Well…I’m behind the crunch again….had to go offline a bit due to the same old issues.

I’m doing my best to get back online ASAP..so bear with me.

In the meantime, I couldn’t help but comment on the Cat 5 blogstorm currently ongoing in the feminist blogosphere over the legend of Kyle Payne: self-identified male feminist, hardcore antiporn activist…..and convicted sex predator.

Renegade Evolution, as usual, has been the point woman for exposing Mr. Payne’s dual life and hypocrisy (starting here and moving on to here, here, here, and here; although Belledame should get first credit for initially discovering this slimeball).

It seems, though, that Payne has managed to do what two years of Porn Sex Wars couldn’t do: unite antiporn radfems and sex poxxies together in shared mutual outrage. (See Ren’s blogroll of posts on the matter.)

All I will say for now is this: if the GenderBorg is so willing to accept this sleazoid so easily into their midst due to his “activism”, while slandering people like moi who use porn and still manage to treat women with respect and humanity, then they are so much worse and closer to the Radical Right than I ever, ever feared.

I’ll probably have more to say on this when I’m able to get back online regularly.

Oh….and show some love to the God Emperor, too, when you visit there: getting burnt really does suck. Seriously. Ouch.

[Inspired by Caroline's brilliant essay over at Uncool]

You know that I spend a lot of bandwidth here focused on exposing what I see are the lies and total wrongness of antiporn activism, especially from those pretending to be from the Left or the liberal perspective.

I’m sure that you have wondered out loud why I have such an obsession with these folks, and why shouldn’t I refocus this blog on more mundane matters, like, say, Obama’s historic candidacy or the upcoming hurricane season or the regular heat and humidity of South Louisiana??

Wehhheeelllll, Clones….if you really, really want to know, then I will amuse you with an answer.

It’s all about defending innocent people who do no harm to themselves or others against slander.

It’s all about defending the basic essential principle of social solidarity combined with respect for choice and diversity in all matters, from economics to sex.

It’s about debunking and demystifying all the rumors and memes put forth about not only the people who perform explicit sexual imagery and acts by their own choice, but those who actually enjoy the fruits of their labor.

But, mostly, because you can always count on the stupid, the insane, the totally whack, and the outright bigoted crackpot statement from the more strident of the “antipornradfems” which practically screams for a rebuttal.

Yes, I’m sure that the usual suspects do monitor and on occasion even will troll my blog so that they can fire their popguns at me for being such an evil defender of rape and murder.  I’m almost sure that Witchy-Woo, Maggie, Stormy, Sam Berg, Gooney Stan Goff, Bob Jensen, and all the rest of the AntiPorn Posse are already loading up their ammo to unload on me for  wanting to “increase men’s sexual access to women”; for being Renegade Evolution’s “pimp” (yeah, right, as if Ren Ev can’t make her own damn money on her own using her own damn talents; her use of sex being not even the best of these….and BTW, that is a high credit to her indeed, considering her sexual talents); and for basically being….well, a man who’s not afraid of either his dick or his brain and still willing to respect women for being human beings.

And that brings me to the final and ultimate reason why I will continue to bring the noise whenever it is needed; and to continue to tweak the noses of these bluenose pseudofeminists and their Christian Right allies in sexual reaction.  Actually, it’s more like several reasons, having mostly to do with some very intelligent, very talented, and very sexy women whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, debating, and even chatting with online. All of them have been associated in one way or another with performing or producing erotica/porn; and each have had their own unique experiences therein: the beautiful as well as the painful; the ecstasy as well as the agony. And yet, all of them have managed through their own ways to educate me more than any book or theory that sexual women can be as thoughtful, as passionate, and as human as any other woman or person on this earth.

Even if I never ever meet them face to face, they will have enriched my life and my brain (the big one between my shoulders as well as the little one between my legs) to my eternal benefit. And the best thing is….they still are.

Consider this collage of my inspirational erotic women my “Kiss my ass, suckas” tribute to the Antiporn Fascist League.

(Just a heads up: the pics are sexy yet safe; I can’t guarantee anything about either the women included therin or the embedded links; those specifically NSFW will be marked as such.)

Shauna O’Brien: Former Penthouse Pet/Softcore Erotica Super Diva/All-Around Baaaad-Asssss (Now Retired) Some background on her can be found here; see also this story on how Shauna dealt with a troll who questioned her abilities and profession.

Nina Hartley (Warning, link NSFW):  The one, the only, and the original…and the closest representative to Aphrodite we have on this earth. Enough. Freakin’. Said.

Vicky Vette (link NFSW): From corporate management to softcore modeling to hardcore porn to her own successful adult website: A bad girl done good.  Damn good.  And damn fine, too. (And her brains and heart are even bigger than her boobs, too.)

Keisha (another NSFW link): You do know that she’s pursuing a Masters’ Degree in Psychology, do you?? It should match her Doctorate in Sex pretty well, shouldn’t it??

