corrente

Salon:

Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?
Hillary's reckless exploitation of racial division could split the Democratic Party over race -- a tragic legacy for the Clintons.

By Joe Conason

May 9, 2008 | As long as Hillary Clinton is willing to spend the money and energy needed to continue her campaign, she certainly can ignore the pundits who insist that the Democratic nominating contest is over. What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and that of her husband -- especially when she starts to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace.

When Clinton blathered on about "totally obliterating" Iran in the event it made a nuclear strike against Israel, and then reiterated that same statement last weekend, she made what was, until then, the single most ill-considered comment of the campaign. But now USA Today has published an interview in which she explained again why she regards herself as a more viable general-election candidate than Barack Obama -- except that this time, she crossed a bright white line.

[...]

But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.

[continued at link]

visit TweetyTown, one floor down.

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April 22, 2008 - MSNBC:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC ANCHOR: All this talk, I heard Chuck, about the power of Eddie Rendell and Michael Nutter; in Philadelphia anybody knows the city is divided. Of course, you go to south Philly; Hillary Clinton will do very well there against Barack Obama. Northeast Philly, where I'm from, Hillary Clinton will do very well against Barack Obama there. Yes, there are liberals downtown, who might vote a different way. It isn't the power of the big shots. It's the people telling their ward leaders how they want to vote and committee people.

TRANSLATION: You see, according to Tweety, "liberals", especially those "downtown" liberals, might vote a "different way" (for Obama). - Now, one might even conclude that voting a "different way" might grant those "downtown" liberlas some kind of mystical MAVERICK status. OMG! - Blasphemy! Perish the thought (there can only be one MAVERICK!)

Quickly - before the wax on the dummy begins to melt! - let's get back to Tweety's hometownie grass rootsy analysis:

MATTHEWS: This is a grass roots campaign. We are picking a president here. Nobody is going to tell you how to vote for president. Sure, they can organize better, get the vote out, perhaps move people around. But in the end -- Howard you know this. You know Philadelphia. And I have to tell you, the idea it would be about 60 percent is not a big surprise. The fact that there are some white liberals who will join the African-American support for Barack Obama is known, certainly down in Centre City and Society Hill, and some of the other areas in the northeast.

TRANSLATION: The others! "Big shots"! from "Society Hill"! - (Creative Class!) "white liberals" are coniving with "African-Americans" to support Barack Obama! What will we tell the "regular people"!?

MATTHEWS: But generally, we know there are a lot of regular people in the northeast who are going to see Hillary Clinton as the hometown girl. She was up there the other day campaigning as a hometown girl. It doesn't surprise me it's about 60 to 65 percent for Barack in Philadelphia. He'll be lucky to get anywhere near 70. It's not because of Michael Nutter or Ed Rendell. It's because that's how people think.

TRANSLATION: Yes, of course, that's how "people" think... "regular people". It all makes sense to me now: "white liberals" and "African American's" who support Barack Obama aren't like "regular people" (and not like Tweety, and his kind from the "norhteast", where he, hometown Tweety, and hometown girls, come from).

MATTHEWS: As somebody once said to me in this campaign, a lot of people in this campaign decided how to vote back in 1957. They have thought about how to vote and they are going to vote this way. A lot of this is neighborhood, a lot of it.

Uh huh. I wonder who that "somebody" was.

1957:

August 28 - United States Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) set the record for the longest filibuster with his 24-hour, 18-minute speech railing against a civil rights bill.

September 24 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to Arkansas to provide safe passage into Central High School for the Little Rock Nine.

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Outside my open window i can hear the arugula, growing ever stronger, in the cool darkness.

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Hillaryland is the land of pander and scare, of lies and innuendo, of a poison pen and the telephone call at 3 AM, and hustling, stunts, and sharp elbows - of backlash, bailouts and shifting goalpost grabs - the land of fabulist knife fights, nuclear options, and anything to win.

sounds familiar:

"Nixonland is a land of slander and scare, of lay innuendo, of a poison pen and the anonymous telephone call, and hustling, pushing, and shoving - the land of smash and grab and anything to win." ~ Adlai E. Stevenson, 1952

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broadcast comments in comment bed below.

