Wesley Clark keeps not insulting John McCain’s military service.
With this lack of assault on McCain’s service to our country, one wonders what Clark won’t do next. What’s not going through that mind of his? What could he be not plotting, not scheming?
I dread what isn’t coming next, my friends.
Did you know that Barack Obama is leading a crypto-messianic, quasi-fascist movement?
Moreover, this kind of reaction—an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere—is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.
People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors—yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.
Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?
There are rising murmurs (and screams) that Obama is the spearhead to a fascist movement, led largely by overexcited college students and newly rejuvenated voters that want to help him embark on his grand crusade of…well, none of the fascism-watchers are quite sure what elements of the fascist program Obama seeks to institute. While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.
This, incidentally, is what happens when a movement begins its official rewriting of history, but one of its prime historians is a complete fucking idiot.
Not too long ago, a friend of a friend joking-aggressively asked me while we were out and about what the difference between misogyny and sex is. Mind you—-we were sober. So I kind of blinked at him and was like, “Come again?” I know the game Bait The Feminist, but this one didn’t even make a lot of sense. He tried to clarify, but it wasn’t helping. I kept thinking he was trying to imply that feminists think straight male sexual desire itself is somehow anti-woman, but he knows that I can’t possibly think that, so I was confused. Later I thought about it and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt—-maybe there are men out there who really do struggle to find a way to desire women that doesn’t have a backlog of misogyny and resentment towards women. God knows that our culture doesn’t do much to help men out in this regard, and in fact encourages men to resent women for being desireable, and to rectify the dissonance between feeling vulnerable towards women because you desire them and feeling superior to women because of your social station by making the act of intercourse a symbolic conquering of the female body. In case that sort of heady language is confusing, a good deal of porn simplifies things by making women choke on cocks, look generally uncomfortable, get double-pronged in painful-looking ways, get spat upon, and get called names like “slut” and “whore”.
Still, I find myself confused. In my experience, men are not complete fools and are fully capable of choosing to define sexual desire for themselves in ways that aren’t dominating and cruel towards women. There’s even porn out there that’s not that bad. But I couldn’t help but be concerned—-is it that hard to tell the difference between straight male desire and misogyny? What do feminist men think of this issue? Lucky for me, Shira Tarrant put together a wonderful anthology of men’s views of feminism called Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, and you’ll be gratified to know that not only do the men in this volume understand the distinctions very easily, some of them taught me a thing or two that I hadn’t thought about in this regard. For women guessing at what men are thinking, the issue of lechery is always confusing—-what percentage is hate/resentment/power play and what percentage is genuine lust when a man looks at you like you’re meat, grabs at you, or hollers at you from a car? From the men in this anthology who have the privilege of not only having male brains themselves, but access to male-only spaces where men are a little more open about these things, the answer becomes clear: It’s 100% about power. Genuine lust is something you feel on the inside and is idiosyncratic and under your control. Men aren’t so different than women after all. But expressing your sexuality in a way that establishes your power is something done to feel strong, to dominate, to show off to other men, and to satisfy insecurities. And that is why lecherous gazes, wolf whistles, and calling someone a “cunt” from a moving vehicle is not, contrary to the claims of anti-feminists, a “compliment”. It’s an expression of dominance, a way for men to signal to themselves, to women, and especially to other men that they are ranked higher than women.
From New York Magazine:
Neither comment even brushes the level of questioning (or, certainly, accusation of cowardice) that was devoted to John Kerry’s Vietnam record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 election. But Smith points out that they’re part of a fringe trend toward deflating McCain’s seemingly unimpeachable war record. Like Bush in 2004, Obama does not support the attacks and has always praised McCain’s war record. But unlike Kerry in 2004, it looks like McCain is ready to go immediately on the counterattack.
Somehow, I don’t think that Obama’s convention will involve handing out ropes to bind other delegates with. Whatever the merits of Obama’s response, he certainly didn’t wait a week after anyone stopped making “controversial” claims to say anything. I somehow doubt that if someone does say McCain’s experiences and recollections are bogus, they’ll get nominated to be ambassador to Belgium, either.
You never know, though. I could be proven wrong.
It’s a Newsbusters twofer today!
First, we have solemn concern over Wesley Clark attacking McCain’s war record, at least according to the braintrust at MSNBC.
