Sexism

Okay, maybe it’s because I’m not a vaginal-American, but I’m involved in a bit of a tête-a-tête in comments over at The Buzz regarding the charge of sexism leveled at (I presume) the Democratic Party for its alleged treatment of Hillary Clinton, and I just don’t see that the issue is one of sexism.

Why does it always have to be about race or gender, especially as Democrats? I can see the sexism or racism coming from the Republican Party (motto: “The best party old white men’s money can buy!”), but I thought we on the Left were all about egalitarianism and fairness? I don’t think the instant situation has arisen out of sexism, any more than I would say there was racism if the tables were turned. Moreover, any dislike or distrust I personally have for Sen. Clinton’s candidacy is (1) not personal and (2) not because she is a woman; rather, I think her campaign tactics have been horrendous and I think she’s behaved more like a Republican than a Democrat during this campaign.

I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but I believe that if Sen. Clinton is being treated poorly by the Democrats or by the media (and that’s a premise I’m only willing to concede for the sake of argument), it’s because of who she is and what’s she’s done/doing, not because of her gender.

Flame away …

What if?

You know, as the fate of the Democratic delegations of Florida and Michigan is debated and, presumably, decided in Washington, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened, at least with regard to Florida, if the Party had recognized that the spirit of their rule, if not the letter of it, was followed.

The stated rationale for setting the February 5 threshold for primaries other than the four lead states — New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina — was, in short, to let them go first. Florida’s primary took place on January 29 — after each of those early states already voted. Therefore, Florida’s primary date did not threaten the primacy of the four states .

It really was so simple. Just note that Florida de facto followed the rules and move forward. But it’s too late now. Too many voters stayed home, or voted without knowing whether their votes would count. And now, as May comes to an end, we’re still arguing about the delegate counts.

It would have been easy. But too many people — and too many egos — made it difficult.

Army suicide rate rising precipitously; wingnut blogger claims AP "crows" about it

These right-wing assholes will stop at nothing when it comes to spinning the news.

You’ve probably seen by now the report that suicides in the Army reached a record level in 2007. And yet, some twisted freak who runs a right-wing hatefest called “Sweetness & Light” (just bash us over the head with the irony, why don’tcha?) believes the Associated Press is “elated” about this news.

According to the AP article:

Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on. At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday.

Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront — 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never deployed to either conflict.

“We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute — mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that’s very, very busy right now,” said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

So, by the Army’s own admission, the multiple and lengthy deployments made necessary by Drunky McStagger’s dick-swinging illegal “war” are contributing factors in the suicide rate increase. Yet one brownshirted douchebag blogger actually accuses the AP of celebrating said rate increase.

At long last, some news the Associated Press will be only too glad to report about our military.

(Never mind their successes in Iraq.)

Two defense officials said Thursday that 108 troops committed suicide in 2007, six more than the previous year. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the full report on the deaths wasn’t being released until later Thursday.

Note that they couldn’t wait to get out this his historically important information. They had to post a leak from anonymous sources.

And speaking of information, we will again point out that according to an August 16, 2007 MSNBC article:

In a half million-person Army, the [latest suicide] toll translated to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000…

But what both the AP and MSNBC neglect to report this niggling detail from an April 15, 2004 report from the Defense Department:

[T]he national average of 21.5 [suicides] per 100,000 for males ages 20 to 34 the age span for most U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

So even this new higher rate is still much lower than the national average. But we can’t have context like that from the AP.

They have an agenda to push.

So what’s your agenda, pal? Raising strawmen like the national average suicide rate so you can cheer for war and killing and destruction and, yes, suicide?

I’ll say this slowly so even a moron like you can understand: the reason the AP didn’t bring up the national average is because it has exactly nothing to do with the point of the story. The statistics are being presented to show a trend, not to be compared to any kind of national average. The only conclusion to be drawn is that there are more suicides because of the Bush crime syndicate. PERIOD.

And, by the way, exactly what successes in Iraq are you talking about? You mean the daily suicide bombings? Or the increased influence of Iran that is directly attributable to this mistake of a “war?” C’mon, let me know — really, I’m curious.

Looks to me like the only “crowing” about Army suicides is coming from the Right … which, for any sentient person, should come as no surprise.

More primary shenanigans threaten to divide Dems further

This is beginning to get out of hand.