Allie Chase (aka Naughty Allie): Computer geek by day; amateur swinging seductress by night…proof that you don’t have to be a professional porn actress to play the slut. Except…she does a lot more than just play.

Bridgett Lee (link NSFW. again): The Florida Sun Coast’s reigning hottest MILF…and a woman who has lived through one hell of a ride.

And, last only in this chronology, but never in rank, the Henchwoman/Roman God Emperor known as Renegade Evolution…..you think that I’d be “pimping” her for nothing??

For these fine ladies, I fight to my death.  Though, it’s so much better to stay alive to enjoy them.

Thems who hate on them and me for liking them as women: Just kiss it….then just SYAD and STFU.  And have a nice Fourth of July holiday, too.

Ahhh..lookee here. It seems that my commentary on Gail Dines and her appearance on Penn and Teller: BULLSHIT! seems to have attracted some interest.

Particularly, the good folks at NoPornNorthhampton, who just so happened to break me off a comment attempting to refute my and P&T’s takedown of Dines’ fundamental makeup of porn and its supposedly harmful effects.

In particular, this section which I wrote in the original:

OK….so the fact that it’s mostly girl/girl sex and solo masturbation scenes and mostly “vanilla” hetero scenes found in most porn sites and movies which make up nearly 80 to 90 percent of the porn being viewed in the US means absolutely nothing to Professor Dines; it’s that nasty-ass gonzo and the circus-sex acts of facials and anals and gangbangs that really count… [....]

Apparantly, Adam or one of his groupies had an issue with that; using a “recent academic study” that attempted to analyze porn DVD titles from the Adult Video News website to prove me wrong.

Wosnitzer: “We went through Adult Video News every month. [It] publishes a list of the top 250 best sold and rented adult DVDs… [W]e avoided the issue of ‘What is pornography?’ because AVN defined it for us, in a sense… We took the top 50 from each month, went back over a six month period, randomly generated took the top 50 films. We coded by scene. We had a total of 304 scenes that we coded over this randomly generated list of the top 50 films…

Wosnitzer: “We can read aggression and violence defined as any action causing or attempting to cause physical or psychological harm to oneself, to another person, animal or inanimate object, intentionally or accidentally, whereby physical harm is understood as assaulting another verbally and nonverbally…”

Bridges: “…I’m going to begin to talk about what it is that we found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of 3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging…to an aggressive act every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a half acts of verbal or physical aggression…”

Now first off: these folks do know that analyzing this “random generated” (more like, pulled out of their asses) list or “top 50 videos” ignores the main point that most of the more popularly consumed and produced porn comes directly off the Internet, not from the major porn studios…and that analyzing 50 videos out of nearly hundreds if not thousands of adult videos that are released every year probably wouldn’t reflect the true diversity of content of porn in the first place.

Then there is their quaint and very open definition of “aggression”. which could include anything from an overly aggressive kiss or an insertion of the digits into another person’s naughty bits (remember, in Dines and NPNH’s worldview, any means of penetration of a woman is de facto defined as near rape, regardless even of the woman’s stated wishes), to open-handed slaps on the face or breasts or buttocks; to direct physical attacks designed to maim or injure. Not to mention the “verbal aggeression”, which basically can be reduced to: “He called her a WHORE, a BITCH, a C*NT!! He said one of those seven dirty words!!! Oh, the humanity!!!” The notion that dirty talk is designed more as a turn-on for the woman as much as for the man seems to be absent from their “studies”…but then again, actually pursuing the opinion and thoughts of the actual actors in those scenes probably wasn’t in their minds when they cooked up this “study”, now wasn’t it??

Bridges: “We also coded for, what…we’re calling loosely in this talk, ‘extreme acts’ (of sex acts). The only sexual sequence that we coded, which is…when one thing follows another, was something called ATM…’ass-to-mouth’. This literally involves anal penetration followed by oral sex…she is literally eating her own shit. That occurred in 41% of the scenes that we coded…”

Ahhhh, dude…I’ve seen my share of ATM (and ATOGM) scenes, and I can attest with absolute certainty that there is positively, absolutely NO “shit-eating” involved at all. In fact, the performers of such acts are thoroughly prepared well in advance for those scenes through enemas and douching and all other precautions to insure that no “accidents” even remotely occur. Perhaps you got that confused with the “scat porn” study???

And considering how open your concept of “aggressive” sex acts are, how can we know that you have not taken liberties with your definition of “extreme” sex acts, too?? Would that include plain anal scenes (of course, taking a dick up the ass must be total rape, because no respectful woman would ever enjoy such a deviant…errrrr, patriarchial activity?? Or…gang bangs (read: sex with more than one man)??? Or blowjobs leading to facials (because REAL women prefer their sex strictly missionary, and with none of the nasty sperm present…eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!! How gross!!!)

And why deal with percentages, anyway…..why not just state the number of scenes you saw that contained the offensive acts….or, better yet, just name the movies and the scenes so that anyone wishing to analyze your study for accuracy can see them for themselves??

