Final debate thoughts

I don’t know what Donald is doing with that chair, but I hope they steam-cleaned it afterwards.

After reading the transcript: Donald Trump came out ugly, and stayed ugly for most of the debate. He stalked around scowling (other than when scratching his balls on Hillary’s chair!), and mostly spewed invective, including threatening to jail Hillary if elected. He also pulled in all the stupid shit he’s heard on Sean Hannity’s show, like the bullshit story about Hillary laughing about freeing a rapist. (More on that from a right-leaning defense attorney). Hillary didn’t rise to the bait but she didn’t really have an effective response to it either, saying “that’s not true” and pointing people at her web site really wasn’t effective (personally, I would have said at least once, “my, Mr. Trump, you have a vivid imagination!”). She did do a decent job of hitting her own talking points, as bland and boring as they often were. Once again I am reminded that Hillary Clinton is not a dynamic speaker, unlike, say, Elizabeth Warren.

To me, this was the most interesting thing I heard from Hillary, something you usually can’t hear through all the howling screech-monkeys that dominate media coverage of the race:

“Mr. Carter, I have tried my entire life to do what I can to support children and families. You know, right out of law school, I went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund. And Donald talks a lot about, you know, the 30 years I’ve been in public service. I’m proud of that. You know, I started off as a young lawyer working against discrimination against African-American children in schools and in the criminal justice system. I worked to make sure that kids with disabilities could get a public education, something that I care very much about. I have worked with Latinos — one of my first jobs in politics was down in south Texas registering Latino citizens to be able to vote. So I have a deep devotion, to use your absolutely correct word, to making sure that every American feels like he or she has a place in our country.”

It’s interesting to investigate Hillary Clinton’s background and realize that, unlike her husband, she really has been involved in things to help the poor and people of color and children for a long, long time. I have no doubt that she is the prime driver behind the Clinton Foundation spending 89% of its money on programs that help children and schools. She doesn’t talk about any of that most of the time, and maybe she should. Not that it’d convince the howling screech-monkeys of anything, but it’d certainly make it easier for those of us inclined to the Democratic side in the first place to feel good about going to vote, rather than wincing and holding our nose.

– Badtux the Observant Penguin

Read Full Post »

Best of wishes for Hillary in her recovery from pneumonia

The good news is that pneumonia is treatable.

Being a narcissist racist misogynist lying bully, on the other hand, is not.

Most hilarious are all the conspiracy theories that are going around about her brief collapse on September 11th. Such as the one that she was replaced by a body double. Which turns out to be a Hillary impersonator trolling the conspiracy theorists. Who took the bait hook, line, and sinker. Ain’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, yo!

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Read Full Post »

No, Donald, no you don’t.

Heh. That expression on her face at the end. Like the look of a mother telling her kid that the kid isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and just said something very, very stupid.

– Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin

Read Full Post »

Deadbeat Donnie

From Hillary’s nomination speech:

Well, let’s take a closer look. In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you’ll find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills. Now remember what the President said last night — don’t boo, vote.

People who did the work and needed the money, and didn’t get it – not because he couldn’t pay them, but because he wouldn’t pay them. He just stiffed them. That sales pitch he’s making to be your president? Put your faith in him – and you’ll win big? That’s the same sales pitch he made to all those small businesses.

Then Trump walked away, and left working people holding the bag.

He also talks a big game about putting America First. Please explain to me what part of America First leads him to make Trump ties in China, not Colorado. Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin.

Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again – well, he could start by actually making things in America again.

Donald Trump is a deadbeat. He doesn’t pay people what he owes them, and if they persist and take him to court, he declares bankruptcy and pays pennies on the dollar. That’s who Donald Trump is. A deadbeat.

And I don’t like deadbeats.

I’m glad that our badass granny brought this to public attention. Sadly, I doubt it will change the mind of Deadbeat Donnie’s core supporters one bit. Because they’d stiff people too, if they could get away with it. So they’re all, like, “hubba hubba!” when they find out that Deadbeat Donnie stiffed people who were doing work for him, because they’d do the same.

Lots of deadbeats in America today. But enough to win the Presidency? I guess we’ll find out.

– Badtux the Politics Penguin

Read Full Post »

If Bernie is George McGovern, who is Hubert Humphrey?

“There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you’ve followed him around for a while.” — Hunter S. Thompson.

1972. The two top vote-getters in the Democratic primaries were George McGovern, a liberal from South Dakota, and Hubert Humphrey, an unlikable unelectable establishment hack from Minnesota who had already lost to Nixon once in the general election. Whichever one of them had won that primary, Richard Nixon would have beat them like a drum. That’s just how bad the situation was for Democrats that year after Edmund Muskie self-destructed when Richard Nixon aimed his dirty tricks machine at Muskie.

Some folks are making a parallel between liberals uniting behind George McGovern, and liberals uniting behind Bernie Sanders. What, exactly, are they saying? That Hillary Clinton is an unlikable unelectable establishment hack?