I admit that I, too, am deeply and gravely concerned over this thing that Wesley Clark did not do. When he honored and verified McCain’s service, and then declared that it wasn’t a qualification for office, I felt for the thousands of POWs who were likewise told by the former Supreme Commander of NATO that they served their country with honor and distinction, yet were not automatically more qualified than those who were not held captive to become president. It reminds me of when I graduated from college, and was told by someone I once respected and trusted that I’d achieved something great and wonderful, but I wasn’t qualified to be a fighter pilot.
A crashed F-22 later, they’re still wrong.
This won’t be a popular article, except of course for those of us childless people who are annoyed at the sanctimonious pity we get from people trying to bully us into validating their choices by having children ourselves. Too bad, though. It’s better to know than not before you make what is really a very permanent choice, isn’t it?
In Daniel Gilbert’s 2006 book “Stumbling on Happiness,” the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child—and increases only when the last child has left home. He also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids. Other data cited by 2008’s “Gross National Happiness” author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term “bundle of joy” may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,” says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. “In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.”
What’s the gas mileage on the Straight Talk Express?
How does saying that someone is a hero to millions dishonor their military service?
I really need to get dishonored more. Seems like a real resume builder.
Oddly enough, we are not a nation constructed to idolize our military rulers.
We all know that Wesley Clark saying that John McCain’s military service isn’t a qualification for the presidency wouldn’t raise a blip if their partisan affiliations were reversed; it would probably also help if you couldn’t hear the murmurs of anticipation for the Straight Talk Express Mark II.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-400, which has the “Straight Talk” logo emblazoned on its fuselage, tries to recreate the feel of the back of Mr. McCain’s campaign bus in a special area near the front of the plane.
The plane will not be an exact replica. Federal Aviation Administration rules preclude the kind of horseshoe-shaped couch from which Mr. McCain favors on the bus because it would block the aisle. So the campaign installed a captain’s chair for Mr. McCain and a couch for reporters and the retinue of Senate colleagues, war buddies and retired officials Mr. McCain likes to surround himself with on the campaign trail.
Should the collective media head ever be pulled out of the collective media ass, they may want to ask if the hundreds of thousands of active-duty soldiers who aren’t promoted to command and leadership positions every year are, in fact, being Swift Boated by the military. The answer may shock and surprise you. Why do our troops hate our troops?
Findlay, Ohio is at about the 3/4 point between Columbus and Ann Arbor, meaning that I’ve been through the city several times in the past couple of months alone. And, well, yeah.
On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor’s house, at his son’s auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate’s background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Race, of course, plays into this. One of Obama’s biggest problems in the Appalachian area that “proved” his problems among white, working class voters was rumors and e-mail forwards like this. His race may not have been the directly cited reason for the various inaccurate and xenophobic beliefs that are sailing around about him, but it was most certainly the open gate that let the beliefs rush in.
The problem is, of course, that even when they’re “corrected”, the correction is simply another story they’re being told about Obama, one they then weigh against the story they’re being told by their friends and neighbors, and one that they’re allowed to approach as if they’re simply equivalent narratives given weight by their fetishized status as “Middle Americans”.
As a fellow Middle American, let me step up and say this: if you believe that Obama is a Muslim, unpatriotic, a terrorist, not born in America, any of the various rumors floating around about him, you are an ignorant, bigoted asshole giving in to the worst temptations of society - no matter how coddled you are by people unwilling to offend you lest they seem like the sort of elitist who doesn’t obsess over whether or not Negroes with funny names are going to kill you in your sleep. Facts don’t seem to work, so I’m more than willing to try abject shame for their unrepentant dumbassery.
UPDATE: Welcome, Atriots. And the (numerous) grammatical errors are fixed. Breakfast, then write. Must remember.
Holy smoke. The irony and hypocrisy meters just blew-the-f*ck up. Look at this from the
American Taliban
Traditional Values Coalition’s Lou Sheldon (a big fan of John McCain, btw), is aghast that a he’s not the only game in town in the whole church-state merger deal. Imposing Christianity is saving the country, when it’s Islamic law, all of a sudden it’s dangerous.
