Anger Management II
I really can’t advise people to click on any of the links I’m providing because they go to instances of insanity for the most part. What I had always assumed were informed, intelligent people have completely and totally lost their minds.
The least of the offenses is committed by my favorite Middle Eastern expert, Dr. Juan Cole, in his post, Clinton Touches off National PTSD. Dr. Cole recognizes that people went around the bend, but at the end brings up the picture of Obama in tribal clothing as an example of a Clinton dirty trick‽
The individual who is the source for the claim about the Clinton involvement is Matt Drudge, one of the few people on the planet with less reliability than Ahmed Chalabi. When you have people like Dr. Cole giving credence to statements on the Drudge Report, the world is definitely out of kilter.
First of all, I realize that understanding Clinton’s remark about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy requires that people know something about American political campaigns, and that Boomers tend to makes references to important events in our own lifetimes, that many “political thinkers” have never bothered to read about, but as we are coming up to the fortieth anniversary of Bobby Kennedy’s remarkable comeback in the Presidential campaign by winning the June California primary, only to be shot as he left the victory party, I would have thought that people would have understood the reference. Yes, campaigns went on into the summer, and the conventions actually meant something. We didn’t have this homogenized, “two primaries and it’s all over” system that the “party leaders” seem to prefer these days. Her mistake was in assuming that people have taken the time to study the history of campaigns before presuming they were qualified to report on it.
As Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman I would probably have been fired after I said “the campaign is really sorry that you people are too pathetically ignorant to understand what Senator Clinton said.”
Why did she bring up Bobby Kennedy? Let’s see – junior Senator from New York, accused of being a “carpetbagger” for moving to New York and running for Senator based primarily on a family association with a popular President, and then using that office to run for President. That describes Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama may have been in grade school in Jakarta when when MLK and RFK were assassinated, but Hillary Clinton was already involved in politics.
Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog pops in to write: HRC Death Fantasy: The Logic Doesn’t Even Make Sense. That’s right it doesn’t make sense, but you are the one having the fantasies, not Clinton.
Sean-Paul Kelley at the Agonist is smug in his: Hillary Clinton: Charmer. Why is your paranoia her problem, Sean-Paul?
Hillary Clinton, I can almost guarantee, has to be the all time leading recipient for death threats among Senators. Anyone who has ventured over to the wingnuts blogs sees them all the time. Why are we supposed to take threats against Obama more seriously, than threats against Clinton? Is an Obama White House going to be even more isolated than the current bubble?
I don’t want to hear any crap about why I should take this more seriously. People were shooting at me in 1968, I know what it’s all about, and I was making a hell of a lot less money than a Senator makes. The year, 1968, was one of the most significant in American history, and those events are still echoing. If you don’t know why 1968 was significant, get a few books and read them.
Note: In case anyone has forgotten, I don’t care who runs for President this year – I’m not using that line on my ballot.
Update: If you think I’m kidding about these people being delusional, try out Benjamin Kirby at the Florida Progressive Coalition Hillary Clinton Crosses Into a Realm From Which She May Never Return.
33 comments
bring me a drudgery!
the world would be better off if both drudge and shrub were never heard from again. not disappeared, not assassinated, not even censored, they just need to stfu.
why should you take threats against obama more seriously? well, she’s a woman y’know. we’re lesser beings, not worth as much as someone with a y chromosome. /sarcasm
i thinks it’s marginally more likely that threats against obama are marginally more likely to end in his death. just a gut feeling based on my volunteeer work with welfare moms, but misogynists tend to just go home and beat up on their wives/girlfriends/kids, as an antidote to whatever ails them, rather than actually confronting the person who actually annoys them. it’s probably not a significant margin, and my own evidence is anecdotal.
i was born at about the same time that the vietnam war was. we kids grew up watching it, and the riots, and the hijackings, and the assassinations on tv every night. i think i was in my 20s before it sank in that this state of affairs was some kind of aberration, really, for [supposedly] civilized countries, at least.