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Read Full Post »

The median male American worker makes less today than in 1973

Brookings does the research to tell us what we already knew. They blame income inequality. They’re right, in that with the decline in male US worker income, the lower classes have become even more unequal. If your Presidential candidate isn’t talking about how things have gotten worse for ordinary Americans, if he doesn’t talk about plans for solving this, your Presidential candidate is part of the problem, not part of the solution. There are only two candidates who have mentioned those words “Income inequality”, and neither has an “R” after their name.

But why are the incomes declining anyhow?

There appears to be two things that have caused the decline:

1. The decline in unionized manufacturing jobs. These jobs paid good wages to working people whose education didn’t qualify them for white collar or creative work.
2. The decline in unionized trades jobs. Believe it or not, only a few short decades ago if you were a contractor looking for framers or drywallers or concrete workers you went down to the union hall and held up how many people you needed, and the union jobmaster would find them for you and you paid union scale to them. The union provided benefits like health insurance too in exchange for the union dues that the workers paid. But now you call a “labor contractor” who goes down to the local Home Depot and holds up that many fingers and illegal Mexicans fight each other for the privilege of jumping into the labor contractor’s pickup truck, and then you pay the labor contractor and he may or may not pay the workers, that’s not your problem.

The manufacturing jobs went to Asia and Mexico. The trades jobs went to Mexicans. The people formerly doing those jobs went to low-wage service jobs that require speaking credible English, and are boiler room sales or debt collection workers or asking “do you want fries with that order?” or driving around in old beat up pickup trucks with hand-drawn signs that say “Handy Man Work” and a phone number on the side, or otherwise scrabbling for whatever leavings they can find that have dripped off the 1%’s table.

In short, it appears to have been a concerted effort to bust the unions by either exporting their jobs or by importing non-union workers that caused wages for male workers to decline. This has been coordinated at the highest levels of government via creation of “Right To Work For Less” laws in half the states, imposition of low-or-no-tariff policies such as NAFTA which reward manufacturers for exporting manufacturing jobs to foreign countries, and via not enforcing citizenship rules at job sites. Add in the hostility of multiple recent Republican administrations towards enforcing the labor rights guaranteed under labor law, and it’s been a perfect storm, with male workers’ wages being what’s sunk.

In short: It’s not necessary to hypothesize a conspiracy when the evidence of one is right there in front of your eyes. Who should I believe, the people who shout “conspiracy theory!” or what I can see with my own two eyes? Just sayin’.

So anyhow: Bernie talks about these kinds of things. Hillary sorta talks about them, in a sort of pro forma kind of way. None (zero) of the Republicans talk about them, with the exception of Trump and his hatred of Mexicans. So if you’re an ordinary male American and you’re upset that you’re making less money in real terms than your daddy did at your age… well. Who are you going to vote for?

Sadly, we know the answer to that. Said ordinary male American is going to vote for a Republican. ‘Cause Republicans have done a great job of convincing said ordinary male American that his wages are going down because of “those” people, not because the Republican Party has orchestrated an effective destruction of unions and worker’s rights. Yay, ‘Murrica…

– Badtux the Inequality Penguin

Read Full Post »

Women Snark McCain

From Women for John McCain:

With John’s record on choice, he’s uniquely qualified to make our most personal, private choices for us as President.

John McCain’s leadership has earned him a 0% rating from NARAL, a 0% rating from Planned Parenthood, and his independent, bipartisan thinking is backed up by his impressive voting record and positions on women’s health and freedom of choice.

• Supports repealing Roe v. Wade. (May 2007)
• Voted YES on barring Health and Human Services funding to medical clinics for low-income women that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
• Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
• Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
• Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus. (Mar 2004)
• Voted YES on banning “dilate and extract” abortions. (Mar 2003)
• Voted YES on maintaining ban on abortions at clinics on military bases. (Jun 2000)
• Voted YES on banning “dilate and extract” abortions. (Oct 1999)
• Rated 0% by National Abortion Rights Action League.
• Rated 0% by Planned Parenthood.
• Despite his extreme voting record, 51 percent of women voters in battleground states have no idea what John McCain’s positions are on women’s reproductive health issues.

Remember, Clinton supporters, let your sour grapes overwhelm you and choose John McCain. It’s the last choice you’ll ever need to make.

— Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Read Full Post »

Sexism, or just typical treatment of a Democratic candidate?

To quote a commenter on another blog who makes a very salient point:

Just because a woman thinks something is sexist doesn’t mean it is. Just because a woman is treated unfairly, doesn’t mean that unfair treatment is sexist. Hillary Clinton got treated poorly at times in this campaign, just like John Kerry was treated poorly in 2004 or Al Gore in 2000 or Bob Dole in 1996 or George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Hillary Clinton was a 30 points ahead front runner who got beat, and because she refused to drop out, her defeat was stretched out over several months. Anyone in that situation is going to get a lot of crap dumped on them. Did sexism play some role in that crap? Sure. But knee jerk victimization that exaggerates the role sexism played isn’t really going to benefit feminists, women or men.

