Enough bullshit about Senator Clinton not breaking the glass ceiling

She broke it -- shattered it into a thousand pieces.

Or 18 million pieces if you prefer.

She just DIDN'T WIN.

Of course there was sexism.
Racism too.

And both sides were busy stirring up one or the other.

But she did it.

She succeeded

She did not fail.

She just didn't win.

That's not the same thing.

No one will again need to ask if a woman could be president.

Women who run in the future will be evaluated, to some degree, against Senator Clinton and her positives and negatives.

But the question of suitability will not be based on the candidate being a woman.

That's over.

And I refuse to believe politically active women are stupid enough to vote for John McCain -- a man who believes women in the military should accept sexual harassment and rape as just part of the deal.

(I do believe journalists -- even the ones I like -- are stupid enough to think women might. But -- really -- their job is to gossip over a wide-scope media back fence. -- "Did you hear what that slut down the street did?" Whichever Hollywood slut they're currently using for pud-pulling...)

But McCain?

Would that he would show SOME of the courage TODAY that he did 40+ years ago.

So to hell with him.

There's been a proposal in California for years, but insurance companies are NOT happy about it -- what a surprise

Actually it is a surprise.

The proposal has been for auto insurance to be covered by a surtax on gasoline, much of which would go to highway funds for repair and maintenance of the state roads and bridges, and would be managed by a consortium of all the insurance companies licensed to operate in the state, who would then divide up the profits accordingly (according to what, I've never heard) BUT -- the radical and innovative part of the plan is/was that surtax:

Having your insurance premium payments be included in a surtax on gasoline would mean that pretty much everyone in the state who is driving would be insured (something I would think the insurance companies would like),* but that would also mean the larger, more fuel-guzzling a vehicle you own, the more you pay annually for gas and insurance. And the larger, more road-destroying a vehicle you drive,the more you pay for road repair.

Of course, it's been slapped down or disparaged or mostly ignored each time someone brings it up. But it should benefit everyone. The insurance companies which would be getting insurance payments from some 100,000 or so drivers who are now not paying them anything. Certainly the environment would benefit from less burning of hydrocarbons. And for a driver, the libertarian in us should be pleased that each of us would be able to control how much we pay for insurance each year.

Which, I guess, makes it too logical and sensible to ever be approved.


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*My car was recently hit by a truck as I was turning into a gas station and the driver was uninsured. It cost my insurance company something like $6000 for repairs. I would assume they'd be much happier if they were to be reimbursed for that. But I guess I'm to unsophisticated to understand such things.

Redrum and Perle and Feith want to rewrite history...

This article was presented by Truthout

The Return of the Neocons

Thursday 19 June 2008

by: James Risen, The Washington Independent

... This anti-Pentagon historical narrative is straightforward and seems well established: Wolfowitz and Feith ran a neoconservative frat house while an arrogant, fiddling Rumsfeld roared against anyone who dared try to bring him the truth.

Neoconservatives - a loose association of pundits, politicians and analysts who put a right-wing spin on American exceptionalism and coupled that with an embrace of the doctrine of pre-emptive war - began pushing for regime change in Iraq in the 1990s. Wolfowitz and Feith brought this desire to oust Saddam Hussein with them when they joined the Bush administration...

And so, during the critical 18 months between the Sept. 11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith were united at the forefront of the administration's march to war.

Five years later, 4,000 young Americans have died. No Pentagon leaders have been so thoroughly repudiated since the days of Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War.

When the Iraq war was young, and they were at the height of their power, few men in America seemed less concerned by or more disdainful of their public critics. The image created by a compilation of Rumsfeld's most famous quotations, words that will surely appear in the first paragraphs of his obituary - "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," "You go to war with the Army you have" - is of a man too busy and important to do anything other than casually mock the little people getting in his way...

Now, the Rumsfeld team is starting to fight back. Rumsfeld recently announced that he is writing his memoirs, while Feith's account, "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism," came out this spring.

In a series of lengthy interviews over several weeks, Feith explicitly stated that his objective in writing his book was to start the process of altering the accepted history of the Iraq war, to adjust the Rumsfeld team's place in history. He wants to change the narrative - before it is too late...

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Douglas Feith says there COULDN'T have been any conspiracy to put Ahmed Chalabi in power because: "I'm putting out a bold challenge - I have gone through the documents, senior level Pentagon documents, and I can't find any documents supporting the extremely important conspiracy charge that we were plotting to anoint Chalabi"

Oh well, if there's nothing written down, it couldn't have happened.