Bridges: “Slapping happened 30% of the time… Most of the aggressors in these films were men…73%. By far the most common recipient of aggression was a woman. Even when women were aggressing, they were generally aggressing other women…”

Bridges: “How did the person respond when they were aggressed?… In 95% of these 3,000 and some acts of aggression, the person was either neutral, as in no change of facial expression or verbal expression, or was sort of saying, ‘That feels great. Keep doing it. Right on.’ And in only 3% did we see some overt expression of displeasure or pain. Again, it seems to be very important to the people who are watching this to believe that the recipient of aggression is fact enjoying it, is choosing it at some level…”

Ahhh, but you do know that there is a fundamental difference between a mild to moderate slap to the butt or breast or even to the face designed to stimulate the nerves and enhance sexual pleasure, and a genuine slap intended to hurt, maim, or injure the person. I would guess that the women who consented to doing those scenes already know the difference quite well, and would probably not appreciated outsiders interpreting their views for them. Maybe there reason why they reacted as it there was no pain was because…well..there really wasn’t any pain, and that it didn’t get to the level of violence or injury??

But, so much easier for antiporn ideologues to believe that women are either lying about this or dupes of the patriarchy, right??

Bridges: “…in couples research we know that couples, even couples who fight a lot, as long as there’s a lot of good in the relationship, about five times more good than bad, they actually do pretty well.

“Less than 10% of the videos showed any kind of a positive act, and that included kissing… caressing happened maybe twice. Something like a verbal compliment, ‘Gosh, you look pretty’, not, ‘Slut bitch, come over here,’ that happened maybe five times in the 304 scenes. So we have a ratio of positive to negative behaviors of 1 to 9, which is not a sustainable, happy relationship.”

Oh, I see…because the kind of porn that you analyzed does not meet some arbitrary ratio of “positive behavior” (kissing, caressing, and such) to nasty, negative, degrading behavior (dirty facials, anal sex, slapping), that proves your point that porn should be banished from the earth?? Never mind that there really is a subgenre of porn that emphasizes exactly what you see as “positive” (do the names Tristan Taormino and Candida Royalle ring any bells??). Is your issue really with porn content, or is it really about women and men who don’t meet your narrow, hyperromanticized standard of sexuality as being only legitimate for “emotional intimacy”?? Does it ever enter your mind that these are ACTORS performing SCENES that may not reflect upon their own private sex lives; that these women and men may be perfectly capable of having strong emotional personal relationships while still depicting acts they may enjoy on the side for their own pleasure??

But even all that ignores the main point: this is still (however NPNH may attempt to spin and distort it) a small minority of the porn that is available for consumption in the United States; and most of it still remains quite vanilla: het couples performing mostly standard sex acts; single women masturbating; and girls sharing each other (sometimes with their BF’s or husbands watching). To emphasize this small sample and attempt to condemn the whole genre of adult sexual media is not only a big lie, but a huge slander on everyone: the performers, the consumers, and those who defend consensual sexual expression.

Sorry, Adam and NPNH, but your old dog still can’t get beyond the same old trick. Try again when you have something new.

As if there wasn’t enough reason to heart Renegade Evolution for being as brainy and passionate as she is sexy:

Gail Dines, Her Porn Training Program, and Me

It’s VERY long, but every word is worth the read….a total debunking of the antiporn “feminist” nonsense from pillar to post and back again.

This almost makes up for the passing of that bad-ass motherfucker George Carlin this morning….

I’m sure that you have heard of the Showtime original show Penn and Teller: BULLSHIT!, in which the legendary comedic/magic duo of Penn Gillette and Teller (don’t know his surname) basically exposes what they see as urban myths, rumors, and other assorted fictions.

Well…for the beginning of their sixth season, they decided to train their BS meters on The War on Porn, and all the myths from both Christian Right and radicalfeminist “Left” about the innate evil thereof. And lookee here….one of the skewered antiporn “experts” just so happened to be our dear friend Dr. Gail Dines; professor at Wheelock College and promoter of the usual “porn is racist/sexist/promotes degradation of women” meme.

Now, as you plainly know, Dr. Dines is well known for her habit of intimidating and refusing to debate women who don’t march in perfect step with her ideology; she has steadfastly refused to share even the hint of a microphone with the likes of Nina Hartley (except in venues where Dines could, in the typical Bill O’Reilly fashion, ambush and entrap women like Nina and distort their responses to their “inquiries”). Plus, she is legendary for her use of porn material without the permission of the actual models or performers featured to sell her beliefs about the innate evil of said expression. And, she is quite vocal about how she believes antiporn “feminist” voices are basically “shut out” and “censored” by the evol Male Liberal Patriarchial Media who simply doesn’t want to admit their sin of masturbating to the “death and destruction” of women and children.

Problem is, though, for someone who is so disgusted with the “male media,” Professor Dines also craves the media spotlight like any other demogague….which is why she agreed to appear on the aformentioned episode of P&T: BS! concerning porn.

