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….

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)

Having been raised as a Catholic and having some deeply devout religious folks in my family, I understand more than anything the power of religious faith; and I’m more than willing to respect people who truly believe in their faith in whomever deity they choose.

Where I draw the solid line, though, is when religious folk cross the line from promoting their faith and belief to disrespecting and attacking those who freely choose not to share their particular belief…and when religion is used as a club to beat down those that they don’t like.

Two recent events prove all too well how excessive religious zealotry and blind bigotry can do mighty harm.

Case #1 you probably know about, since it’s been all over the news of late: Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern’s most recent rant against “the homosexual lobby” that was originally part of a speech she did before a private Republican group, but thanks to YouTube and the Victory Fund, got spread worldwide.

Victory Fund transcription of State Rep. Sally Kern’s (OK) rant on homosexuals (via YouTube)

Of course, such slanders against homosexuals are all too familiar, and all too common, and reflect the usual ignorance and hatemongering that we all seem to expect from the Religious Right.

Case #2, on the other hand, has gotten little or no media play, but in many ways is even more disturbing…though, considering the depth of religious zealotry within particular Black communities, I probably shouldn’t find it any more surprising at all either.

This is Illinois State Rep. Monique Davis going off on atheist activist Ron Sherman during a recent hearing of the Illinois State  Assembly’s State Government Administration Committee.  The subject originally was Sherman’s opposition to a $1 million state grant that got in the hands of a local Chicago Baptist church: but apparantly Rep. Davis wanted to make it a bit more personal, and went after Sherman’s faith (or lack thereof).

For the record, Davis is Black and a Democrat; while Sherman is White and a Green Party member.

Recording of Rep. Monique Davis (IL) berating atheist Rob Sherman (via YouTube)

An excellent source and background of the Davis/Sherman rumble can be found here

Notice that both Kern and Davis both claim the name of “God” and the fusion of faith and country to attack their alleged foes as somehow “anti-American” or “alien”; note also that both claim themselves as representing “the majority” and abuse history to claim their bigotry.

So…what is the main difference between the two??  Not much, in my view…other than the visibility of the victim groups being attacked.

Homosexual groups have rallied in force against Kern visibly and rapidly, to the point that Kern has had to seek defense behind the firewall of the usual right-wing activist groups like Friends of the Family, Morality in Media, and other such anti-gay organizations.  By contrast, however, you could hear the sound of crickets over any hint of public criticism over Davis’s slams of atheists…..other than the few right-wing attempts to link her with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and by extension, Barack Obama) as the typical example of Black rapicity.

Could it be because so much of the liberal blogosphere is so obsessed with Republican bigotry that they tend to gloss over the same kind of bigotry when it is spewed by Democrats??  Or maybe, it’s
because atheists are so small in number in comparison to fundamentalists that they don’t have the collective political power to challenge the likes of Rep, Davis??

Whatever the cause may be, it is vitally important for Black progressives (if not ALL progressives, in fact) to be as critical of hatemongering when it comes from our side as it does when the people on the Right spew it. In my view, Monique Davis is as unfit to serve her consitiuents as Sally Kern is…and in the end, there is no difference between them as equally reactionary.  You don’t have to be an atheist or a homosexual to oppose them equally; just being a living human being with a brain and a soul and a conscience will do.

You may not like what atheists believe in or what homosexuals do in their own private time; but they are as much equal citizens as you are; and as long as they do no harm to you or anyone else, it’s not your place to condemn them for what they believe. We are still (for now, at least) ruled by the Constitution, not the freakin’ Taliban.

Oh, and final memo to Rep. Davis: Abraham Lincoln was actually a non-believer in God for most of his life, alternating between atheism and agnosticism.  Only at his deathbed did he convert to Christianity. Perhaps you meant a different “Land of Lincoln” than what you said in your rant, madame.