granted there are parts of the world that really are in a perpetual state of war/famine/disease, but we don’t hear about them much anymore, so i guess my sense of what the outside world is really like is still skewed. i can forgive the under-30 crowd for not knowing this stuff first-hand, but there are still plenty of people who should [and probably do] know better.
otoh, [how many hands am i up to now?] we’ve had very few high-profile black leaders, leaders who were out to radically change things, and a huge proportion of those got shot and killed. white leaders, not so much, st least not percentage-wise. i can certainly see why blacks are touchy about the subject. i would be too.
ps. i’m boycotting all your links. or would that be grrrlcott? the clinton derangement syndrome really does seem to have morphed into a new and more virulent strain: hillary derangement syndrome.
help! i have opinions and can’t shut up! i’ll be using that line on my ballot. i’ve got no problem at all choosing between two republicans if it comes down to that, although i’m still seriusly considering writing in edwards. or christopher houdini.
Malcolm X was killed over “religious differences”, and then there was Martin Luther King.
RFK was next, then the attempts on Ford, George Wallace, and Reagan.
Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton don’t seem concerned. John Conyers, Charlie Rangel, etc. don’t seem concerned. I don’t even remember Cynthia McKinney complaining, and she was certainly a lightning rod for hate.
This is paranoia and total overreaction.
I have reasons I don’t like Clinton, but they are policy reasons, and Obama is even worse on most of those policies. Neither one of them are talking about doing anything for anyone I know, nor have they committed to reversing the police state and imperial Presidency.
Clearly there’s something wrong with me (more than one thing, actually, but let’s stick to topic): wannabe wonk that I am, when I first heard Hillary’s statement about RFK, in context, I thought it was just another observation of the history of the time, more evidence that primary campaigns often run quite late into the season. I thought the statement was awkward and in poor taste, but I did not think of the implication that horrified everyone (and was that really what her statement implied?) until later.
Then I encountered Olbermann’s rant. From its pitch, you’d have thought Hillary was Dubya, or maybe even Sirhan Sirhan himself. I’m sorry, but that is simply not justified.
i’ve considered writing in cynthia mckinney for president too. i may even get a chance to actually vote for her as a real candidate.
… nor have they committed to reversing the police state and imperial Presidency.
committed? ron paul, mike gravel, dennis kucinich are the only candidates in the two major parties who have any real commitment to these values. dodd and richardson are good on a few scattered issues, and i voted for edwards because of his apparent willingness and ability to take on the corporatocracy, but in their present incarnations, both the democratic party and the republican party are committed to keeping the police state and imperialism alive.
if we get a president clinton or a president obama, one of the glass ceilings will have been cracked significantly. that’s an important enough social benefit that i’m willing to actually cast a vote for either one of them if the alternative is yet another old white guy. and yeah, i’m aware that this is the bait the party is using to hook me into otherwise supporting the status quo.
i’m pretty much with you on the ‘awkward and in poor taste’ part of it, steve, but the savvy white candidate who’s trying to win the hearts of black voters would have known that even inadvertently raising the specter of political assassinations would trigger some folks’ hot buttons.
ko could do this coutry a lot of good if he’d redirect his vituperation and media presence exclusively to calling for impeachment of bush and cheney, or tryig them later for war crimes, instead of jumping on the cds bandwagon.
[sheesh] trying
tryigthem later for war crimes…anyways, on assassination attempts, successful or not… in raw numbers, whites have probably been targeted more than blacks, but a higher percentage of black leaders than white leaders has been gunned down in recent history, [cough] ‘religious differences’ [cough] notwithstanding [that was still a political assassination, whatever the veneer].
[help! i’m up on my soapbox and i can’t get down!]
This is the fortieth anniversary year of the MLK/RFK assassinations, so it would be very strange if they weren’t mentioned in the campaign. One of RFK’s most remembered moments was his speech in the bed of a pick-up in Indianapolis on the assassination of Martin Luther King. There is a monument to the speech in the city.