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Cackling Codpieces Batloon! A Pandering Polyorchid in a Pantsuit?

James Carville explains (Newsweek):

Carville takes the view that the longer Obama is out there under scrutiny, the more the voters see his vulnerabilities. "Everything that's happened to him is not because of her. She hasn't laid much of a glove on him other than just being there," Carville says.

Obama didn't have much choice in deciding to take on Wright. It was a fight he did all he could to avoid, acting only when it threatened to destroy his candidacy. "The Republicans will eat him alive" is what the Clinton campaign is telling the superdelegates. Hillary is the tougher of the two, the candidate you want on your side in a knife fight, a gender reversal that prompts Carville to indulge in some ribald humor: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."

Sheesh.

So, I guess that means she has three you know whats, and if she gave one to Obama, she'd still have two left to play with?

Well, Ooo-kay. Apparently she's pretty good in a knife fight too. No doubt a consequence of years of harrowing tarmac sniper fire engagements. But I don't understand, if she is such a good fighter, how come, as Carville says, she hasn't even "laid much of a glove on him" (Obama)?

Maybe she's too busy playing with her nuts? Well, I dunno. But, if we are to understand Carville, we would have to conclude that if Hillary Clinton is elected commander in chief she will be the first woman president with three "cojones" below the belt. And then we would have to also assume we are electing America's first triorchid (as far as I know).

Sounds like a flower doesn't it? Unless of course she gave one "orchid" to Obama. In that case she'd be just another sad sack - one family jewel short of the original dowry.

She should probably be careful around that knife. If ya know what i mean (and i think ya do).

Polyorchidism / triorchidism

Polyorchidism is the incidence of more than two testes. It is a very rare congenital disorder, with under 100 cases reported in medical literature. The most common form is triorchidism, or tritestes, where three testes are present. The condition is usually asymptomatic, but can increase the risk of testicular cancer. A man who suffers from polyorchidism is known as a polyorchid

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Vanity Fair (excerpts):

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
May 2008

[...]

Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.

[...]

The Control of Nature
For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. “It’s not like describing a widget,” says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.

[...]

Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns— the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences—and one day may virtually control—what we put on our tables. For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth. Yet in a little more than a decade, the company has sought to shed its polluted past and morph into something much different and more far-reaching—an “agricultural company” dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations.”

[...]

Under Edgar Queeny and his successors, Monsanto extended its reach into a phenomenal number of products: plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Its safety glass protects the U.S. Constitution and the Mona Lisa. Its synthetic fibers are the basis of Astroturf.

During the 1970s, the company shifted more and more resources into biotechnology. In 1981 it created a molecular-biology group for research in plant genetics. The next year, Monsanto scientists hit gold: they became the first to genetically modify a plant cell.

[...]

In the meantime, the Nitro plant continued to produce herbicides, rubber products, and other chemicals. In the 1960s, the factory manufactured Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide which the U.S. military used to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War, and which later was the focus of lawsuits by veterans contending that they had been harmed by exposure. As with Monsanto’s older herbicides, the manufacturing of Agent Orange created dioxin as a by-product.

[...]

From 1929 to 1971, Monsanto’s Anniston works produced PCBs as industrial coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and other electrical equipment. One of the wonder chemicals of the 20th century, PCBs were exceptionally versatile and fire-resistant, and became central to many American industries as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and sealants. But PCBs are toxic. A member of a family of chemicals that mimic hormones, PCBs have been linked to damage in the liver and in the neurological, immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, now classify PCBs as “probable carcinogens.”

[...]

The Monsanto of today says that it can be trusted—that its biotech crops are “as wholesome, nutritious and safe as conventional crops,” and that milk from cows injected with its artificial growth hormone is the same as, and as safe as, milk from any other cow.

[...]

In its company literature, Monsanto now refers to itself disingenuously as a “relatively new company” whose primary goal is helping “farmers around the world in their mission to feed, clothe, and fuel” a growing planet. In its list of corporate milestones, all but a handful are from the recent era. As for the company’s early history, the decades when it grew into an industrial powerhouse now held potentially responsible for more than 50 Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites—none of that is mentioned.

[...]