In exactly the same way Adolf Hitler has been slandered by history because no one has come up with documents that show he ORDERED the death camps.

(The fact that he used a very specific word to state his policy toward Jews inMein Kampf, the interminably self-serving and boring -- even for German philosophy -- tract written by his prison bitch, Rudolf Hess, and that word was vernischtung i.e., "annihilation," never seems to be remembered.)

The neocons point to Macnamara's self-serving and interminably lying piece of crap -- "Fog of War" -- as a model for correcting history.

How do I know it's a lying piece of crap?

When that book came out, there was one review that threw down on it, and that was by a Colonel who was teaching military history at West Point.

His claim to contradictory authority?

He was there.
He was an attache in those meetings and remembered quite clearly that anyone who contradicted Mac in any way ("Sir -- it wasn't Russian made -- it was a Claymore mine, one of ours.") was either thrown out of the meeting or saw Macnamara storm out, refusing to hear the facts he later insisted were unknowable -- "how could we have known when all the experts said it was so?"

Wow -- does that lame excuse resonate down the years. As well it should, since it was many of the same people who did it again under Bush Two

And of course, the proud tradition of various high commands who create military disasters is still in effect, i.e., blame the people who told you in advance it was a bad idea.

"Why didn't they speak up?" says Feith -- the angry premise is this -- "How could they let me commit the crime I wanted to commit when they knew it was wrong and doomed to failure?"

In other words, WE -- you, me, Scott McClellan -- we are THE DEVIL as in "THE DEVIL LET ME DO IT."

There's only one answer to that sort of thinking, and Texans know it well ... lynch law.
Our country has used it before.

Remember, the neocons' battle cry was "pre-emptive war"-- the same thing the Japanese used to attack Pearl Harbor. Same as the Nazi rationale for invading Poland. And as I recall, our answer was to hang Yamashita and sentence the top dogs of the Nazi effort to death.

Why shouldn't Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush and Feith and Perle and Rove and all the rest get the same treatment? They've committed the same exact types of crimes. The fact that they're penny-ante players in the game of Crimes Against Humanity doesn't change THEIR guilt.

So ok, maybe use a smaller, smoother rope.

There's a song by Ana Popovic on the one recording of hers that's been released in the USA, "Still Making History" -- it's the title song, and there are some lyrics in it that go:

"There's no freedom that asks for no alert.

No wisdom of war that won't weaken the Earth.

How much more time we'll live in vanity before

All of us are hurt.

Hope is a sunlight before the dawn

Peace is a battle we never truly won

Seems like the end of the game now

Unbearable wish to escape as far as we can

Just like belief will mask the troubled times

All victories are cover stories for the hidden crimes.

---Ms Popovic is no Kumbaya singer -- this is one tough lady who grew up in war-zone Serbia while Milosovic was building up his resume as a war criminal. She is a hard-edged rocker and has apparently seen those hidden crimes committed, and then spun into tales of success and glory by the monsters who walk away.

We all knew, or should have, in advance that those of us who said "Jeezus Keerist -- read your history -- all you're doing is sentencing the ones who are patriotic enough to wear that uniform* to death and despair," were going to be blamed for the inevitable defeat. It's like Redrum and Cheney and all the rest thought Iraq was their Tinkerbell, and those of us who weren't clapping our hands were killing their dream.


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*Coincidentally, that uniform wasn't worn by any of those people who though going to was in Iraq was such a gooid idea.

Obama's running mate -- not WHO but HOW and WHY

I might as well weigh in on this, for all the difference it won't make.

I don't see anyone (except ONE writer I'll mention below) who is actually making sense about how to decide who Senator Obama should select, i.e., base his decision on what a President should want from a Vice President.

Because, frankly, Barack Obama should be able to win against John McCain even if he ran alone, without ANY VP candidate.

McCain is a man who is repeatedly -- and tiresomely -- billed as "the straight-talking candidate" which is grating and irritating, since these days, his only solid stable continuing principle on issues seems to be -- obviously -- "Any way the wind blows"

If Obama can't beat John McCain on his own, he doesn't have what it takes to be president.


But, I read this in a blog and can't remember which one, which is annoying because I would love to give credit where it's due.

The blogger said (and I believe he or she was quoting someone else) that the choice of who to select as a running mate should not be made on the basis of who will help the presidential candidate get elected, but who will help the president govern and get RE-ELECTED.