Now, you would have guessed that knowing how Penn and Teller can be when it comes to driving their points home and being as agggressive as pit bulls when it comes to debunking their favored topics, Dines would have probably thought better of appearing knowing that their audience would probably not be accomodating to their views. And indeed, it wasn’t: the show basically debunked and smashed all of her mythologies about the dangers of porn and its impact on women and men….to the point that Dines and the other antiporn panelists who appeared were reduced to sputtering in anger when their talking points fell on deaf ears.

Funny how it feels to be on the other side of the rout…right, Professor Dines??

But, oh, Gail Dines is nothing if not perseverent…..she decided to take her case against Penn and Teller directly to the people, using an essay posted directly to CounterPunch this morning titled “Penn, Porn, and Me”…with the suggestive subtitle of: “How Some Men React When They Think You Want To Take Away Their Porn”. (As if Penn and Teller were themselves porn addicts for not totally buying into Dines’ ideology.)

Mostly, Dines’ rant is that Penn and Teller totally misinterpreted her stance about porn…namely, the kind of porn that men supposedly truely want to see; mistaking the soft core that is Showtime’s/Vivid’s fare for the real “Shock-n-Awe” gonzo that really rings up the registers and drives the degradation complex. Mostly, though, Penn’s just an angry, bitter man who just wants to keep on wanking to porn that damages women, according to Ms. Gail:

I have seen a lot of upset men, but few get close to the level of rage Penn exhibited on the show. As he yelled and screamed into the camera, I thought he was going to have a stroke. He was especially upset with me for suggesting that mainstream porn, which is increasingly cruel and degrading, has a real effect on the men who use it.

The interesting part of this story is not Penn’s out-of-control anger, but the way the show framed the story on porn. As was expected, the producers used the topic as an excuse to show lots of porn; a quick and cheap way to pull in the audience. But the porn they showed was the soft core kind that is mainly girl-on-girl sex, the type that is not the main moneymaker for the industry.

The porn that makes most of the money for the industry is actually the gonzo, body-punishing variety that shows women’s bodies being physically stretched to the limit, humiliated and degraded. Even porn industry people commented in a recent article in Adult Video News, that gonzo porn is taking its toll on the women, and the turnover is high because they can’t stand the brutal acts on the body for very long.

OK….so the fact that it’s mostly girl/girl sex and solo masturbation scenes and mostly “vanilla” hetero scenes found in most porn sites and movies which make up nearly 80 to 90 percent of the porn being viewed in the US means absolutely nothing to Professor Dines; it’s that nasty-ass gonzo and the circus-sex acts of facials and anals and gangbangs that really count…..and of course, we all know that women are leaving in droves due to the “abuse” of such acts. Ahhhh, Gail….would it be just a little effort to actually ask some female performers who have left the industry — well, at least those not already integrated with antiporn ideology like Shelley Lubben — if they felt “degraded” or “humiliated” by the experience of doing porn?? But oh, nooooos….that would mean actually accepting the social agency of such women as actual human beings rather than just plain suckers for Teh Patriarchy, or just mindless sluts needing reeducation or redemption for their sin of liking cock or twat..or both at the same time. We “leftist” feminists can’t be having that, can’t we???

Ahh, but Professor Dines has more to bitch about….

While I doubt that Penn is any stranger to this type of porn, I know for sure that the lead producer is aware of it. In preparation for the show, he spent several hours with me as I carefully explained the different genres of porn, and he also came to one of my lectures, where he saw in clear and sharp focus just what happens to women in the industry. He himself expressed shock and anger as we talked, yet when it came down to it, he ended up just like the rest of media producers: cowardly and untruthful. The story they told about soft-core porn is only part of the story, as what really needs to be explained is why men are, according to the industry, seeking out harder and harder porn.

Oh, yeah…..”according to the industry”….not according to her biased opinions, you see.

I initially declined to do the show, as I had no faith in Penn and Teller doing anything that remotely looked like serious journalism. In the end I agreed because they promised to give me some serious time to talk about porn. They also promised not to edit me to look like a fool. They kept their first promise and reneged on the second. They introduced the three anti-porn activists as the “Three Stooges”, setting us up as idiots before we had said a word. Of course, every time one of us said anything, they cut back to some soft porn and Penn, who was at times having a hysterical fit. It was both scary and comical, his red face contorted with rage as he yelled at the camera that porn doesn’t cause men to be violent!

Now..the fact that maybe the reason why Penn was going off on Dr. Dines and the other antiporn panelists (no doubt including a more traditional Christian Rightist, I’ll bet) might have something to do with countering her own beliefs that men who jerk off to porn inevitably move on to doing all sort of nasty things like bestiality and rape and pissing on women and pedophilia and all other such depravities..but then again, I’m not a regular view of that particular show. But never mind that, it just proves Dines’ point that porn must be censored for the good of all men!

Yeah. Right. Really,

The show is scheduled to air as a repeat tonight at midnight Eastern Time (check your local listings for exact time in your area); so you can see for yourself whether Gail was indeed ambushed or whether she just got owned by superior talent. Given her history, I’m vouching for the latter.