There are people — largely Clinton supporters, of course — planning to protest — yes, actually protest – about the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan. Not surprisingly, the Clinton supporters are most vocal in demanding that the election results from those states in January stand as is. The DNC committee in charge, the Rules Committee, meets tomorrow in Washington.

Among those who may go to bat for Florida on Saturday: Florida Democratic Party chairman Karen Thurman, Florida’s Sen. Bill Nelson and DNC petitioner Jon Ausman.

“Clearly, (Nelson) is going to let the committee know his preference that the entire delegation be seated in accordance with the votes that were cast in January,” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for Nelson, who endorsed Clinton.

“This isn’t about Obama or Clinton,” Gulley said. “It’s about doing the right thing and seating the entire delegation. We want to make sure Florida is seated at the convention and that their voice is heard.”

[...]

Outside the meeting, several hundred Floridians plan to protest on the sidewalk in front of the Marriott-Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Many of them will be Clinton supporters, but others say they are simply angry at the party.

“To say that we don’t matter because of a rule that was not of our doing, that’s unconscionable,” said Blaine Whitford, who is a “special events” organizer for a group called Florida Demands Representation. “I don’t mean to sound jaded, but I am. I prefer Democratic policies on the whole, but I don’t like this. We don’t elect presidents from 48 states in this country.”

Florida Demands Representation and Florida Hispanic Caucus said they had 700 people register for the bus trip to Washington, which could get on the highway as early as today. Also, a group of Clinton supporters called Hillary Rapid Responders will be there. The Clinton campaign on Wednesday eagerly pointed out all the protesters, denying they had a hand in organizing it.

I’ve never seen such internecine squabbling within one party in my life. (Admittedly, I was just a tot in 1968, so forgive me if my political memory doesn’t stretch back quite that far.) The Clinton backers really will stop at nothing to promote their candidate, even if it means that Huggy Bear gets a boost, or even wins the election in November.

This is unconscionable. Can’t the Clinton supporters see that the country would be vastly better off with a President Obama than with a President Huggy? Don’t they realize that if the tables were turned, Sen. Obama would have stepped aside long ago? In short: what the fuck is wrong with you people?

Any rational, objective observer can see that the only fair way to fix the Florida-Michigan mess is to have a do-over — a new primary or a caucus or something, as long as it was a fresh start and run as fairly as the primaries and caucuses in other states have been. Why? Because the January primaries weren’t fair and weren’t necessarily an accurate representation of the voters’ wishes. You just can’t seat delegates based on those primaries — period. In Florida, many Democrats stayed home rather than vote in what they thought might be a meaningless primary. Michigan’s case is even starker, as Sen. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot there, while Sen. Clinton was. Any contention that either primary, especially Michigan’s, was fair is a farcical argument on its face.

Of course, the Democratic Party in each state decided, in their infinite wisdom (yes, that’s snark), that a revote just wasn’t going to be possible — I don’t know about Michigan, but I’m sure the fact that the decisionmakers in Florida are Clinton supporters was purely coincidence (that’s not just snark, that’s outright sarcasm, people).

This has gone far enough. The time to unify behind a single candidate is now — well, actually, it was weeks ago, but now is the best we can do at this point. We can gripe about why things are the way they are and why the DNC screwed up and why Florida sucks, etc., until we’re blue in the face. But it’s far more important to make sure that America is blue on the map in November.

Quit fighting each other and start fighting the Republicans. Before it’s too late.

Harvey Korman (1927-2008)

Sad news about the death today of actor and comedian Harvey Korman.

I grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show, as so many of us of “a certain age” did, and that’s when I first learned of Korman’s comedic talent. Later, of course, I saw Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I and thought he was ideal to play the smarmy roles he did in those films.

But what really will stick with me is when I visited my lifelong best friend Kimberly, who lives in Las Vegas, in 2005, and to celebrate my 40th birthday, she got us tickets to the Stardust to see Korman with Tim Conway. The two, naturally, were brilliant together, as they always were on Burnett and elsewhere … and even though we were the youngest people in the audience or nearly so, we roared with laughter like everyone else.

Now, like the Stardust not long ago, Harvey Korman is gone. And there’s a little less comedy in the world now.

Ron Paul: Nepotism is his middle name

I’d forgotten, frankly, that Ron Paul was still running for president. Most of his batshit-crazy supporters (which of course includes all of them) seem to have quieted down, which is terrific, since they are all pretty much unglued in one way or another — or, in many cases, more than one.