We are running against the media this November. The media is owned by Republicans, and will dump a ton of crap on Obama before it’s all said and done just like they dumped a ton of crap on Hillary Now, granted, Hillary also got some crap from Democrats. Given that much of Hillary’s support in late primaries was Republicans crossing over and voting for her because “I don’t want a nigger running for President” and she pandered to those people shamelessly, she did get dumped on by Democrats too — but that’s what happens when you run as a Republican in a Democratic race, regardless of your sex, just look at how Democrats dump on Joe Lieberman if you don’t believe me. Democrats don’t dump on Joe Lieberman because of anti-semitism, they dump on him because he sucks up to Republicans.

But anyhow, back to the point: As the front-runner, Hillary got dumped on because the media would have dumped on any Democratic front-runner. Unfortunately she and her supporters didn’t handle it in some way that would diffuse all the crap that was being dumped on her, all they did was whine and whine about how it was “sexist”, all of which whining made her look weak, which made her look like a victim rather than a winner. That’s not helpful in winning elections. But now all that crap is going to be laser-focused on Obama. Whining about it being “racist” is not going to do Obama any good either. All it’ll do is make Obama look like a victim, which isn’t the Democratic message. Remember, while the content of some of the crap is going to be blatantly racist, that’s not why he’s going to be getting the crap. He’s going to be getting the crap because he is a Democrat running against the candidate preferred by our ruling elite. We better remember that and re-focus on the Democratic message every time the media tries their crap (which for better or for worse is “change” this election), or we can say hello to President McCain and probably the end of the Republic. Who, then, shall be our Julius Caesar? I think I’d prefer to wait for the next generation to find out, rather than find out first-hand in the fallout from electing a President who will continue leading the nation into utter economic disaster…

— Badtux the Practical Penguin

Read Full Post »

Obama is the nominee

For those suffering from CDS, deal with it. Game over. Obama passes the threshhold and is the nominee, unless someone knocks him off in the next few months. Reality bites. But reality simply is. It doesn’t respond to “what if?” and urgent denials of its nature. Either you accept reality, or be viewed as, well, deranged.

— Badtux the Reality Penguin

Read Full Post »

More Clinton Derangement Syndrome

Clinton Campaign says they’re not conceding even if tonight’s primaries and superdelegate announcements, as expected, put Obama over the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for President.

The asshat who apparently is running campaign policy for the Clintons is Terry McAuliffe, probably the most incompetent and ineffectual DNC chairman of the past fifty years, the man whose machinations led to the nomination of John Kerry in 2004, probably the weakest Democratic candidate since Michael Dukakis, and the loss of Congress in 2002. This is an example of the kind of people who led to Clinton’s loss — long-time party insiders whose incompetence led to the loss of Democratic majorities in Congress and to 40 years of almost-uninterrupted Republican domination of the Presidency. The Clinton campaign apparently puts loyalty ahead of competence — hmm, where have I seen that before?

The fact of the matter is that Clinton lost, and every survey and poll says that this is the will of the majority of Democrats — more Democrats supported Obama than Clinton, regardless of any paranoid delusional silliness from the Clinton campaign about how Obama didn’t really win the support of the majority of Democrats. The race was Clinton’s to lose — she was the frontrunner from the time she announced until the day after Super Tuesday — and she lost it fair and square the old fashioned way, by running a campaign that was strikingly incompetent until these last two months, at which point she started fighting dirty by claiming that John McCain was more qualified than Obama to be President, America wouldn’t vote for a black man for President (won her the Republican racist crossover vote in West Virginia and Kentucky, but those people are going to vote for McCain in the fall so that’s not exactly a selling point for Clinton), etc. etc. etc. I must say that she is exceedingly good at running a dirty campaign pandering to the worst in everybody, and if she’d run that kind of campaign from day one, the outcome might — or might not — have been different. But she didn’t.

Yet, just as a delusional John McCain and George W. Bush claim we’re “really” winning in Afghanistan and Iraq despite all the years of evidence to the contract, Clinton continues to claim she’s “really” winning even though, well, she isn’t. And the sufferers of Clinton Derangement Syndrome start saying “well, even John McCain is better than Obama because Obama stole the candidacy.” Yeah, he “stole” the candidacy by appealing to more Democrats than Hillary Clinton did , and by opening up a lead over John McCain (and Hillary Clinton) in the polls, a fact which is swaying the superdelegates to ignore Hillary’s argument of “America won’t vote for a nigger for President”. The question is whether the sufferers of Clinton Derangement Syndrome will come to their senses and make sure the disaster that is John McCain is not elected to office, or whether they will elect John McCain. If the latter… well. I guess I need to start liquidating my many many possessions in preparation for the move overseas, because the collapse of the United States during a McCain presidency will not be pleasant.

In short, even though I’m not a big Obama partisan (see my criticism of his health care plan), I will vote for him in the fall. He’s not a bad candidate by any means — he has demonstrated that he is intelligent, cunning, and has an ability to take on the partisan slime machine that will be slung at him in the fall. He’s also not an ideal candidate. But he has certainly demonstrated that he is a good candidate, and the perfect is the enemy of the good — and if we wait for a “perfect” candidate, we’ll never have another Democratic president ever. And right now, given the fact that Ghawar is about to stop producing and over 10% of the world’s oil production is about to evaporate, another delusional Republican presidency is the last thing this country needs…

— Badtux the Practical Penguin

Read Full Post »