P.S.: The Renegade Henchwoman (aka Maximus Sexeeemus AssKickumus, Grand Emperess of Modern Rome) is a HUGE P&T fan, and she had a word or five hundred to say about Gail Dines and the show today at her blog, too.

Nice going once again, Dimocrats.

And just when I thought that you were finally going to cast the yoke of Bush-McCain policies from your brow, your distinguished leaders Pelosi, Hoyer, and Reid decide to hand Dubya and McCain a blank check and the power to tap Americans for whatever reason…not to mention the virtual pardon for telecom companies who basically broke the law.

I thought that the main idea of putting your party into office was to overthrow and oppose the Republicans, not cave in to them and keep giving them everything they wanted.

OK…so there are the “Blue Dogs” and the Lieberman Democrats (that is, Republicans who cloak as Democrats for fun) who would cross the aisle to support Dubya and his political protection plan.  But they aren’t even the majority of Democrats, and they weren’t the ones who put your sorry asses into the majority.

But hey…I guess that the Dem leadership is still scared of Karl Rove throwing the “cut-and-run” smack at them, so who cares about the Fifth Amendment, or the will of the majority of their own damn party??

And as for you, Senator Obama: what the hell is your problem??

How in the HELL can you with a straight face attack McCain for being a Bush clone, then back off and support one of Bush’s main policies of wrecking FISA??

And I’m not accepting your “I’ll support the FISA bill, but will do my best to remove the retroactive telecom immunity when I become President” meme, either.  Sounds too much like Bubba Clinton supporting the GOP welfare “reform” bill while screaming about “fixing it”, which he never quite got to.

Change we can believe in.  Yeah, right.

Oh..and anyone hoping that the mighty Obama will make any radical changes in foreign policy should take a gander at the list of folks on his foreign policy advisory team.  Sam (”Me no like queers or liberals”) Nunn??  Madeline {”A million dead Iraqis are worth it”) Albright??? Lee Hamilton??  Richard Lugar???? Yeah, maybe not the loony neocons of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Bolton….but hardly pacifist either.

The funny thing is that Obama is still worlds above Bush and McCain, and would be a definite improvement over the past 8 years.

The really tragic and frustrating thing, though, is that the improvement wouldn’t matter much in the long run.

Way to drive your bus under your entire base, Dimocrats…..if McCain snatches victory from this in November, this will be the main reason.

Oh…and memo to Dennis Kucinich: why are you still a Democrat after all this??? Why aren’t you meeting with Cynthia McKinney about a joint Green Party ticket of resistance???

Just saying….

Well….my problems aren’t all the way resolved…but at least I was able to get enough money to get my sorry ass back online today.

Now…I got some serious catching up and posting to do. Too much happening, from Obama’s historic campaign to the usual right-wing asshattery, among others.

Give me some time, and I will get back up to speed.

I usually don’t bring my personal life into this blog, for the obvious reasons….but now I am so desperate for help that I’m throwing myself out here for any assistance you can give. It will also explain why I have been absent from the Internet this past few weeks.

My problem is basically financial in nature….Ever since my parents passed away, I have been living with my sister and her family (no names to protect the innocent), paying them rent and sharing part of the utilities and food budget. My job makes about $1,200 a month in salary after taxes and deductions (and that includes a wage garnishment from the Federal government due to a past defaulted student loan from way back)…so, while it’s been a bit tight, it has been managable.

At least, until around three months ago.

Then, I was hit with a series of setbacks that caught me off guard: A $500 deductable for an ambulance ride to the hospital when I got sick with a bacterial infection and the flu; then I missed some time at work which severed my take-home pay for a bit.

Because my credit was basically shot to hell due to my defaulted loan and some bad credit cards from an earlier period, I could not get a traditional loan to temporarily fill in the gap.  The only alternative was to use temporary payday cash advance loans, which were readily available.

Problem is, though…..as I got further and further behind and all the financial liabilities continued to build up, I ended up taking on more payday loans to attempt to stay above water….and now it is biting my behind BIG TIME.

As a result, in the past month, they have been taking their money directly from my paycheck as a means of collecting their past due bills…..and thusly, I end up with NO money left over to even pay my basic bills, or rent.  It has happened to me the previous two paychecks….if it wasn’t for the stimulus check coming in last week, I wouldn’t have been able to pay even the rent or some of my bills.

It’s gotten so bad that I am even contemplating filing for bankruptcy to at least stop them from raiding my paycheck….or at the very least, attempting to find any company willing to offer some kind of debt consolidation loan that would allow me to pay these people and get back on track.

I am NOT trying to pass blame on anyone here, since I got into this mess all by myself by mistakenly taking on more than I could handle….but remember that everything I did was done to pay my bills and keep myself under a roof.

Here’s where you can help me, if you can: Is there any means where I can find a personal bankruptcy lawyer willing to take on my case? Or does bankruptcy even apply to situations like mine where there is no business or credit liability?? In lieu of that, are there any programs out there that I can use to help me get rid or or reduce this debt so that I can get my hard-earned paycheck back?? Would credit counseling be an option here??