Anyway, the campaign continues, and now I think I know why: it’s a great way to enrich Paul’s own family!

Stick with your own kind, says [Paul,] the maverick presidential candidate.

And that’s more or less what he has been doing over the past few months, putting relatives in a slew of key positions and paying them a total of $169,063, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Paul’s granddaughter Valori Pyeatt helps organize fundraising receptions and has been paid $17,157. Another granddaughter, Laura Paul ($2,724), handles orders for Ron Paul merchandise. Grandson Matthew Pyeatt ($3,251) manages Paul’s MySpace profile. Daughter Peggy Paul ($2,224) helps with campaign logistics. The candidate’s sons Randall and Robert and his daughter Joy Paul LeBlanc have all been paid for campaign travel and for appearing as surrogates at political events.

Who keeps track of all these finances? Paul’s brother and daughter, naturally, who have been paid a combined $62,740 to handle the campaign’s accounting.

Campaign aides said they discussed the possibility that involving so many family members could create the impression that nepotism was driving hiring decisions, but ultimately they saw no problem with the practice.

“You always think about those kinds of things,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman and, it just so happens, the fiance of one of the candidate’s granddaughters (he has been paid $54,573). “But his family is very important to him. There is something important about having a family element involved in a campaign. Having people around you that you can unconditionally trust.”

Nice going, Paulistas. You keep pouring money into your racist whackjob hero’s campaign, and he just passes it right on to his relatives. In fact, here’s a handy chart (right) of the family money tree.

I mean, over $3,000 just to maintain a MySpace profile? Hey, I’m not on MySpace, but I’m on Facebook, so if ol’ Ron wants to write me a $3,000 check, I’ll happily keep track of him on Facebook.

I’ve been laughing at Ron Paul on this sucky blog for almost a year now. But now it appears the joke actually is on his supporters.

Today’s Daily Schadenfreude: this dude who sent me an e-mail

I love getting angry, pointless e-mail from angry, pointless wingnuts. It keeps me in fighting shape.

However tempted I am to share the writer’s real name, though, I instead will choose to shield his identity out of pity. No one this ignorant needs to be outed. Besides, you might just find him on a different website someday.

No, strike that. He wouldn’t be with a hot chick.

Anyway, here’s the e-mail I received today from someone upset with me about my Daily Schadenfreude award to Robert Linger of Tampa’s FOX 13 News:

You are obviously just another paranoid angry liberal where the FOX brand is concerned. WTVT FOX 13, while owned by Newscorp, has nothing to with the business of the FOX News Channel. They are separate entities entirely. Of course a liberal elitist like you conveniently paints everything FOX with one brush. The one and only reason Mr. Linger should earn your award is because he is in a high profile position, has a family and he blindly ignored each in his quest for instant gratification. Unfortunate for him it has most likely earned him a lifetime of humiliation. I think its time to give yourself a Daily Schadenfreude.

A question for my correspondent: How many times did I state, insinuate, indicate, or suggest in that earlier post that FOX 13 is part of or connected to Fox News? ZERO? Yeah, that’s what I thought, moron. Look, I’ll be the first one to laugh at myself when I make a mistake — and I make plenty of them, I assure you. But today, the only derision I’m enjoying is aimed squarely at you, a classic deluded right-wing windbag.

Wingnuts, sadly, tend to come up significantly short in the area of reading comprehension, as I’ve learned over my time as a DFH blogger. At the risk of redundantly stating the obvious, for my addle-brained correspondent, I never said FOX 13 was part of FOX News Channel (FNC). I did, however, point out accurately that it is a FOX station, and as you helpfully pointed out yourself, it, like the FOX Network and its subsidiaries, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp.