All over the United States, radical Muslims are pushing companies to bow to Islamic law known as Sharia. They are doing this under the guise of religious freedom, but the political and cultural ideology of Islam recognizes only Allah as the supreme ruler over the world.
...What Muslims are doing has been referred to as “creeping Sharia” – that is, getting companies, communities and states to change policies in order to force everyone to obey Sharia law, a totalitarian system of regulations that govern Islamic theocracies. Caribou coffee shops and Church’s Fried Chicken are Saudi-owned companies which operate and manage their employees based on Sharia principles.
In America, creeping Sharia is to be imposed by lawsuits and claims of ethnic or religious discrimination. Examples of creeping Sharia are becoming more and more frequent as radical Muslim groups such as the CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and Muslim Brotherhood either create conflicts between Muslim employees and their employers or exploit such conflicts.
Did I miss the whole doodad about “Christian” pharmacists not filling legal prescriptions because of their beliefs, or the civil servants out in Cali who refused to marry same sex couples because of their religious convictions? Methinks Lou has a terminal case of theocratic envy.
TVC concludes its diatribe by saying “TVC will be publishing regular updates and special reports on the goals of Islam within the United States.”
I’m going to get the biggest spoiler out of the way right away, so don’t click further if you want to remain unaware of a major theme which is not revealed until about an hour into the film:
From PZ, a story that’s horrifying both on its own and for its implications for the rights of all people, but especially women, whose bodies that the churches claim spiritual ownership over in the name of god. A bit of background: A number of fundamentalist churches believe that sin is caused by literal demons that are invisible but that cling to your body, and need to be expunged by regular exorcisms that are satisfying dramatic to suit their own beliefs that they’re waging war. Unsurprisingly, this tradition drifts over to sadism towards the sinners themselves, especially if the sinners are the young women that absorb so much of fundamentalism’s fascinated hostility. Which has, in one case at least, caused what sounds like a version of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Laura Schubert testified in 2002 that she was cut and bruised and later experienced hallucinations after the church members’ actions in 1996, when she was 17. Schubert said she was pinned to the floor for hours and received carpet burns during the exorcism, the Austin American-Statesman reported. She also said the incident led her to mutilate herself and attempt suicide. She eventually sought psychiatric help.
But leave it to the Texas Supreme Court to decide that physical assault, kidnapping, and generally traumatizing young women is a-okay if you say Jesus told you to do it.
That’s what Heh, Indeedy tells me about the Glorious Revolution.
I’m signing up for Applenacht, because I really want to bust up some insufficiently hip iPods.
OK. I opened a can of whoopass on McSame a bit ago for being completely computer illiterate, but his cluelessness on the following matter defies description—why would we want this man to run the country? Look at this exchange with the Orange County Register’s Martin Wicksol when asked about the spiraling price of gas and its effect on our economy:
WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?
MCCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.
McCain’s cluelessness about gas prices is compounded by the fact that he is clueless about what to do about it. He is promoting a gas tax holiday for drivers because he claims to understand “Americans are hurting.” It will provide “a little psychological boost,” McCain said of his plan.
In reality, his gas tax holiday would be worth a mere 60 cents a day for Americans and would be a boon for oil companies and foreign oil-producing nations. It would drive up the deficit.
Well, maybe an inkling of how $2.00/gal vs. $4.25/gallon might affect the economy might be a useful perspective to have as it has an impact on, oh, the little people, you know the ones who actually pay taxes, as opposed to McSame, who’s a tax deadbeat...
McSame says our taxes are too high and he wants to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, right? I guess none of that really matters to him anyway since he doesn’t bother paying them on his beachfront condo. Why does John McCain hate America?
Newsweek is set to publish a highly embarrassing report on Sen. John McCain, revealing that the McCains have failed to pay taxes on their beach-front condo in La Jolla, California, for the last four years and are currently in default, The Huffington Post has learned.
Under California law, once a residential property is in default for five years, it can be sold at a tax sale to recover the unpaid taxes for the taxpayers.
BTW, this is one of the SEVEN homes John and Cindy McCain own. What else is the MSM going to find?
Related:
* John McCain gets hip on the internets as the GOP paints grim picture (”Well, basically, it’s a Google.”)
* G*d damn. Can we afford a computer illiterate doofus as POTUS? (”I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance that I can get.”)