And as tempting it would be to openly solicit financial help and place a PayPal button here, I’m usually not that kind of person to do that….though, if you would offer such assistance on your own, I won’t object.

I could really, really, really use some help here…whatever means it comes by.  It’s that bad.

Meanwhile…..I may be a lot more scarce here until this passes; because I am reduced to one-hour access via the public library (with all the filters and censorship within); I will do my best to post as much as possible when I can.

UPDATE #2: 8 PM:  Barack Obama’s officially clinched. It’s done. Deal with it, haters.

Oh…and McCain’s already in Kenner (suburb of New Orleans), attempting the same old tired right-wing talking points to bash Obama in. Really.

UPDATE (6-3-08):

Well…it’s almost over. Obama as of 7 PM tonight (Lafayette, LA time) is now only 5 delegates short of clinching the nomination; and he will possibly clinch that even before the results from South Dakota and Montana come in….and the superdelegates and Hillary Clinton delegates switch over.

Hillary may not concede now (more than likely, she’ll admit the math while giving a good face for her supporters tonight)…but my guess is that she will officially concede either tomorrow or later this week.

Now….the real game begins: and the bottom line question remains as it will ever be.

Is the popular hatred of Bush/Reagan/McCain policies and the desire to kick the GOP out on its collective asses deeper than the desire not to see a Black man occupy the White House?

Can McCain do the unenviable task of both separating himself from the Bush policies while simultaneously relying on Bush’s core electoral base and his abundant funding machine and dirty tricksters (read, Karl Rove and the Swift Boaters and Fixed Noise)?

Can Obama heal and bridge the rift between himself and working-class White and female voters estranged from him due to all the drama about Hillary?? And who will his Veep be?? Richardson?? Webb?? Hillary??

Will Bob Barr and/or Cynthia McKinney (or Ralph Nader) — or even Ron Paul — have any say in the matter??

Most of all….will the economy and the war remain steady enough for McCain to survive, or will there be further meltdowns?

These questions make all the difference between a too-close-to-call election where Diebold and dirty tricks combine with the usual White racism to keep McCain alive (except that this time, the Democrats control the House, which is fundamentally different from 2000); and a historic rout of Reagan-Mondale (or possibly Bush41-Dukakis) proportions where the GOP gets its collective heads smashed in.

Either way…the game will be officially on after tonight. Grab your chairs and some popcorn; it’s gonna get….interesting.

ORIGINAL POST:

Well…after all that noise and fireworks, the Democratic primary season will come to an end tomorrow with the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana.

And then beginning the next day, the remaining superdelegates will team up and rally around Barack Obama, putting the final touches on his delegate majority and sending a clear message to Hillary Clinton that it’s time to step aside and make way for the general election.

What Hillary does after that will be pretty much significant.

Will she see the reality that she just can’t win, and gracefully pull out, with promises of a Cabinet seat or a more substansial Senate role??

Will she stand her ground and take her fight for delegates all the way to the Dem convention in Denver, and then wait until she’s shut out then before she gives in??

Or…will she, powered by the anger and rage of some of her most strident and vocal supporters, decide that she has to destroy the Dems and trash Obama and work behind the scenes (or, even, publically as an Independent) to undercut Obama and give the Presidency to John McCain on a silver platter??

The optimist in me believes that Hillary is not that removed from reality to see the writing on the wall; and will begrudgingly accept a graceful withdrawal.

The pessimist, on the other hand, sees that Hillary is so caught up in her ambition, and the supposed entitlement of being handed the Presidency, that she is more than willing to torpedo Obama and allow McCain in so that she can claim the mantle in 2012. Not to mention, the absolute rage of a few of her supporters, who are so intense in their racism that they would even vote for McCain so that that evil Black man not contaminate their “White House”. (And NO, I am not saying that all or even a majority of Hillary’s supporters are stone cold racists; but you can’t deny that she has attracted a sizable lot of ‘em who want to stick it to Obama merely because he’s Black.)

And it doesn’t help matters when the likes of Larry Johnson of NoQuarters.com (one of the more strident Clintonoid Obama haters) attempts to unleash thinly veiled agitprop, directed towards Senator Obama’s (fully) Black wife, Michelle, as an anti-White bigot. (Note: he’s now reversed himself: he promised to release the offending “video” of Michelle spouting “anti-Whitey” smack today at 9 AM, but is now saying that the Repubs will hold on to it until October. Yeah, right….just another smear.)

But Larry Johnson is but one example of this newly minted Obama hating: witness this nice rant by a “Manhattanite” named Harriet Christian after she was thrown out of the infamous Democratic National Committee meeting attempting to resolve the delegate count mess in Florida and Michigan:

Harriet Christian (Clinton supporter/Obama opponent) ranting on DNC decision not to seat more delegates for Hillary (from YouTube; hat tip to Raw Story)

And, of course, there is all this smack from the agrieved parties that they will cross over to McCain in the fall as a protest to Obama getting nominated (or Hillary getting “screwed” out of the nomination; as witnessed by this article from another disgruntled Clintonoid (reprinted from here, via here):

Here’s just a few reasons why:

The claim that anyone who won’t vote for Obama is a racist.