Sure, I know as well as you do that FNC is a propaganda factory for the right wing in America, and its use of “News” in its name is misleading at best. But the real power behind the right-wing noise machine that is FOX is, of course, Murdoch himself and the sycophantic, mouth-breathing minions who worship him and his twisted world view. Everything Murdoch touches, from FNC to his individual stations in markets around the country, ultimately is intended to spew venom, hate, and right-wing talking points, usually directed (like my correspondent’s e-mail) at so-called “liberal elitists.” (As Jon Stewart once asked, “Doesn’t ‘elite’ mean ‘good?’ ” Besides, few people are more elite than, say, Huggy Bear or nearly any member of the Bush crime syndicate. I always laugh at the “elitist” tag …)

So if you actually were capable of reading, dear correspondent, you’d understand that my criticism isn’t of FNC alone … it’s of the entire FOX broadcasting cartel. Hell, if it weren’t for sports, I don’t think I’d ever watch anything FOX-related, just because I hate the idea of helping to feed advertising dollars into the gaping maw of the lying scum who own, operate, and populate FOX properties. At any rate, Mr. Linger is a FOX (read: Newscorp) employee, and therefore it’s entirely appropriate to point and laugh at his (and FOX’s) misfortune.

Speaking of pointing and laughing, thanks for allowing us to point and laugh at you, Mr. Correspondent … because for your lame attempts at literary criticism and your stereotypical Republican lack of reading comprehension, today’s Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

Photo phunnies

Need a laugh? Try these out:

Or how about a nice McBush?

That last one’s gonna give me nightmares.

(h/t Holden for “Loading” and Steve McGarrett for “McBush”)

Huggy Bear needs an editor

Just when you thought the shit-for-brains Huggy Bear campaign couldn’t get any stupider comes this ad (right) from this sucky blog right here. (Hey, I don’t sell the ads … and besides, if you click on them, money comes right out of the Huggy campaign coffers and — presumably, someday — goes into my pockets. Like a fraction of a penny at a time, but still …)

Okay, first off, there’s a lovely grammatical issue at the very start of the copy. Is the campaign really too ignorant to find and correct that?

Beyond grammar, though, let me try to parse this idiocy. If you, like me, are against judges improperly interpreting the Constitution to satisfy political ends, like the Roberts Court consistently does (often at the behest of Justice Scalia), then you’re supposed to vote for Huggy Bear? Does. Not. Compute.

My friends (heh), if Huggy becomes president, you can say goodbye to things like a woman’s right to choose, freedom of speech and of the press, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures (if we haven’t lost those things already), and say hello to direct government funding of religion, privatization of Social Security, and bigger profits for the oil barons at the expense of American citizens. That’s not going to come from “proper interpretation” of the Constitution, but from the “legislat[ing] social policy from the bench” that Huggy presumably opposes.

Please don’t be fooled by the propaganda. This election is way, way too important.

And, Huggy – get a fucking editor, for Jeebus’ sake.

More unseen toll from FEMA mismanagement of Katrina

Everything the Bush crime syndicate touches turns to shit. But whether it’s the illegal war in Iraq, the crashing American economy, or the unconscionably bad response to Hurricane Katrina, what you hear about in the mainstream media represents only the tip of the iceberg. The long-term tragedies, like PTSD from Iraq, the massive cuts in municipal budgets, and the diseases brought on by FEMA end up hidden beneath the surface.

What’s that about diseases brought on by FEMA? Oh, just that FEMA trailers are a dangerous health hazard.

[Fifteen-month-old Lexi Bouffanie of Bay St. Louis, Miss.], diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.

Doctors cannot conclusively link her asthma to the trailer. But they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems because the temporary housing supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contained formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level.

The chemical, used in interior glue, was detected in many of the 143,000 trailers sent to the Gulf Coast in 2006. But a push to get residents out of them, spearheaded by FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not begin until this past February.

Members of Congress and CDC insiders say the agencies’ delay in recognizing the danger is being compounded by studies that will be virtually useless and the lack of a plan to treat children as they grow.

“It’s tragic that when people most need the protection, they are actually going from one disaster to a health disaster that might be considered worse,” said Christopher De Rosa, assistant director for toxicology and risk assessment at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the CDC. “Given the longer-term implications of exposure that went on for a significant period of time, people should be followed through time for possible effects.”

Formaldehyde is classified as a probable carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no way to measure formaldelhyde in the bloodstream. Respiratory problems are an early sign of exposure.

Young children are at particular risk. Thousands who lived in trailers will be in the prime of life in the 10 to 15 years doctors believe it takes cancer to develop.

What’s it going to take to prosecute these bastards, to impeach the leaders and punish those responsible for this heinous dereliction of duty? At long last, America, haven’t we had enough yet?

There is absolutely no excuse for the crimes committed against American citizens by the Bush maladministration with regard to Katrina and its aftermath. Somehow, some way, they must be brought to justice. Human decency demands it.