President isn’t a dangerous job for assassination compared to others. If you want a high risk profession, work in a women’s health clinic that performs abortions.
I’m beyond tired of this fear crap. If these people are so damn afraid they can crawl into holes and hide, just as the Hedgemony wants. The media doesn’t want to talk about the war, but it is still there, and it is killing a lot more black Americans than imaginary assassins.
yeah, i agree about the fear. after the paul hill incident, my parents seriously considered becoming abortion clinic escorts, but reluctantly decided that their activism calendars were already too full. i admit to breathing a huge sigh of relief at that.
Given that it is apparent that very few people can accurately recall the events of 40 years ago, I don’t think it counts as recent history.
It’s worth pointing out that a whole lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome seems to be occurring as well on places like TalkLeft and No Quarter, or Tennessee Guerrilla Women. June 4 this contest should be ended so that we can begin healing this division.
Michael, some of us just want a Democrat to win, whether it’s Obama or Clinton. Polls I’ve read recently show a Clinton/McCain matchup to be a win for Clinton, and an Obama/McCain matchup to be tied. (Yes, I realize that can and probably will change.) But referring to one’s primary opponents as victims of “derangement” is by no means helpful to your cause.
FTR, I caucused for Hillary, but have not endorsed since I endorsed Edwards months ago. I shall support the Democratic nominee because I am long since pledged to do so…
… Well, I’ll do that unless I am considered “deranged” by what is left of the Democratic Party. In that case, I may do what I never thought I would… stay home in November. Either way, I will not tolerate being abused, by friend or foe.
division derangement syndrome!
i dunno, michael, i think this ‘division’ problem has been over-hyped too. [the number of people who exist in real life] >> [the number of people who blog + the number of people who punditize for the media] and most of the people i run into irl are like steve, they may or may not have some preference for either clinton or obama, but they’re united in their resolve to not have a president mccain.
Steve, if it’s okay to speak of Clinton Derangement then it is proper to speak of Obama Derangement. I didn’t open that door.
June 4, all states will have voted, and the delegates should let their decision be known. In saying this, I am not proposing you have to support Barack Obama just because he will be the nominee. You have every right to sit out the election in November if you prefer. The internecine disagreement needs to end once Hillary Clinton has had an opportunity to participate in every state contest.
Also, Steve, note that I never said you or anyone here was exhibiting Obama Derangement. But Larry Johnson is frankly unreadable now.
I just checked No Quarter and there is a post today claiming that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee she has a 99.9% chance of beating John McCain, but if Barack Obama is the nominee (which he will be), he only has a 32.7% probability of winning in November. That’s just batshit insane talk.
As I said in another comment, Larry (and his wife) are so pro-Hillary now that they have lost all objectivity and lost whatever respect I had for him. He seems to have given up on the important issues he was battling. Same with TalkLeft and others.
All three candidates have private agenda’s and all three are in it for themselves. The only question is, which agenda might be less harmful for Americans, and which might give some slim chance of fixing things. You have McCain and the *Old Money* (via his wife) and the MIC. You have Hillary with the Israel/Turkey/Oil money, and Obama has the Chicago machine and all the corruption that brings with it and is courting the Religious lunatic fringe.
Interesting that Hillary and Obama are both tied to the Chicago machine. 🙂
Nice choices. Good luck with that!
courting the religious lunatic fringe away from the democratic party is what helped get reagan elected, and helped keep the republicans in office for the past quarter century.
I’m of the opinion that Larry thinks he knows something that is affecting his judgment. Of course, the fact that he was in the CIA makes his judgment suspect with me, as the “company” was always too politically involved.
That said, Clinton has a better chance than Obama in November, as she connects to the biggest group of voters in the country – women. The Obama campaign has not been good about precision targeting it’s attacks on Clinton, and women have been collateral damage in many of those attacks.
The question is one of Republican turn-out. If the GOP doesn’t stay home, McCain is the money bet.