The claim that anyone who won’t vote for Obama is stupid. So stupid, in fact, despite record turn out in Florida the smart people stayed home because they knew their votes wouldn’t count. So if we count Florida’s results in total we are disenfranchising the brilliant people who disenfranchised themselves.

The claim that Michigan shouldn’t get a full ride because Senator Obama (like his smart Florida supporters) disenfranchised himself by taking his name off the ballot and denying his supporters the opportunity to show their love. By the way, can I just say that again? HE TOOK HIS NAME OFF THE BALLOT. THERE WERE NO RULES THAT SAID HE HAD TO. WHY DIDN’T HE TAKE HIS NAME OFF FLORIDA’S BALLOT AS WELL?

[Note from Anthony: Actually, that's not quite true; under Florida's rules, Obama couldn't take his name off the ballot in Florida because he wouldn't be able to be placed on the general election ballot, either. That particular fact has been noted and corrected in the original post.]


The claim that the popular vote doesn’t matter; it’s all about super delegates. Hello? Were you just not alive in 2000? Did you never refer to President Bush as illegitimate because he lost the popular vote but won the because of the Supreme Court and the Electoral College?

Here’s a new one I adore. Puerto Rico doesn’t matter because they can’t vote in the General. I actually went over to the dreaded Huffington Post last night - I showered immediatly - and the mocking of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans was over the top. Memo to the Obamanation: there are more Puerto Ricans living in the US than in Puerto Rico. Way to help your man get in with the Latinos!

Holding the Supreme Court over my head as a reason to vote for Obama. You know what? Let them overturn Roe vs. Wade. Let it go to the states. Let politicians no longer have the excuse that it’s the law and they can’t do anything. Make them accountable. Make the young women who have always had a choice fight for it like we did.

Ahhh, OK….never mind that no one in the Obama camp has ever even claimed that all Hillary supporters were being racist, or that they were stupid (any more than the majority on the Clinton side complaints that Obama supporters were a “cult”, and that he was an anti-White, anti-American Muslim hiding his true pro-terrorist agenda behind his super secret madrassa upbringing and his evil White-hating Christian church. (Gee, he’s now both a radical Muslim AND a radical Christian….at the same time???? WTF?!?!?)

And you just gotta love a supposed liberal who claims that Hillary is being screwed because she’s a woman and a feminist….then in the next breath suggests that voting for the antifeminist McCain and allowing him to torpedo Roe vs. Wade and allow states to banish abortion (and other forms of reproductive rights for women) would be quite a suitable means of revenge for the evil Black man standing in her way.

Liza Sabatier brought up the perfect word for what these fools are under the influence of: “Archibunkocaine”. Emphasis on BUNKKK.

As you all know, I’m not a fan of Obama, either, for the fact that he panders to the Right a bit too much himself (and the recent incident of him breaking off his former church because of the remarks of one of its pastors doesn’t give me much hope, either). My vote’s still going for Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party; I’m basically through with the Democrats forever. But….that doesn’t mean that I can’t express my utter disgust at the open and explicit pandering to vile White racism that the Clinton campaign has been perfecting for the past two months in desperation to save themselves from their own mistakes.

Face it, Clintonistas: Barack Obama simply out campaigned you, out fundraised you, and just plain ran a better campaign than you did….and you had all the advantages of incumbency and a popular President in Bubba behind you. Whether you like it or not, he played and won by the rules; it’s time to face reality and accept the facts.

Now, if you want to destroy yourselves and cross over to McCain and allow your own spite get in the way of defeating the Republicans…well, that for you to decide. But, you can’t blame anyone but yourselves for the results….not even Ralph Nader.

You just couldn’t leave well enough alone….couldn’t you, Senator Clinton??

Running the most right-wing “populist” campaign in Democratic primary history wasn’t enough for you.

Pandering to the worst of the racist hardhats and hard core right-wing rednecks was bad enough.

Playing upon your female status and Bill’s former power in order to be annointed with the nomination just couldn’t cut it.

And even with all that not working, and you getting your sorry self blown out by an upstart rookie Black US Senator who simply had a better strategy and a better message than you…you just couldn’t take the hint and get out while you were behind.

Instead, you just took a brush fire….and promptly dropped a nuke on it.

OK…so  I might be willing to take your excuse and half-hearted “apology” that you were only quoting Robert Kennedy’s assassination as a chronological point to say that presidential campaigns can continue long into the summer.  Fine enough….except that RFK in 1968 was a late arrival in a truncated nominating process that didn’t even involve the kind of primary/caucus voting, or the long and winded political process of today. (Remember, Hubert Humphrey was nominated the old fashioned way, through backroom deals and appointed delegates; neither RFK or Gene McCarthy had much of a say over the ultimate process back then. Indeed, you could say that RFK’s run was designed to deflect attention to the success of McCarthy as the “anti-war candidate”.)

