You know, from a foreign point of view it really matters less which of the Democratic candidates wins the nomination, as long as it is a Democrat who wins the elections. None of the Democratic candidates, not even nohoper Dennis K. is that much of a progressive, most are likely in the short term to continue the Bush foreign policy with regards to Iraq and most won’t bring radical changes at home either. But even Hillary Clinton is preferable to any candidate the Republicans can round up, as the Republican party as a whole needs to be destroyed, seeing as its corruption is now endemic.
Which is why this primary season is a bit lost on me. The horse race aspects of it, which is all the media even here can care about (Dutch tv news not being much better than the US) are only interesting if you are actually rooting for a candidate. Since none of the candidates has a political stance appealing to me (and why should they?), so I can’t really bring myself to care overtly much.
Just don’t let the Democrats fuck up the elections again.
The above perfectly captions everything that’s embarassing and cringeworthy about (American) politics. Not so much Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment, however much I suspect it was totally scripted, but the response to it. One example:
How voters interpret Sen. Hillary Clinton’s composure — emotional, cold or just plain tough — could be a deciding factor in her campaign for the presidency, political analysts told ABCNEWS.com.
[…]
But there is a line for a female candidate when it comes to speaking forcefully and appearing too “shrill,” said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the chair of American studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
“It’s very hard to find the balance between appearing strong and tough and caring and engaged and then crossing your line to where you’ll be labeled shrill and bitchy,” said Owen. “As far as being a female candidate, she’s open to different descriptive adjectives — things like melting down or being too emotional — that you would not hear as much in terms of male candidates.”
“I’m sure the calculation said you’ve got to go hard and attack and appear as thought you’re really taking this seriously,” said Owen. “But she lost her cool.”
And as to Clinton’s latest emotional episode, Owen is more confident that her composure — or lack thereof — is a sign of her campaign’s unraveling.
“Crying in a campaign at this stage is something you can’t do — male or female — and history has shown that,” said Owen. “It shows people weakness — crying goes against both male and female stereotypes, neither can do it.”
*Facepalm*
As if it matters in the least whether or not Hillary Clinton becomes slightly emotional about how hard the election campaign has been. For fuck’s sake, this is a woman who has had to suffer nasty, downright evil rightwing attacks for decades, first because she was Bill Clinton’s wife, now because she’s a leading Democrat in her own right. She has been accused from everything from arraigning Vice Foster’s suicide to having a lesbian relationship with Janet Reno, attacked as a whore, a shrew, a bitch, a castrator, in fact every hurtful sexist cliche has been hurled at her and for the most part she has been able to ignore them and not let them get to her.
But is it so surprising that in what’s perhaps the most important thing she has ever done in her life, when she’s again being attacked in this way, not just by wingnuts but also by some of her fellow Democrats, at a time when it seems that perhaps her dream of becoming president might end in New Hampshire, she gets a bit choked up?
As I write this, the US national debt is about $9.17 TRILLION dollars. This debt is the amount we have borrowed to pay for our government since the Reagan tax cuts – compounded by the Bush tax cuts. This is because of a choice we made – yes I say WE, because this government is US – to borrow and pay later instead of pay now.
Don’t for a minute think that you do not owe that money. It comes to about $30,000 for each American, including infants. If you are a family of four you now owe about $120,000 thanks to those tax cuts. YOU owe this money, even though the tax cuts have primarily gone to the very rich. You WILL be paying it, one way or another. Don’t think that debt like that just goes away.
So where did it all go? Much disappeared into the gaping maw of Iraq of course, where some of it simply disappeared but most of it was scooped up by entities like the ones in the title for dodgy reconstruction projects. Quite a lot also went on other military boondoggles: aircraft carriers, attack submarines, three different fighter projects, missile defence, over engineered combat vehicles, etc. And of course anti-terrorism funding was expended hugely as well: got to keep all those public swimming pools in Buttfuck, Texas well protected!
And thanks to the tax cuts, much of the money needed to pay for these toys now has to be borrowed and borrowing costs money. A lot therefore is spent paying the interest on those loans. No wonder there’s no money left over to rebuild New Orleans.
So what will you, mr and mrs average taxpayer notice of all this? More indirect taxes, less government services, more decaying infrastructure, that’s your future. The US is the richest country in the world, but not for you. You’re not rich, so you don’t count. The best you can hope for is spending the next few decades paying off the Bush spending splurge while your betters count the profits they made of you.
At Digby, again – this time on the news that a prisoner at Gitmo had attempted suicide by cutting his throat with his fingernail:
Clearly if those terrorists are going to weaponize their fingernails, its our obligation to use a rusty pair of pliers to rip them out to ensure the safety of the Homeland.