I see a nasty, low turn out election, with McCain winning.
FTR, let me issue a correction that you, Michael, at least, will appreciate. Bill Scher states that in seven out of eight major polls, Obama now defeats McCain, so that matter, at least, is now a non-issue. (Never say I don’t admit it and correct it when I commit a factual error.) Read Scher’s column for the details.
I’m approximately Bryan’s age. I’ve been a “registered” Democrat (we don’t use that term in Texas, but I’ve been an actual party member) for 16 or 20 years of which I have a record in the presidential primary vote, and probably another 12 or 16 years before that in elections for which I don’t have records. When I hear Hillary backers OR Obama backers talk about staying home or, worse, fracturing the party, I have very little patience with those people… not all Obama backers, of course, nor all Hillary backers, but I am intolerant of people who use the Democratic Party apparatus for their purposes but intend to break it when it doesn’t suit those purposes. I’ve worked too hard for too long to put up with that.
Michael, I would never have attributed bad motives to you; you’re not the type. And goodness knows some of Hillary’s troops are outside the pale as much as some of Obama’s. I just don’t see the notion of “Obama derangement syndrome” as having any more validity than the analogous phenomenon for Hillary. There’s craziness enough to go around.
Bryan, I’d have agreed with you about the election outcome until I read the article by Scher. McCain’s campaign is apparently flat-out lying about current poll numbers, selectively publishing the one of eight polls (USA Today/Gallup) that has McCain leading (by 1 point) while ignoring the seven major polls (follow the link) that have Obama leading by 2 to 10 points depending on how the polls are structured. There is no longer a valid reason… at this point… to say that Obama is more likely to lose to McCain than Clinton is.
But for goodness’ sake, remember that all this false flim-flam about poll numbers stems from Karl Rove and the like, not from one or both Democratic camps. I’m sorry, but it is not immoral for Hillary to try to win, even at this point. Whoever your favorite candidate may be, if you’re sticking with the Democratic Party (and I can understand why Bryan is not), don’t fracture it by buying into Rove’s claptrap.
Steve, I refer you to hipparchia’s comment above where she raised Clinton Derangement Syndrome. My raising of Obama Derangement Syndrome was only after that door had been opened, and again, I was speaking particularly of people like Larry Johnson that there seems to be a consensus of opinion is out of his mind. It’s probably not a good term to use, I agree with that.
As for not having tolerance for people talking about staying home, you just did that above as well.
If you’ve lost patience with the Democratic party, I’m thinking that Cynthia McKinney ought to be invited to participate in debates.
I also want Bob Barr to participate, and I think he’ll take lots of votes from John McCain.
“Steve, I refer you to hipparchia’s comment above where she raised Clinton Derangement Syndrome.” – Michael
“Mooommm, Sis did it first!” If hipparchia marched her candidate’s campaign over a cliff, would you follow her? %-)
“As for not having tolerance for people talking about staying home, you just did that above as well.” – Michael
Oh, Michael, you are so clever! Irony-impaired, but clever.
I have no intention… never had any intention… of staying home in November. I was trying to show you how offensive your statement was, and how such language could drive people away. Irony is hard to convey in print, I suppose, and I could have done it better. But I kid you not, Michael, it ill serves Obama’s cause, or Hillary’s for that matter, for their supporters to whine about how unfair opponents and opponents’ supporters are being. Do you want a President McCain? Offending former Hillary supporters is a good way to accomplish that.
“If you’ve lost patience with the Democratic party, I’m thinking that Cynthia McKinney ought to be invited to participate in debates” – Michael
Believe me, I’ve thought all this through, and there are no good approaches. Leaving the DP may eventually be forced upon me, if Obama’s and Clinton’s supporters together succeed in obliterating the party. But that is a poor solution to anything. Anyone in the U.S. outside the two major parties has effectively zero positive power. In today’s circumstance, Greens and Libertarians can destroy, but they cannot accomplish positive things.
I admire former Rep. McKinney in her own right, but running for President is not a game. I have some grudging respect for former Rep. Barr because of his civil libertarian views (not his Libertarian views), but running for President is not a game. My sincere hope is that those two worthies’ participation will cancel out and have no net effect on the race. If the U.S. had a different sort of electoral system, I would welcome all participants, but as it is, my motto is “No new Naders.”
By the way, just to be clear, I don’t think it’s immoral for Hillary Clinton to continue her campaign until she’s competed in every state, and it has been educational. I think it is helpful to the party in knowing what we’re facing in Appalachia, for instance.
My only point is that on June 4, the delegates should make their decision known, and it wouldn’t be a bad bet that they will decide for Barack Obama by a majority.
Also, my interest in Cynthia McKinney is partly as a way to let people who are really angry at Barack Obama and refuse for whatever reason to support him if and when he is the nominee to have an outlet other than John McCain. Right now I’m seeing commenters on some of these blogs that I mentioned above openly stating they would rather vote for McCain than Obama. I think having a green alternative will not spoil the vote because it will be balanced by the libertarian alternative, Bob Barr will likely do better than Cynthia McKinney to be honest. No, this is not a game, but this is an instrumental approach to the ending of the Republican party.
😈 over the cliff with ya! disney pushed the lemmings, y’know.
no new naders. nifty slogan.
i used to be angry about nader too, but after rethinking it, i wonder how many of those naderites would have just stayed home if he hadn’t been in the race. would enough of them have turned out to make a difference and vote for gore? possibly maybe perhaps in florida, where it came down to a few hundred votes, but all told they were only avout 2-3% of the vote, so maybe not. unlike ross perot, who garnered 20% of the vote in several states.
as for breaking the democratic party, i don’t have any wish to actually break anything, but it might be workable if we could let the far right have the republican party, let the centrists have the democratic party, and let the leftists take their portion of the democratic party off to start up a new liberal/progressive/whatever party.we could probably naturally end up with close to a 1/3 – 1/3 – 1/3 split, so that no one party had a huge advantage.
keep in mind, nader didn’t cost gore the election, he just made it close enough that bush stole it. Cynthia McKinney did stand up for Florida but no senator would recognize the objection of those house members.
eh, no way to prove, or disprove, that the election wouldn’t have been just as close if nader hadn’t run. how many ron paul supporters are going to turn out to vote for mccain?
nader was running as a pretty far left candidate, and gore, at the time was pretty darned centrist. i only voted for gore because it was a vote against the republcans and they needed to be stopped [not that that worked]. most of my naderite friends told me they’d have stayed home if nader hadn’t been in the race. anecdotal evidence and small sample size and all that, but still….
i’m not angry at obama, or clinton, or any of the dem candidates, just the party and the system. and the pundits and the press. much opprobrium for them.
I just don’t know. If I had to do a full risk assessment on the three candidates, I suspect it would be close It isn’t the candidates themselves, but those around them. It’s like on ’04 when lefty’s everywhere wanted Gore to run. I like Gore really, but he has one glaring fault. Tipper Gore. She’s a gold plated lunatic. A lot of people yelled at me, because, as Bryan has pointed out numerous times, people there don’t know or care about their history. I was never a big fan of Frank Zappa’s music, but I admired his politics, and his stand. He was never a hypocrit. He was all over Tipper and even won a court battle against her and her lunatic wives club that controlled many serving politicians. It’s the same with the candidates today, especially McCain. But all three have allied themselves with some very questionable and even objectionable people! So, who will benefit the most when one of them is the Prez?
Americans are all too easily fixated, almost hypnotically, on the main candidate and fail to look around and see what they are trying to hide. Americans see what they are told to see, like they are being controlled by some great illusionist, until it’s too late. The blogs, like this one, have helped change that. But a lot more needs to be done. You are NOT just electing Hillary or Obama or McCain… you are electing everyone around them, everyone they owe allegiance to, everyone they owe a favor too, everyone who knows whatever dirty secret they don’t want anyone else to know. It wasn’t until after Bush stole a second election that Americans finally started to notice the people he had like Rove and others, who had always been there, in control, from the start. The people who have the spotlight and you are all being told to look at, are just a distraction. They are not even important. They will do what they are told.