However F.D.A. approval came about, Monsanto has long been wired into Washington. Michael R. Taylor was a staff attorney and executive assistant to the F.D.A. commissioner before joining a law firm in Washington in 1981, where he worked to secure F.D.A. approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone before returning to the F.D.A. as deputy commissioner in 1991. Dr. Michael A. Friedman, formerly the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for operations, joined Monsanto in 1999 as a senior vice president. Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the E.P.A. when she left the agency in 1993. She became a vice president of Monsanto, from 1995 to 2000, only to return to the E.P.A. as deputy administrator the next year. William D. Ruckelshaus, former E.P.A. administrator, and Mickey Kantor, former U.S. trade representative, each served on Monsanto’s board after leaving government. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was an attorney in Monsanto’s corporate-law department in the 1970s. He wrote the Supreme Court opinion in a crucial G.M.-seed patent-rights case in 2001 that benefited Monsanto and all G.M.-seed companies. Donald Rumsfeld never served on the board or held any office at Monsanto, but Monsanto must occupy a soft spot in the heart of the former defense secretary. Rumsfeld was chairman and C.E.O. of the pharmaceutical maker G. D. Searle & Co. when Monsanto acquired Searle in 1985, after Searle had experienced difficulty in finding a buyer. Rumsfeld’s stock and options in Searle were valued at $12 million at the time of the sale.

[...]

Steven Milloy, the “junk science” commentator for FoxNews.com and operator of junkscience.com, which claims to debunk “faulty scientific data and analysis.” It may come as no surprise that earlier in his career, Milloy, who calls himself the “junkman,” was a registered lobbyist for Monsanto.

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Mickey Kantor; Wiki:

...Clinton-Gore campaign chair in 1992, Kantor was appointed United States Trade Representative, holding that office from 1993 to 1997. He was, in 1996 and 1997, United States Secretary of Commerce.

An advocate of free trade, Kantor, as Trade Representative, led U.S. negotiations that created the World Trade Organization (WTO), such as the Uruguay Round, and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

McLove Story - A marriage of true morons:

Think Progress [if you dare]

McCain’s staff and Bush’s staff talk ‘everyday.’ At a lunch hosted today by the Christian Science Monitor, former uber-lobbyist Charlie Black, who is a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), said that McCain’s staff talks to the President Bush’s staff "everyday."


s s s s s

and then shortly thereafter that:

Mr. & Mr. McBu$h accompany each other on a gas-tax holiday giveaway getaway with Bill and Hill from Friggin Lake. They all play golf and pinochle and eat pieces of baked Cod and BBQ'd baby back pork rinds and Higher Pie and freshly filched painkillers and toss back slugs of Old Pantsuit and Cindy Beer and Crazy Uncle Dick's Stovepipe Moonshine (it's just like being shot in the face!) made from fermented hubris and the shredded fortitude of the US Constitution. And then Mr. and Mr. McBu$h anounce that they are pregnant and are expecting results somewhere around the year 3008 - God bless - and Hill jokes: "I feel your pain" - and everyone laughs - and Bill passes out Legacy Cigars - and Mr. McBu$h offers a toast to "thresholds" - and Hill concurs, "ready on day one!" - and the other Mr. McBu$h stands and declares "mission accomplished" - "Bring it on" - "Dead or Alive" - whatever it is.

And as if that weren't enough holiday fun for any one - milking one free tank of gas - Joey "BooBoo The Bear" Lieberman comes a runnin' up from the waters edge with a picnic basket - flip-flopping full of fear - an anglers feast - by hook and crook - Gefilte fish and catfish with coins in their bellies! - terror still fresh in their eyes. Fabulous! Another round of Uncle Dick's Stovepipe Blind-shine on the house! Lightning flashes in the distance - The Obliterator cackles - and the crickets go chirp, ,chirp, chirp - and the wind gently whistles the bonfire ever upward into the black evening - and the Aspens flutter - shivering - a collective shudder - turning in clusters - my friends - because, as the celebrated poet and novelist and barrel man Scooter "I Lewis" Libby once expounded, "their roots connect them".

Oh, the tangled giveaway, getaway, gotaway, schemes we weave.

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