Despite all the debating and arguing and strategic planning, even the people who are doing the arguing seem to recognize (and often say) that people don't vote on the basis of the running mate.

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I'm not plumping for any one in particular, although I am wary of one -- and as I've said before, I don't know what sort of sin I'm committing by agreeing with anything said by that animatronic Vril, Mitt Romney, but I do agree on this one statement (although Romney said it about a reason not to let Senator Clinton become President).

He delivered this one-liner that someone obviously wrote for him, since he delivered it with all the lack of style and rotten timing of some smartass 9th grade kid in a class play.

He said that he was afraid of Bill Clinton alone in the White House with nothing to do.


Me too, even if it's the Naval Observatory.

Hillary Clinton's Concession Speech -- an EXCEPTIONALLY gracious speech...

... and the only thing that could have been added to really really convince us all would have been completing the de-nazification of her staff with a summary public execution (Vietnamese Police Chief style*) of Slime-Creature Terry McAuliffe

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*for those younger than might remember from the time, there was the shocking color footage (and Eddie Adams' Pulitzer-Prize winning still photo) of National Police Chief ((South Vietnam) General Nguyen Ngoc Loan standing in the street with a supposed VC, blindfolded and with his arms tied behind his back, and simply, without fanfare, putting the .45 to his temple and blowing the man away. I have read that the general, in later years, owned a pizza parlor in Virginia until 1991 when his identity become known. He died of cancer in 1998

Joey Liebermann --Sonderkommando

Sonderkommando --term used to refer to a Jew in a Nazi death camp who would throw others (Jews, Gypsies, Political prisoners, etc) into the ovens in order to get extra food and one more day of life for themselves. They usually -- finally -- committed suicide.
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Funny how a hypocritical sniveling self-serving man (using that term loosely) was supposedly very brave some 40+ years ago (Joey Liebermann was allegedly a Freedom Rider for Civil Rights in his youth) is willing to throw feces like some sort of craven ape on behalf of a man who was, in fact, VERY brave some 40+ years ago.

McCain withstood hideous torture and abuse to maintain his principles and loyalty while a POW in Vietnam. True, he HAD been dropping bombs on those people before they caught him, but that doesn't lessen the degree of his fortitude or bravery.

On the other hand, Little Joey was willing to betray all his compadres for fear of nothing more harmful than losing status.
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Sen. Joe Lieberman... got some tough talk from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois ... Obama and Lieberman greeted each on the Senate floor in the Well as they were voting on the budget resolution.

They shook hands. But Obama didn't let go, leading Lieberman - cordially - by the hand across the room into a corner on the Democratic side, where Democratic sources tell ABC News he delivered some tough words for the junior senator from Connecticut, who had just minutes before hammered Obama's speech before the pro-Israel group AIPAC in a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign.

The two spoke intensely for approximately five minutes, with no one able to hear their conversation. Reporters watched as Obama leaned closely in to Lieberman, whose back was literally up against the wall.

...Democratic sources tell ABC News that the conversation was a stern rebuke to Lieberman for his criticism of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on the conference call, as well as a discussion about how far Lieberman is willing to go in his advocacy of McCain, and the tone of the campaign...

On the McCain conference call yesterday, Lieberman congratulated Obama "in securing the Democratic nomination and to express my own hope as a supporter of John McCain that this will be a civil and constructive campaign debate from here to November."

The only Orthodox Jew* in the U.S. Senate then criticized the White House hopeful's speech to the Jewish pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, saying, "I would say respectfully that I thought in this speech that there was a disconnect between things Senator Obama said today in particularly with regards to Iran and things that he has said or done earlier either in the campaign and senate. To be specific, I was troubled earlier in the year during the campaign season when Senator Obama referred to, I guess compared Iran and other rogue and terrorists states to the Soviet Union and minimized the threat represented by Iran. I think that is wrong."

Lieberman also criticized Obama for voting against an amendment he offered with Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group, and included other language that Obama said linked the war in Iraq to Iran in a way that troubled him. "Senator Obama opposed it saying it was saber rattling and referring to the possible threat of military force," Lieberman said. "But if you look at the Kyl-Liebermann Amendment as it was passed, it has none of that in it, regarding military action. I was hoping and I still hope that he will say that that vote was a mistake, and that he would support that resolution."

