I’m terrible Edwards supporter.
I’d also be lying if I said that I’m not disapponted that Clinton didn’t lose big – not because she’s a woman or that she cried – but because it would have continued the chain of events leading us to a two person race. Hell, it didn’t have to be Clinton, she just happened to be saddled with the losing mo’. Obama could have lost big and I would have been cool with that.
But I am heartened by felagund’s diary on DailyKos on why he contuinues to support Edwards rather than going over to Obama:
I don’t want reconciliation, unity and bipartisanship. I want the next President to investigate, indict, prosecute and convict the living shit out of the thieves and murderers that have despoiled our beautiful country over the last seven years and well before. I want a President who’s going to put on some boots and stomp on the throats of the Republicans, tear away the media lies and the layers of obfuscation and show everyone in America just what was done in our name. I don’t want warm and fuzzy: I want thunder and lightning. I want a perp walk every night on the news. [Emp. not mine]
And here’s a video, just for the hell of it, from the ABC/Facebook debates in New Hampshire on Saturday because none of you saw it:
