ThePoliticalCat

A Blog devoted to progressive politics, environmental issues, LGBT issues, social justice, workers' rights, womens' rights, and, most importantly, Cats.

Friday, April 08, 2011

Didn't I Tell You Guys

Like, a fucking year ago?

President Barack Hussein Obama proves prescient once again in a speech to Republicans a year ago:



The man thinks ahead. He looks ahead. He's not perfect by a long shot, and he's not my ideal candidate by a long shot. But he is, hands down, the most pragmatic President ever. His rhetoric is not overblown but precise, surgically precise.

I wonder if John Boehner is weeping into his whisky watching this, right now.

Details here.

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Friday, October 29, 2010

How's YOUR Memory?

Go ahead. Watch it.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Women's Rights: Jamie Leigh Jones

This woman has guts. She really does. She's taken a horrible experience and turned it into a blazing fight for justice. I look at her sweet little face and think, if I was her father, brother, husband, boyfriend? Some KBR employees would be sitting around wondering what happened to their gonads.

You know who else has guts? Our newest Senator, Al Franken. Watch him kick KBR's lawyer's ass nine ways to Sunday.

Minnesota, you did the right thing by giving us this wonderful guy. He comes to his committees and hearings PREPARED. He reads everything. And he's sharp as a tack.



Go, Senator Al!

Now I see why the Rethuglicans were so terrified of letting him into the Senate. He does not mealymouth around.

So, Minnesota, all y'all gotta do now is get rid of that batshit-crazy Bachmann and we're, like, on, yaknow?

Damn, he rocks. DiBernardo's going to take a week or two to dislodge that pointy boot from his ass. Serves him right too.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Politics: You Owe It To Yourselves

to read what my good friend Chuck Butcher has to say about Senator Jim Webb and the criminal justice system.

I'm really thrilled to see that Senator Webb is living up to the high hopes I had for him. I was convinced there was gold in there in that complex, shy, stubborn, and solid man, and he's proving that he's more interested in the wellbeing of this nation than his own political future. McCain could learn a lot about "country first" by watching Senator Webb.

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Monday, March 30, 2009

Politics: There's Dawgs

and then there's dawgs.

This here dawg:

IHAH

despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, is a GOOD dawg.

These dawgs, OTOH, are some BAD, bad dawgs.

Remember all those years of Democratic Party congresscritters making backwards bridges of hands and feet to kiss Gee Dumbya's ass? Remember all those years when we cursed and swore at the idiots we had put into Congress who ran as Democrats, then ran FROM Democrats on every issue?

That would be your Blue Dog Democrats, better known as Republicrats or Democraps or Demicans. They keep talking about some mythical "center" to which they owe allegiance while selling all our hopes and dreams down the river, along with their, and our, grandmothers, for a nickel the lot. Fuck me blind, I've had enough of this shit, and if you're sick and tired of so-called Democrats who'd rather have public buttsex with lobbyists and coporathieves than forward the agenda of those who elected them, that is, us - put on your buttkicking boots and get in line. Time for some activism!!

At a time when conservatives of every stripe are thoroughly sick of the betrayal of the conservative movement, at a time when progressives are joining hands with conservatives to protest the wholesale theft and looting of our nation, at a time when Republicans themselves can't run away fast enough from the Party of NoBrains, people like Ben Chandler of Kentucky, Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Kirstin Gillibrand of New York threaten to hold the Democratic Party hostage to their slimy, weaselly ways. These turncoats run as supposed Democrats, hoping to ride our very popular President's coattails to victory, then turn around and do their best to obstruct his agenda at every step.

Thanks to them, we had endless years of frustration, of "do-nothing" congresscritters, of Bush butt-buddies. Enough, we say. People, y'all better find better candidates than your blue dogs to put in power, because they're determined to fuck us all over, and they're gonna start with you.

If you love those ambulatory poops as much as we do, please be sure to let them know. We can't afford to have these weasels in power, mealy-mouthing us into another decade of lobbyists sucking the last drops out of the Taxpayer Trough. Get on them, people.

Here they are, in all their craven glory. Let them hear from you!


Blue Dog Leadership Team



Foot Soldiers


List compiled by commenter unite4change at HuffPo.

Righteous commenter tsmith1440000 adds:
These "Blue Dogs" (& other Dems) are having a meeting with 44 tonight. This is a critical point in the new administration. They need to be reminded of how they reached these positions. This is a bad time for self-interest. Remind them that it'll be a WORSE time for it come election time. Copy & paste your (ahem) "opinion" to every single one of them. Feel free to use this:
"44 GETS HIS BUDGET OR I VOTE YOU OUT!!"

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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Entertainment: An Oldie But Goodie


We've heard a million versions of this, most of them having to do with techies and management, but this one's topical:
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below.

She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be a Democrat.”

“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”

The man smiled and responded, “You must be Palin.”

“I am,” replied the woman balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made promises that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problems. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it’s my fault.”

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

2008 Elections: Wake Up Call

The Mighty Munchkin of Justice, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, issues America's wake-up call:



Y'all better pop yer peepers open and listen to the man. It's time for the tide to turn. Jobs, prosperity, health care, retirement benefits, peace, what's not to like?

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Saturday, July 19, 2008

Politics: Don't Go Away Mad

Just go away.



McClatchy poses the question today of whether Dumbfuck McBlotto, our (decidedly un)esteemed Escutcheon-blot in chief, is "going out with 'a whimper'." Frankly, McClatchy, who gives a fuck? We just want him to go, preferably to a narrow, cramped, poorly-lit prison cell where he can rub the heads of all the baldies he can get his hands on. The sooner the better.

While academics opine on Dim Son's astounding lack of popularity, the common people are watching basic food prices soar out of reach even as the value of their homes, the stability of their corporate employers and their financial institutions, and the value of their currency sink lower than a worm's arsehole.

So, as Maru over at WTF Is It Now? likes to say,
The popular war preznit has regained his footing... oh, I'm sorry, Mr Broder, make that [insert real-life stumblebum's latest stumble]
Considering that the pathetic, wretched little asshole can barely behave in public, it's hardly surprising that that fact seems to be registering with record numbers of his fellow-citizens.

Meanwhile, it's heartening to realize that there are some Republicans with ethics. Stephen Spoonamore, founder and CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an IT policy and security firm, has stepped forward to help an anonymous whistleblower prove that professional slime mold impersonators and cybervote machine manufacturers Diebold improperly interfered in Georgia's 2002 elections.

So we now know we have fucking Diebold to thank for that ambulatory turd, Saxby Chambliss. In case you didn't know, Chambliss prides himself on holding up monies to combat AIDS in Africa, as Cernig points out over on newshoggers. He also doesn't care much for SCHIP, The Endangered Species Act, the fight against global warming, women, life (except for "unborn children," i.e., fetii), environmentalism, science, civil rights, taxes for the rich, bankruptcy for the poor, education (except for school prayer), or pretty much anything except prisons and the death penalty.

In heartening news today, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki announced his support for Barack Obama's plan for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. In even more heartening news, Chimpy McDumbfuck's pathetic minions sent the news about Maliki's support to the press &mdash by mistake. In even more heartening news, Jowly McGrumpypants (thanks, Maru!) camp issued a succinct evaluation of this news: We're fucked, they said, which makes us really happy, since Gramps McSnarly is the last person to help this poor nation get back on her feet. Shoot, he's having trouble keeping his own. And, he's definitely showing signs of dementia or otherwise eroding mental function, not that his mental function was much to brag about in the first place.

It's also nice to know that McCain is exhibiting a level of fiscal stupidity that reinforces our suspicions about his dysfunction. And to no one's surprise, McCain's elderly, probably racist and certainly ill-informed supporters are displaying a lack of enthusiasm usually reserved for Matlock reruns. Really? It must rub salt in the wound to hear that art collectors believe McGrumpypants artwork is worth nothing, while Obama artwork is selling for tens of thousands of dollars, eh, McJowly? Of course, you'd have to be more than slightly off to find portraits of CottageCheesyJowls McSnarlfester remotely exciting, but hey.

McAncient's inability to keep his festering gob shut may have caused security problems for Obama: Blabberjowls McScarface apparently announced to the press that Obama is expected to be in Iraq this weekend. Hopefully, he'll be greeted with flowers by an adoring population, since he's the only candidate to espouse a definite timeline for the withdrawal of our troops. Of course, when someone else blabbed about a person being in Iraq, McCain was simply furious. But then, the subject of the blabment was his son, not his political rival.

The good news is coming thick and fast today: Multimillionaire whiner Phil Gramm, who just last week told us (before Starbucks announced it was closing a bunch of stores and laying off staff) that we were whiners suffering from a "mental recession," has stepped down from McAncient's campaign. Good. Goodbye, and good riddance, Phil. And quit whining.

Meanwhile, the Mighty Munchkin of Justice has decided to investigate Felon McChimperson and Snarly McCrashcart's minions' surveillance of harmless peace activists and expending much-needed taxpayer money on police officers to do so, instead of fighting crime. But then again, why bother to fight crime when you can turn prisons into a high-paying privatized industry, with the citizen taxpayers doing all the paying.

This is what happens when we elect Democrats, people. Sure, it's going slowly, slower than many of us would like. But let's not forget that the past eight years has been nothing but incompetence, fraud, lies, cheating, hypocrisy, deceit, and the tearing down of this great country. It's gonna take a while to fix the mess, and if we're going to try to hold anyone accountable, it must be done in a way that they cannot overturn. And that takes a little time.

For those who don't want to click the above link, it's to a Washington Post story about the current, Democratic governor of Maryland, who has reversed his Republican predecessor's policy of having the State Police conduct surveillance of peace activists and anti-death penalty protestors. What a waste of taxpayer money!

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Politics: Too Funny

Pass it on. This is just too good to resist!



Spread the word!

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

2008 Elections: Who ARE These People, Anyway?

As the Democratic nomination contest drags on endlessly, we find several troubling events on the horizon. For example, a group named Women's Voices Women Vote has been engaging in dubious shenanigans that apparently seem designed to disenfranchise Black American voters in the southern states. The group claims that the misleading robocalls they made were part of an effort to register women voters. Read for yourself and see what you think.

Meanwhile, another "women's" group, the WomenCount PAC recently ran a large, expensive ad in USA Toady titled Not So Fast. See for yourself:

Click to embiggen

Pretty cheeky, eh? We understand about the revolting levels of sexism that have surfaced thanks to Senator Clinton's campaign. Every sexist pig that ever lived, breathed, or crawled felt obliged to comment on the Senator's clothes, hair, laugh, tits, totally irrelevant shit.

But, guess what? Hillary Clinton does NOT speak for all of us. She probably doesn't even speak for half of us. All the women we know support Barack Obama. Now, you may say, "Well, PCat, that's obviously a self-selecting group, after all, as an Obama supporter, clearly you choose to hang out with other Obama supporters." To which we say, "Balderdash." We continued to support Clinton long after our friends, male and female, independent, Democratic, and Republican, had come out for Obama.

It caused a few strained relationships, initially. But as more and more of our friends &mdash even the staunch Republican "never voted for a Democrat in my life, and never will" types switched to the Obama camp, we were finally forced to read the guy's books and Web site and reconsider our support for Clinton.

We inched into that camp toenail by toenail, until La Clinton gave us a huge kick in the tush with her comments about educated "elitists," "working, hardworking white Americans," and the like.

Now we find all kinds of people popping up telling us that Clinton is the only voice that speaks for all women. We thought the whole idea behind the feminist movement was, women have their own fucking voices. They don't need anyone to speak for them. And they don't need to favour someone based only on their gender.

La Casa de Los Gatos declares unequivocally that La Clinton does not speak for us. Barack Obama speaks for us. Nothing could be further from our political positions and our personal preferences than La Clinton, with the exception, of course, of John McInsane.

Thanks to diarist RemarkablyChanel at DailyKos, we find that the WomenCount PAC is funded by Hillary Clinton's best bud, Suzie Tompkins Buell of San Francisco, former CEO of Esprit. Wikipedia includes this little tidbit about Tompkins Buell:
Esprit de Corp. was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have illegally interrogated and intimidated $2-an-hour Chinese workers, and then to have shut down a factory to keep them from unionizing.[9] The Department of Labor found that an Esprit contractor doctored payroll records and refused to pay overtime.[10]
Why would Hillary want to be best friends with such an exploiter of poor working women? How feminist is that?

We took great exception to the ad, and to Ms. Buell's new pet project for her friend Hillary. Should you care to tell these people just what you think of them, you can reach them at womencountpac@gmail.com.

The ad signs off with "We want Hillary to stay in this race until every vote is cast, every vote is counted, and we know that our voices are heard." Well, given how incompetently Hillary has run her campaign, y'all better be prepared to fork out more money to her if you want her to stay in. She's already over $20 million in debt. But more importantly, what is this "every vote is counted" business? It seems to imply that every vote in Michigan and Florida, the two states that have been punished for pushing their primaries up before the dates established by the Democratic Party, must be allocated to Hillary. Well, that just won't do, ladies.

When Hillary was winning, she said those states didn't count. She signed a pledge that the delegates from those states would not be seated. Apparently, her signature was only valid until she discovered she was losing.



We do not want a proven liar and promise breaker representing us. We've had one of those for nearly eight years, and look at the mess he created. Once you lie to us, once you break one promise you made, you've lost our trust. If you can tell one lie, you can tell 935. The last 935 lies told by Gee Dumbya and his cronies mired us in a civil war, killed 4,000 of our country's citizens (and more, and counting), and plunged our wealthy nation into a severe recession.

Do we really need more of that?

Any promises that Senator Clinton makes on the campaign trail cannot be trusted. If she breaks one promise, she can break another. She promised that Michigan and Florida would be punished by being stripped of 100% of their delegates if they moved their primary dates before a date set by the Democratic Party. They moved those dates, and the Party moved to punish them. At the time she said nothing.

Today because she's losing the contest, she wants those votes to count? What kind of rubbish is that?

If any of you are wondering why the Superdelegates don't move at once to end this ludicrous, long-drawn out campaign, it's because Mrs. Clinton indulges in these types of behaviours. She promises the moon to the supers, and many of these people have personal friendships with her and want to believe her, or are afraid to act against her because of her known predilection for retaliation.

Then she breaks her word, breaks her promise, brings in some of her personal friends like Suzie Tompkins Buell and Haim Saban, who are big money donors to the Democratic Party, and uses them against the party. She gets Ms. Buell to take out ads like this which will inflame the already troubled Clinton supporters who (rightly) believe that their candidate has been subjected to unacceptable levels of sexism. Instead of accepting that the battle is over and moving to force the Old Boys' Network to change its sexist ways, thus benefitting all women in the party, Clinton is working to ensure that she delegitimizes the current front-runner. She convinces her big-money pals to put the squeeze on Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

We hold no brief for Pelosi, with whom we have our own slew of problems. But attempting to pressure party leaders by threatening them with money to force them to line up behind you is so unethical as to border on the illegal.

Sending out your wealthy friends to buy superdelegate votes for you is unethical. Senator Clinton, the voice of the people is the deciding factor in the nomination. Not the money your rich friends can throw around.

You really have no respect for the "little people," do you, Senator?

Today, Barack Obama's number of pledged delegates will reach over the 50 per cent point. That makes it mathematically impossible for you to win this contest. We know you won't listen to the voices asking you to step down now, so we won't waste our breath. But at this point, you're nearly 200 delegates (pledged and Super) behind, and there are fewer than 200 Superdelegates left to be allocated.

You won't win this. You won't even catch up. You're like a child who has eaten too much chocolate before bedtime, screaming and fighting and throwing tantrums. These are all excellent qualities in a litigator, Mrs. Clinton. They are not Presidential qualities. Here's hoping that 2012 is an even bigger bust for you than 2008 has been.

Instead of working on the fears of the women who support you, how about ensuring that women's voices really are heard? How about starting a foundation for women to ensure that more of them are elected to positions of power in the party? How about mentoring some of the wonderful young women who are working in the ranks of the Democratic Party, helping to shape their political careers?

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Monday, May 19, 2008

2008 Elections: The Bad

Connie Schultz, who writes for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recently put up this article.

Men shouldn’t be telling Hilary Clinton to quit the race
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Connie Schultz
Plain Dealer Columnist

Someone tell me, please, how grown men in 2008 can believe it’s their right - their duty, even - to tell a woman when she should rein in her ambition and go home.

Male columnists, male politicians, male talking heads, male “surrogates” - all of them harrumphing that it’s time for Hillary Clinton to stop it, just stop it, with all this talk of being president.

Who cares if the race is close? So what if millions of Americans believe their yet-to-be-cast votes matter? Voters, schmoters. When was this ever about them?

Hillary Clinton, they insist, must quit.

Well, boys, you’d better sit down for this one: This is no longer the playground of your youth. The girls aren’t sitting in the stands keeping score and cheering whenever you’re at bat. In fact, the girls aren’t girls at all anymore. We’re all grown up, and we are so done with this notion that the trajectory of our lives must end at the border of your comfort zone.

Hillary Clinton marched across that border miles ago, and she is not about to surrender. Not now, anyway, and not ever because you said so. And if you’ve got anything besides hubris knocking around in those heads of yours, you will take note of the potential backfire in your volley.

“OK, now I’m mad,” a friend, Karen, told me last week. “Who do they think they are?”

She supports Barack Obama, but the thought of finger-wagging men telling a woman what to do really set her off. She might change her vote, and anyone reading some of the comments on newspapers’ Web sites and blogs knows she’s not alone.

I’m thinkin’ that’s not where you fellas were going with this one. But I also think I can help.

The problem here is that you don’t understand the tenacity of American women.
It’s not all your fault. Your history books were full of tales of manly men beating each other up and then taking the livestock and womenfolk as prizes. Frankly, you were misled.

You didn’t learn about how women risked their lives birthing babies in open fields and harboring escaped slaves on their flight to freedom. You probably didn’t spend much time on how Alice Paul and her fellow suffragettes were tortured in prison because they dared to picket for the right to vote.

And chances are you’ve never cracked the spine of the book “Women’s Letters: America From the Revolutionary War to the Present” by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. If you had, you would have seen the letter Abigail Grant wrote to her husband, Aszariah, in 1776 after she found out he had been less than heroic in the battle at Bunker Hill.

“Loving Husband,” her note began. “I hear by Capt Wm Riley news that makes me very Sorry for he Says you proved a Grand Coward when the fight was at Bunkers hill & in your Surprise he reports that you threw away your Cartridges So as to escape going into the Battle. . . . [I]f you are afraid pray own the truth & come home & take care of our Children & I will be Glad to Come & take your place, & never will be Called a Coward, neither will I throw away one Cartridge but exert myself bravely in so good a Cause.”

See, that’s the thing. You’ve got to remember that there’s a bit of Abigail Grant in a whole lot of us women. Granted, we hide it well. Most women are all fervor and no fanfare, running everything from companies and campaigns to families and food drives without so much as a plaque with their names on it at the end of it all.

We’re full of fight, too, which is the only way we got the vote, the pill and the right to own property, as opposed to being property. We don’t beat our breasts and brag about this, though, which appears to be part of the problem. Some men apparently still confuse humility with acquiescence, and then they think we need their permission to make a difference.

One mile at a time, Hillary Clinton is clearing a new road, taking hits for the rest of us along the way.

“It feels so personal,” another friend, Mary, told me. “Whenever I hear men bash Hillary, it feels like they’re attacking me.”

See, guys, that’s not good.

Remember: Abigail Grant lives.
We here at La Casa de Los Gatos have never felt this nomination battle was about men telling Hillary Clinton to quit the race. There are plenty of women doing the same.

A lot of nasty misogyny has been directed at Clinton, and there's no excuse for that. It made us support her for longer than most of our friends. We felt it was not OK to reward the anti-feminist and misogynist contingent of the electorate.

But, as we keep saying, we didn't "fall in love" with Obama. In fact, we steadfastly resisted finding out about him or gravitating towards him because he was an unknown, young, new on the scene, and didn't have anything like the vaunted Clinton machine at his command. We were certain he would be crushed outright. Clinton, herself, drove us away. Again and again, she made comments that showed us she outright despised and disparaged us. She permitted her surrogates and allies to disparage, mock, and publicly abuse us. Even as she sent us daily emails requesting our money.

We understand that a lot of women continue to support her, and we empathize with them. We, too, had hoped to see the first female President take office in our lifetime. But given her campaign, we have been forced to conclude that she is not the right candidate. History has seen many powerful female leaders. The Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi comes to mind, as does Eva Peron, Jiang Qing, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Cory Aquino. None of those women would be our first choice for President, although all of them were capable (capable of what, we'd prefer not to say). We'd rather have an Aung San Suu Kyi, or a Galyani Vadhana or a Shirin Fozdar for a leader &mdash a woman of peace, committed to feminist issues and improving the lives of the poor.

Clinton is not a woman in that mold. The race is over, Obama won, and for Clinton to continue campaigning is just damaging her own legacy, what's left of it. Or so we wrote and told Ms. Schultz.

Regarding your article on men telling Hillary Clinton to quit

You seem to be overlooking the fact that a great many women are ALSO telling her to quit.

Birthing babies is something any animal can do. It doesn't confer any judgment, discretion, wisdom, or intelligence on the birther. The fact of the matter is, Clinton is not a feminist. She is using feminist women to garner votes for herself, but had no compunctions about viciously attacking the women her husband slept with. Is it their fault that her husband couldn't keep his pants zipped?

She's taken money from domestic abuser Chris Albrecht of HBO. A few minutes' research would have told you that Chris Albrecht was arrested for beating his girlfriend in public. I would have thought a feminist would have returned his money immediately.

She touts her husband's experience as her own. "35 years," she says. A good 16 of those years were spent as First Lady of the elected president, or on the corporate board of Directors of WalMart, an organization that has done a great deal of woman-oppressing, not to mention worker-oppressing and union-busting.

But the real issue is that Clinton, for all that she is tough and tenacious, is a deeply flawed candidate. Instead of working with fellow Democrats to pass promised health care legislation while she was First Lady, she set up a war room to crush alternative views of health care, thereby ensuring that we sit here over a decade later with worse health care than before she made her efforts. Her casual remark about "obliterating" a nation of 70 million innocent people deeply disgusts those of us who are not bloodthirsty warmongers. Her comment about having the support of "working, hardworking, white Americans" could not possibly have endeared her to Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. She has a tin ear.

As a loyal supporter of hers for two decades, I fully expected her to take the nomination. She proved, through her dreadful campaign, that she lacks the organizational skills and temperament to be President. Starting with the largest war chest of all the delegates, the best name recognition, and 200 superdelegates in her pocket, she limps to the finish line over $20 million in debt, with her donors tapped out financially, with fewer states, fewer popular votes, fewer pledged delegates, and fewer superdelegates. How am I to trust her with the keys to the treasury? She was beaten by a nobody!

It is very disingenuous of you to make this nomination battle out to be one between men and women, or feminists and nonfeminists. This is a battle for the future of a rapidly sinking nation. You owe it to your readers to frame the issues honestly.

Thank you.
Should you care to write Ms. Schultz, you can reach her at cschultz@plaind.com.

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

2008 Elections: Paranoia Sets In


Yaknow, the Republicans, for the past couple of decades, have shown that they march in lockstep to promote the interests of a small core of wealthy, greedy elite.

Note to "low-information" people: The real elite are the CEOs pulling down salaries of $10m and up per year, with personal fortunes in the hundred millions and billions. Yaknow, people like, oh, Cindy McCain, Dick Cheney, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ken Lay, the Bush family.

We've seen them pander to the Religious Right to pull poor and working-class voters to the polls to vote against their own interest and for the wealthy. We've seen them toss the Religious Right under the bus once they achieved their aim.

Let's face it, the Capital Gains tax benefits only those who have large amounts of capital. If all you have to leave to your kids is the house or the family farm or a couple of million in investments, you don't benefit from repealing the Capital Gains tax. But Cindy McCain benefits a hella lot. And your schools, parks, libraries, roads, bridges, military, hospitals, colleges, dams, levees, and other civil institutions suffer from lack of funding. Which, if your federal, state, and city governments want to keep providing services for you, must be funded somehow. So if Cindy McCain doesn't pay Capital Gains tax, the government cuts the budget for maintenance of, say, the federal highways. Or gives your city or state less money for your 'flu shots. Or your kid, who serves in the military, gets inferior equipment.

It's gotta come from somewhere, right?

So we all know the Republicans have always had this formidable machine, because the Treasury is full of taxpayer dollars and these wealthy, greedy scumballs want to keep siphoning it off. The Dubya years have been the worst illustration of that, as war profiteers and ruthless contractors won no-bid contracts by bribing their friends in the Republican Congress (think Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, people like that). Well, the election's got everyone in a fever, and we're taking our eye off the ball again, people. We're looking at pathetic old John McCain and thinking, "No way in hell is that guy gonna win this thing. Shoot, some days he needs GPS just to find his ass with both hands, a flashlight, and ass-labelled arrows everywhere."

Could be, could be. But what will the immensely powerful and greedy wealthy people do to ensure that our tax dollars keep flowing towards their pockets? Well, one of the remaining candidates has been funded by corporate bigwigs from the charming girlfriend-beater Chris Albrecht (how feminist is that?) to Vinod Gupta, CEO of Info U.S.A. A look at the size of donations handed to Senator Clinton by these hard-headed businessmen tells us a lot right off the bat. People like them are not known for giving money to anybody without expecting something in return. If they done paid for the lady's ticket, she's gonna have to dance with 'em.


Then there's the Other Candidate. Brian told us yesterday that he found Barack Obama before we did. It's true. If not for Bri we'd probably be sitting around going Bar-who? Thanks, Bri.

So there's Barack Obama. He's in the home stretch now, heading for the victory. He has more popular votes than Senator Clinton, more pledged delegates, and more superdelegates. Today a crowd of 75,000 or more turned out to hear him speak in Oregon. He's not beholden to the powerful wealthy and greedy cabal. His fundraising has come from average yobs like us, who send a couple of hundred as they can afford it. 1.5 million small donors funded Obama's campaign.

He's the only candidate of the three in the running who is not owned by the cabal. And he needs every voter, and every vote. Obama and his campaign people have always been pretty respectful of the Clintons, despite Hillary's "kneecapping," "kitchen sink" strategy, and "nuclear strategy." And Obama has told his campaign folks and the world that he is reaching out to Clinton's supporters.

Clinton has displayed no such comity. She is still attempting to delegitimize Obama's success. But what really gets our paranoia chemicals going is, the cabal, with its dirty tricks, its Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves and droves of followers who don't recognize that they are being used and played and tossed aside when the party's over, is undoubtedly planning to use more dirty tricks to hold on to power.

Why not? It's served them well since Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.

So while bumbling around on the InnerTubes today, we found this:
IMPORTANT
This information is not to be posted to any of our usual forums and should be emailed only to people you know personally andcompletely trust.

Here is the updated game plan.

Step one: Register a bunch of user accounts on lefty blogs.

*Create false identities equally divided between Obama and Clinton supporters. Initially play it cool. Don't make more than two accounts per blog one for each candidate. Too many accounts from the same ip and you will be outed as a sock puppet. Dont do anything drastic that would get you banned. Lurk for a while
at first so you can learn how they talk. Liberals are like a different species. Dont start an all out flame war right away begin with small insults.

The idea is to poison the tone of discussion but do it so slowly that they dont realize where its coming from. You want the liberal sheep to get caught up in it and start doing our work for us.

Step three: As the Democ-rat nomination narrows in on a candidate crank up the heat. The loser ident should start calling for a voter boycott on the winner. You may not be able to peal off voters to our side but demotivating them so they stay home is almost as good.

SPREAD THE WARNING
Now, there are several sites (to which we won't link, but you probably know they exist) that claim to be peopled by supporters of Clinton. Most of them don't have many individual posters or commenters. We've been looking at them periodically, just because we're paranoid.

We've noticed a trend: One or two strong posters, more articulate than the rest, start by praising Clinton and downplaying Obama. That's to be expected. Everyone has a candidate they support and it's a bitter disappointment when one's chosen candidate doesn't win.

But these people then go on to suggest various ways in which the disaffected supporters can protest the nomination of the other candidate. And to no one's great surprise, all these different ways redound to the benefit of the Republicans.

Suggestions are made to shower superdelegates with email. Vicious attacks on Democrats and Democratic politicians, and even the small-d democratic process. The disaffected are urged to vote for McCain, harrass Obama supporters, flood their legislators with mail and calls, turn to Faux News for information and shun all other sources.

What do you think? Sounds pretty fishy to me.

So once again, we urge all our friends, Democrat and Republican alike, not to fall for this type of dirty politicking. Fight fair. Examine each candidate's policies. Don't be swayed by Faux Noise or dubious sources like WingNut Daily. Consider carefully what your own interests are and who best represents them. Don't consider not voting. Vote for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or Nader or Barr or Clinton or Obama or McCain, but don't give up your hard-earned right to vote. Don't sit out this election. Your country stands at a crossroads. She needs every single individual to turn out and do something.

Don't consider violence or harrassment. Consider your favoured candidate and your alternative candidate, and vote. And consider this: the economy is in the pits. The dollar is in the pits. The climb out of those pits is going to be long and hard. Set aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and consider the fate of the nation, and your children, and your children's children. We cannot afford another war. We cannot even afford the two we're currently fighting.

Which candidate will give us peace, and help us rebuild the economy, and leave our nation a better place for all of us? We're not urging you to support any particular candidate. We are, however, speaking against John McCain because we do not think he has a grasp of the enormous issues facing us. We do not think, if he is elected, he has the temperament and the capacity to pull the entire nation out of the quagmire. Any of the other candidates would be preferable.

So choose carefully, and wisely, and well. Because your choice will affect not just you, your family, your friends. It will affect your entire nation, and the citizens of many other nations.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Politics: Rep. John Conyers Offers


A high-quality butt-kicking to that ambulatory slimeball KKKarl Rove.

Will it happen?

We here at this blog, your hosts at La Casa de Los Gatos, are so thrilled by this eventuality that we force ourselves to blog with an icepack on our repro bits as we swelter in the 100-degree temperature.

Dayumn, Rep. Conyers. May we offer you a pair of hobnailed boots? Or, better yet, spike-soled shoes? We could rub a little Scotch bonnet over the spikes first. In the interest of an unique experience, y'unnerstand.

Let's hope this causes the fetid little porker to squeal on everyone else in the chain of command at the Bush-Cheney Misadministration.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

2008 Elections: Our Choices


The likely nominee, who just received the endorsement of our former choice for nominee:

The man who has kept his eye on the prize, which is the redemption of this nation, fixing everything that's broken, bringing back pride and dignity to working people, and making the pledge to cut poverty by half by the end of the next decade.


A woman who has her faults but also has many great qualities, among them intelligence, tenacity, toughness, the willingness and the ability to fight for what she wants, and a genuine commitment to social justice issues.




Or, the ghastly zombie who fills us all with loathing and horror, celebrating his 69th birthday with the Worst President in American history as a great city drowned and died.


We must never take our eyes off the prize, people. No matter what happens, a Democrat must sit in the White House next year so that we can begin the long, painful task of rescuing our nation from the pits into which Clueless George and his cabal of crooks and thugs has flung it.

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Politics: Oh Pleez Oh Pleez Oh Pleez Oh Pleez


Can it be? Will the Democrats finally get up on their hind legs and subpoena that worthless fat turd and shit-impersonator (he'd need a couple of eons of evolution to be able to impersonate humans) KKKarl Rove, and throw his pasty, flabby, tuchus in jail if he fails to comply?

Pleez Mr. Conyers, Pleez Oh Pleez Oh Pleez!

The Birmingham News is reporting in a breaking story today that the Democrats have rejected Rove's offer to flip them off and refuse to testify in person about his role in the Justice Department scandal regarding the firing of attorneys tasked with enforcing the nation's laws, and in the unethical prosecution and imprisonment of former Governor Don Siegelman.

If you have a religious belief, please light a candle/sacrifice a relative/braid flowers in your hair and dance naked around the garden in the moonlight or whatever it is your particular religion prescribes. This vile slimebot must be forced to testify, then prosecuted and jailed for his role in corrupting the very meaning of justice.

If you don't have a religious belief, or just want to express yourself differently, blog the issue, write Conyers and thank him, write your Rep. and thank them for taking this belated and long-awaited stand, or urge them to vote with Conyers to hold Rove responsible. Here is a PDF copy of the letter Conyers sent to the slimebag and his attorney. Read it and dance around the house with your underwear on your head. But draw the blinds first. There's a limit to the tolerance of neighbours and passers-by.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

2008 Elections: The Democratic Party's Nominee



In his own words:
My job, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, isn’t to scold people for their lack of ideological purity. It’s to persuade as many people as I can, across the ideological spectrum, that my vision of the future is compatible with their values, and can make their lives a little bit better. Thus, while I may favor common-sense gun control laws, that doesn’t keep me from reaching out to NRA members who are worried about their lack of health insurance. I favor affirmative action, but I’m still going after the votes of white union members who oppose affirmative action, because I think I can convince them that it’s Bush’s economic agenda, and not affirmative action, that is eroding their job security and stagnating their wages. And while I may object to the misogyny and materialism of much of rap culture, I’m still going to spend the time reaching out to a hip-hop generation in search of a future.

In other words, I believe that politics in any democracy is a game of addition, not subtraction. And I believe deeply enough in the decency of the American people to think that progressives can build a winning majority in this country, so long as we’re not afraid to speak the truth, and so long as we don’t write off big chunks of the electorate just because they don’t agree with us on every issue.
Found while perambulating around DailyKos. These words were spoken in 2003, as part of an interview.

This is what President Obama's message is: let us reach out to each other. There will always be things about each other that we don't like or don't agree with. But together, we can tackle the things that really hurt us. Together, we can change them and make them better. For ourselves, our loved ones, our nation.

Politics in a democracy is a game of addition, not subraction. Yes!

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2008 Elections: Working, Hard-Working


Today's Clinton gaffe: working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.

Hillary Clinton, in an interview with USA Toady, said those words. What popped into your head when you heard them?

Working=hard-working Americans=white Americans. That's the equivalence you're supposed to see. That feeds into every stereotype white America has been fed about non-white America.

Just when you think Clinton has been beaten down and you start to feel a little sympathy for that tough and seasoned fighter, she shows you that it ain't so much "tough and seasoned" as "willing to cock-punch you while you're about to extend a hand to help her out of the pit."

So now those of us who are not white &mdash Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Black, biracial &mdash just don't count, is that it? Because we don't represent significant voting muscle in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries? Or what?

We don't work hard? Tell that to the Chinese who came to America to work on the railroads and stayed to start their own businesses because their children could not get hired despite excellent educations. Tell that to the Latinos y Latinas who pick your lettuce and tomatoes and make your wine and build your houses and clean your house and take care of your children. The Korean restaurauteurs and grocery-store owners. The Indian gas-station owners (like Mahatma Gandhi, remember that, Hillary?) and the Pakistanis who work at the 7-11s and the South Asians who form the backbone of the engineering and software industries. The African-American teachers and construction workers and office employees who have to work three jobs to put food on the table.

Coming from a woman who has lived in comparative wealth all her life, and sucked off the government teat one way or another for, as she reminds us, 35 years, that's damned insulting.

We're not going to fall for this tactic of turning this into white versus nonwhite people, Hillary. You persist in resorting to the lowest and most despicable tactics, but not this time. It's not going to work.

As a hardworking nonwhite person, ThePoliticalCat joins with hardworking white and nonwhite people everywhere to condemn these racist, divisive, contemptible words and tactics.

And, finally, a white member of La Casa de Los Gatos asks, "Hey, Hillary! What about all the nonhardworking white folks? Who's gonna speak for the slackers around here?"

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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

2008 Elections: Helen Clark and New Zealanders Respond To Senator Clinton

Ward Sutton's Sutton Impact Hillarytoon

We actually went looking for some response to Clinton's recent nasty remark about Helen Clark, the PM of New Zealand. It's bad enough that Clinton is so lacking in insight and self-reflection that she thinks a misogynistic remark about a fellow female politician is "a joke." What's even worse is that the so-called joke is distinctly unfunny, along the lines of "Hillary nutcrackers" that are sold by purveyors of cheap gimmickry.

Worst of all, Clinton can't even get her facts straight. She referred to Ms. Clark as "the former Prime Minister." Ms. Clark, a former lecturer at the University of Auckland, is a well-respected and popular feminist and intellectual. She is currently serving her third term as PM of New Zealand.

Has Clinton apologized for her stupid remark? Not to the best of our knowledge. But then again, this is the same woman who thought it was "funny" and "a joke" to refer to Mahatma Gandhi as the proprietor of a gas station in St. Louis.

Helen Clark, fortunately, has a wry wit and sense of humour. She chose not to be offended by Mrs. Clinton's remarks, stating only, in reference to Mrs. Clinton's husband, the ex-U.S. president:
"As a current prime minister I spoke with him as a former US president in London only two weeks ago," she said.
Perhaps Mrs. Clinton should speak with her own husband more often, so that she does not "misspeak" on the campaign trail. Or perhaps her husband's right, and she's too old at 60 to be anything but forgetful at 11 pm.

As far as New Zealand's Dominion Post is concerned, the joke's on Hillary.
Wonder if she's going to "misspeak" at 3 a.m. as she did at 11 p.m.?

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Saturday, May 03, 2008

2008 Elections: What It Is

La Casa de Los Gatos don't know what it is about Barack Obama. We just know that his speeches fill us with, yes, hope. We're sick and fucking tired of three decades of hopelessness, watching as jobs disappear, factories shut down, economic bubbles appear and just as rapidly disappear. We like policy details, but before we can bring our avoidant minds and bitterly disappointed hearts to even examine policy details, we first need to feel like somebody gives a fuck.

We haven't felt that since the Kennedys. And Jimmy Carter. Everything in between has been trickle-down jellybean etiquette, to quote Zappa. Crooks, thieves, thugs, and liars, looking to siphon our pockets for every penny. We haven't felt the faintest thread of hope for years.

Even mi gatos listen in rapt attention when Barack speaks (could be because we have the speakers turned way up, and they lack opposable thumbs). What-the-fuck-ever.

Listen to this and tell us how it makes you feel.



Barack my world, Senator Obama.

And yes, you can bet your sweet bippy the day after he's elected, we intend to hold his feet to the fire. But first we gotta get him elected.

Because the two cyborgs he's running against? They got no feet to hold to the fire, just wheels. And wheels don't feel.

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Friday, April 25, 2008

2008 Elections: The Tide is Turning, Alright


Ever since Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primaries by a whole 9.2 points &mdash after being slated to win by over 26 points in that state &mdash La Casa de Los Gatos has been receiving, on average, two or more emails each day from her (her campaign, really) announcing that the tide has turned and would we please give them money.

Our regular readers know she's shit outa luck there, because we have no money. Having been painfully unemployed for close to six months now, with no job offers on the horizon, we don't have a shekel to spare. Not that we'd give her our hard-earned moolah if we had any.

Not because we hate her, or even dislike her, or have animosity of any kind towards her. No, we would not give her a penny because we're fiscal conservatives and we don't like how she's spending her money and how she's accounting for it.

See, we've been following the money information in this campaign fairly closely. The economy is in the crapper, and we want a leader who knows what the economy is about and how to rescue it. Make no mistake, without the money, we don't get no honey. What we mean by that is, the country is at a pivotal point here. The economy is pretty wrecked. We've been losing jobs for eight years. Inflation, rising food prices, peak oil, joblessness, tight credit, a contracting job and housing market, a broken health and welfare system, and a decaying infrastructure must all be dealt with and dealt with immediately.

Failure to deal with these, the nuts and bolts of the nation, will severely restrict our ability to defend ourself, to cope with the threats of an increasingly dangerous world, to negotiate favourable treaties political and economic, to secure our strategic global interests.

Even as we writhe through the throes of finding our next leader, the current gang of thieves, crooks, and liars is planning &mdash and enacting &mdash steps to keep us mired in endless war which drains our resources further while ensuring that whatever we have goes straight into the pockets of profiteers, bypassing broken sewers, bridges, hospitals, and people.

Opening up a new front in an already two-pronged war that we are losing by every imaginable count only guarantees that whoever takes the helm will have to spend more time and resources dealing with the extrication from all three fronts than they can possibly spend on issues domestic, however pressing.

We believe that the Republican Party and the current crooks in power saw the results of the 2006 elections and came to the conclusion that the populace was not going to let them take power again in 2008. In order to guarantee maximum profits for the corporate swine at the top, they worked hard to engineer a situation in which external issues would have a higher priority than domestic issues while simultaneously launching an all-out media blitz on the election process. They selected which candidates they wanted &mdash or tried to, anyway, although the voting public refused to go with Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, their two preferred choices.

Now they're stuck with John McCain, whom they've never really liked, but they think they can control. And there's plenty of baggage there that is being covered up. His foul temper, his public assaults on colleagues, his treatment of his wife, his fondness for the high life, his cooperation with his captors as a PoW, his current psychiatric and medical records, his adulterous behaviour, his shameful treatment of his first wife. And no one's talking about the fact that 25 per cent of Pennsylvania's Republicans voted for two other Republican candidates rather than McCain, the party's nominee.

So, we believe the crooks in charge have made a pact with Hillary Clinton: if she will "bloody up" the candidate who appeared out of nowhere to destroy her shot at the current nomination, they will give her something in return. And they have. To see Richard Mellon Scaife, that hateful, crooked, rotten, nasty man, sit down with a Democratic candidate could only feed our suspicions. He's never, ever had one impartial word for the Democratic party and its candidates. We don't ask for a positive word. Merely an impartial word. His entire life, his fortune, his career have been spent to wreck any hope of social justice, fairness, in short, democracy. If ever a man was dedicated to the concepts of plutocracy and oligarchy, that man would be Richard Mellon Scaife.

For him to be sitting down with Hillary Clinton can only mean that he's buying and she's accepted his offer to buy. She won't win the 2008 elections if she manages to destroy Obama. What she will win, though, is the promise of competing in the 2012 elections, when McCain, already dangerously unstable, will probably have to step down. She might also win sufficient money to pay off her huge campaign debt.

And that's where the fiscal information comes in. Over the past four months, we've seen several reports that Barack Obama is outraising Hillary Clinton by substantial amounts. As recently as April 20th, the NYT carried a piece by Michael Luo outlining the plight of the Clinton campaign as its fabled fundraising juggernaut stumbled in the face of Obama's multitude of small donors. Caveat: Login required.

Now we hear that Hillary Clinton, in the wake of her poor showing in Pennsylvania &mdash winning by 9.x points when you've been predicted to win by 26 for months is a poor showing, and until the day the results were announced every worthless "pundit" who could draw breath was predicting that she would need a double-digit win to have a prayer of viability in the race &mdash has raised $10 million in 24 hours.

We don't care to do the math to verify that claim. We find it suspicious for several reasons, primarily that our visits to her site during that 24-hour period indicated much lower figures. Also, money pledged is not money in hand.

But the main reason we don't find her claims impressive is: according to our calculations, she owes at least $15.3 million in campaign debt. Most of this money is owed to the vendors, usually small businesses, who were kind enough to extend her credit for the staging of her campaign. According to Novakula, Clinton owes unionbuster Mark Penn between $2.5 and $3.1 million. Clinton's total debt includes a personal loan of $5 million that Clinton made to her campaign, that the Boston Globe reports has not been properly declared in her FEC filings.

Clinton claims that the $5 million she loaned to her campaign represents her share of the assets of herself and her husband. However, given that her annual income for the past X years that she has been a Senator is slightly under $170,000, and her book fetched some $9 million, and DC is an expensive place to live (as is New York), we wonder just how she is calculating her share of their combined assets.

What all this boils down to is, Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner a year ago. How she got our email address was, we wrote to her campaign because we were proud of her and confident that she would emerge the nominee. A campaign that boasts of having ten million but owes $15 million is not, by our standards, a successful campaign.

Admittedly, Senator Clinton does not have to pay off her campaign debt until after the campaign is over. However, many small businesses have extended her credit. According to USA Toady, she plans to spend the funds she has raised not to pay down campaign debt but to continue to campaign. That's all well and good for her campaign. It's not so good for the little people who are struggling to stay afloat in an economy circling the toilet bowl.

The best thing she could do for herself, her party, her country, would be to step down now and pay off her campaign debts. After all, back when she pledged not to campaign in Florida and Michigan, she claimed those two states didn't count. Her top advisor, Harold Ickes, voted to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates. A significant proportion of the Democratic voters of Michigan preferred "uncommitted" to Hillary Clinton.

What that says to us is that Clinton is a tough candidate, attractive to many in the Democratic party. But she is not trustworthy or competent on fiscal matters. In the final analysis, we need a leader who can get us out of this mess we're in. All the continuing campaign does is make the voting public really tired. And run up huge campaign debts. And prolong the moment when the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama &mdash because Clinton doesn't have a prayer of getting enough delegates to win the nomination &mdash can concentrate on ensuring that we don't have a doddering hawkish ill-tempered unstable and dangerous fool in the White House. That is, other than the current [string of adjectives] fool.

Even the Wall St. Journal has stated that Obama is the Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, you fought a good fight. It's time to step down now.

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