"Obama today argued that American foreign policy in recent years has essentially sort of strengthened Iran," Lieberman continued. "At one point, he almost seems to suggest that it helped to elect Ahmadinejad, and has made Israel less safe. I just disagree with that. Iran elected Ahmadinejad for their own reasons. If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign policy which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way, it is not because what we have done in Iraq, it is because Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state and has a leader and a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel."

"Its a difficult situation," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the Senate Democrats' Assistant Majority Leader and a major Obama backer, told reporters Wednesday, according to Roll Call. "Joe is my friend ... but I hope he doesn't become the lead attack dog. Of course it's a concern when someone in your Caucus is supporting the other party's candidate. Let's not try and sugarcoat it..."

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*They keep calling him an "Orthodox Jew." So where's his beard? The man is an orthodox asshole.

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Liebermann is someone all Jews wish was Protestant or Catholic, and not one more circumcised pissant that bigots can point to and say "So that's what a Jew is like."

No -- that's what a craven self-serving simpering little shit is like.

Sort of like Pat Robertson with a yarmulke.

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What do you call a "dog in the manger" that's a female?

I HATE using the word "bitch" about or to women.

I hear it too much.

Yet it is a viable word to dog breeders, etc.

So when someone is a "dog in the manger,"* and that someone is a female dog in the manger, it's the appropriate word.

SO....

when I see this:

HILLARY NOT READY TO CONCEDE

I think about that.

I was already pissed off with her attempt to PUBLICLY club Senator Obama into naming her (and Wet Willie) as running mate(s).

Just a fucking no-class move -- she didn't talk with HIM about it because she wanted her troop of Hillary Bacchae to scream and shout and threaten to vote for McCain to "get some respect."**

She seems to be pissed off that the invincible "Clinton Machine" done broke down.

So now that she's established herself as the incredibly tough woman who wouldn't let ANYTHING stop her, she's shifting to her ever-popular "I'm a victim because I'm a girl and the boys are beating up on me.:"

But she's know since MARCH that the numbers made it impossible for her to do anything but a symbolic finish.

Is she bargaining? Or is she just a malevolent bitch in the manger?

But why would a politican as intelligent as Barak Obama be willing to name a scorpion as his vice president? Give someone who's knives are out to stand behind him? If Obama needed any more proof that she can NOT be trusted to be a part of his administration (or the active Democratic Party, for that matter), this is it.

This should qualify her to get NOTHING in the new administration (see yesterday's post).

Just let her and Slick Willie sink in their own slime along with Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson.

It's bad enough that Joe Scarborough is back. We have to witness this embarrassing debacle, too?

She's already losing A LOT of her supporters by being so ungracious and grudging.

Too clever by half.

To hell with her.


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* In short, an Aesop fable about a dog who lay down to sleep in a manger and when the cattle came in to eat, attacked them -- even though he couldn't eat any of the straw, hay, etc that was there. Just refused to give it up because...


** Yeah, right, the man who -- in public, during a senatorial election address flipped out when his rich new wife tousled his hair and said "You're getting a bit thin up there." To which he went ballistic and yelled "Well at least I'm not slathering layers of makeup on my face like some whore, you cunt!" No tapes yet, but 4 professional journalists attest to having been there and heard it. So yeah -- they'll get a lot of respect from him.

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Hillary for VP? Wrong -- Hillary for AG

Vice President? Number two?

She wouldn't like it.

Besides, Obama might not want someone as VP -- someone in the line of succession -- who refers so casually to RFK's assassination.

And it's a bit of typical Clintonesque sleaziness for her to make her willingness to accept the VP slot in public rather than privately discussing it with Obama's people. Manipulative, low class and dishonorable.

No way a president could allow someone like that to be in the second slot.

But to get real -- if it's not John Edwards (first choice):

Hillary Clinton for Attorney General

Despite the fact that she and Obama despise each other, they have a pretty much identical vision of what they want for America.

She's a nasty, brilliant, aggressive, below-the-belt, dirty-fighting lawyer and could do more to bring real change to the USA as AG than as president and definitely more than as VP.

(Besides, what would Bill do? Often, after bypass surgery, doctors say the patient shows some signs of dementia and loss of acumen, this due to the period of time when not enough oxygen has gotten to the brain. He certainly seems to have lost a mental step or two.)

The best comment I've heard (wish I could remember who in order to give credit) is that the VP choice shouldn't be someone who'll help you get elected, but someone who'll be a useful part of the administration and help the president get RE-ELECTED.


Or to put it another way -- after what's gone down, what sort of judgment would it show to give this modern-day Livia a clean shot at your back?