I don’t get it. I know the MSM can be blamed for a lot of it… but there are other ways to find things out, there always has been.
i can has oppo research? ur for hyer?
digging up the information isn’t the hard part. dislodging the leeches, even once we know about them, is the hard part. that, and finding non-leeches who actually want the job [senator, president, etc].
public finanacing for campaigns, dismantling the lobbying industry, repealing corporate personhood, these would all help, but everytime we unwrap one of their tentacles, they manage to get two more wrapped around us. worse than hydras.
as for the media, we need them [or a replacement] to not only gather information, but disseminate it too. maybe if we make it all into lolcats….
hipparchia, my point was that it makes no sense to blame nader for what bush stole.
kryten42, right on with the censorship advocated by tipper gore, and by holy joe. I deliberately abstained in 2000.
My thinking has evolved quite a bit since then, but here is part of an essay I wrote that year:
As I head for bed this morning (November 8, 2000), now around 5:00am EST, the US Presidential Election is too close to call. Assuming that you believe the figures, who shall be the winner, the next President of the United States of America, the so-called Leader of the Free World, the Emperor of the Universe (so far as it is supposed to matter), depends upon the results of the vote in one single state. In that state, Florida, somewhere near six million votes have been counted. And the two “leading” candidates (neither of which is purported to have a majority, only a plurality of votes cast) are separated by a mere 200 votes. And it may still be tightening.
So it looks like there will be a recount. But this brings up the point that is so often made, your vote counts.
It could theoretically come down to just a single vote. One man or woman, casting their ballot, could determine the fates of millions of people. Will there be a war in the next four years? (Whether declared by Congress or just a fait accompli by the administration, let’s not quibble here.) Odds favor it, given recent history. Who will we war with? Who will die, because you voted one way rather than another.
Who is responsible for the results of your vote? Is it just a matter of expressing a preference, and then washing your hands of it? Or do you bear some responsibility? Can you say that you would be willing to look upon dead men and women, burned children, destroyed lives, and simply shrug your shoulders as if your vote didn’t count?
Your vote counts. Even if you ultimately voted for the losing candidate, you certainly approved the process by which his opponent was chosen. In a race as supposedly close as this, it bears repeating that the candidate you voted for might have won. It’s just too close to call. If you say that your candidate wouldn’t have done the particular things that the winner ends up doing, can you also say with certainty that he wouldn’t have done other similar things? Maybe we wouldn’t have gone to war with this country, maybe we would have bombed that country instead. Different dead people. Different burned children. Different destroyed lives. But in principle, no difference, really.
Your vote counts even if you voted for a third party candidate. Maybe you believe that he had no realistic chance of winning. But look at Florida, and so many other states in which neither of the “major” candidates obtained a majority of votes. You could have voted for one of them. You chose not to, and that made a difference. You preferred another choice, still, you participated in the selection process. You agreed, implicitly, to abide the result. You consented to authorize the winner to exercise his power on your behalf. Even if you disagreed with how you expected him to act. In the same manner as voting for the “major” losing candidate, you cannot wash your hands of it and deny your responsibilities. When you give your consent to a process, you give your consent to the result. Accept this, you are responsible.
Your vote counts if you choose not to vote. It makes just as much difference in the election result as does voting for a third party candidate you don’t believe has a realistic chance of winning. Maybe it sends a more ambiguous “message”. But how much blood are you willing to have on your hands to send a message? And how clear a message is a vote, anyhow? Maybe you even agree with 90% of what a candidate says, how do you say that you disagree with the remaining 10%? Except by just coming out and saying it. Which is a darn good way to send a message anyhow. Just send one. Like this.