And no, Hilary, not even your husband’s “comeback” in 1992 counts either, since Bubba had already wrapped up the Dem nomination by as early as March, dispatching Paul Tsongas during the “Super Tuesday” sweeps; the only issue with the Cali primary was whether then Governor Jerry Brown would play the role as resident “populist” spoiler.

Funny, though, that Hillary is closer to  Jerry Brown in reality than she is to Bill; since she has basically no chance to win the nomination, unless she can somehow intimidate the majority of superdelegates and claim all of the disputed votes in Florida and Michigan as hers.

And that is the entire point of all this mess: a last gasp effort to smear Barack Obama as unelectable for no other reason because he happens to be a Black man (even if only half-Black), and because he got in the way of her coronation and anointment as “The Chosen One”. Pandering to the “working class White Americans” (as if Black folk aren’t quite “working class” enough); parroting right-wing “populist” memes like the “gas tax holiday” and secret fundamentalist group meetings; and never backing away one inch from her support of Bush’s wars….all of that is meant to do nothing more than to preserve her mighty ambition to follow her husband to the ultimate political prize.

And if she manages to so beat down Obama enough to hand the 2008 election to John McBush…..errrrrrrrrr, McCain….on a silver platter; all the better to set herself up as the modern day Joan of Arc which will rise from the swamp to save the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012.

But that’s not even the worse of it….certainly Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know that Black folk are rightfully afraid of a genuine assassination threat to Obama or any other Black major political official who challenges the dominant political discourse; since it has happened far too often (remember Malcolm X; Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, COINTELPRO???) OK, so Obama isn’t nearly as radical as these folk, but even the notion of having a person of color not to the right of Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes even within shouting distance of the White House would be enough in some corners of our nation to give them some….you know, ideas?? Was she asleep when Mike Huckabee ran his “there goes that Barack, running for cover from the gunshots” attempted joke with the NRA Comedy Club earlier this week?? Is she even aware that Obama has been under Secret Service protection due to death threats from as early as March?? Because, if she did manage to think about that for, say, one second before opening her piehole and inserting her leg up to her thigh, the word “assassination” would not have even ventured from her lips.

But then again, if she had thought about that, then she would have seen the reality of her situation and conceded the nomination to Obama a long time ago when it was obvious that she wasn’t going to win.

Instead, she’ll have her lieutenants, Mark Penn and Terry MacAuliffe, paint down on her the rosy scenarios about how she is now ahead in the popular vote (yeah, right, if you exclude states with caucuses only rather than primaries, and throw in Florida and Michigan’s disputed votes all in her corner); how she should be anointed the nominee because “she wins in states Democrats need to win while Obama leads in states that have no chance to go Democrat at all” (but I thought that the idea all along that she would be the candidate to win the “swing states” which didn’t go Democratic at all??); and how she is at the very least deserving of the Vice Presidential slot as a “unifier” who will assuage women voters who don’t like how she has been “bitchified” and bashed (now, she does have a point there about the mass misogyny of some in the media towards her; but how that justifies her “scorched earth” campaign strategy remains subject to debate).

And, she will have her groupies and media wolfhounds (see Taylor Marsh and Susie Madrak, whom has degenerated so rapidly from a fighting progressive to become a simple yes-woman for Hillary) attack the messengers and spin her mistakes around to attempt more smears against Obama for being such an evil person to get in the way of her “historical” candidacy.

Do us all, and especially the Democratic Party, Hillary, a real favor.  Give it up; acknowledge you are beaten; give Barack Obama his well-earned victory..and then disappear for, like a year or five. The way you are going right now, you will be less electable than even he will….and you will drag the Dems down with you into the sewer hole. Considering how low Dubya and the Repubs are at this time, that would be a significant task…..even considering the regularity of Democrats for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Oh, and one other thing: this recent mauling of Keith Olbermann for his righteous and pithy recent Special Comments whacking Hillary for her dense remarks and for her entire strategy is a bit too much.  I find it quite funny that all the newly minted KO haters had no problem applauding him when he busted out the whupping sticks at Dubya and the Republicans for their crimes and scandals and war games…but let him raise his voice one decibel against Hillary’s tactics, and they become like…well, Fixed Noise agents. Sorry, but I didn’t know that he had to gain your approval for thinking for himself…any more than he has to gain BillO’s or Steve Doocy’s.

Doesn’t bother me any, anyway..since as of right now my vote’s still going for McKinney, and I still consider Obama to be a different kind of conservative Democratic opportunist panderer.  But Hillary still deserves all the razzing she gets for running such a horrid campaign….and using Black voters as a stepping stone for her blind personal ambition. Sounds familiar…doesn’t it??

The relevant video follows:

Sen. Hillary Clinton Addressing Argus Leader (SD)  Editorial Board (via YouTube; crossposted to Huffington Post)

Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC): 5-23-08 Special Comment on Hillary Clinton’s “Assassination” Gaffe (via YouTube)