Posts tagged hillary clinton

NY, Nannygate, and the Nanny State

October 24, 2008 · Filed under Basic Decency, NY State · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve never really been known as an advocate for small government — I have an expansive personal interpretation of the Constitution proper, I miss the days of the 70% tax bracket, I believe in heavy governmental regulation of the economy, and nationalization of all emergency institutions (including hospitals and healthcare generally).

However, it seems to me that, in recent years, the compulsion by some to attempt to eliminate all risk of death or generally-bad-things-happening in the lives of individuals has gone too far. This, of course, started in 2005, when Senator Clinton (D-NY) opened what the Times called a “morality war” on video games, essentially attempting to limit the amount of what she thought of as “inappropriate” content. She blamed things like school shootings and innapropriate behavior by children on games like Grand Theft Auto (the content of which, admittedly, I have problems with, but those problems are different in nature).

More recently, Carl Kruger, a NY state senator (also a Democrat, but that’s not to say that the shenanigans of the Republican Party hasn’t been far worse–it has), proposed a ban on listening to an iPod or talking on the phone while crossing the street. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to explain to anyone living in New York City — or any other city, for that matter — how absolutely ridiculous this is. I cross a street about every minute or two I’m walking in the city. If I’m talking on the phone with someone, that means I’ll have to interrupt my conversation with them — and maybe even hang up and call them back — every minute or so, simply to be a truly law-abiding citizen. This would also pose a problem for joggers, who often listen to music on multi-mile runs as a means of distracting themselves from the blinding pain in their legs/lungs/other parts of their body (as a cross-country runner and jogger, I speak from experience). If this law were passed, every one to two minutes, they would have to stop, unplug their headphones, cross the street, and then plug their headphones back in again.

Granted, according to one newssource, the state senator is proposing the legislation

in response to two recent pedestrian deaths in his district, including a 23-year-old man who was struck and killed last month while listening to his iPod on Avenue T and East 71st Street In Bergen Beach.

While, I’m sure, many people were saddened by the deaths of these two people, they did not die because an iPod and a crosswalk are a combination that will, more often than not, result in death. On the contrary, crossing the street while listening to an iPod is perfectly safe, and these people most likely died because someone was being a dumbfuck. Either they didn’t look both ways to cross the street, or the oncoming car couldn’t see the human being in front of them.

Comments (1) »

Learn You Some Math, Fool

May 4, 2008 · Filed under Basic Decency, Election 2008, Humor · Tagged , , ,

According to this website, Obama won Guam with “with 2,264 votes to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2,257 votes.” This is, apparently, “a 7-point difference.” It was also, for some reason, necessary to report that Obama “never trailed from the first vote on.” Besides the fact that this is shit reporting, it is also grossly inaccurate. One vote is never, and has never been, necessarily equal to a point (which is one percent) — and that fact remains the same in this situation. Obama won Guam by less than one point.

That is all. You may resume your reporting of unacceptable quality.

Comments (3) »

The “Values” Talk

April 22, 2008 · Filed under Basic Decency, Election 2008, LGBT Issues · Tagged , , ,

So I just came across a link (is that what they’re called?) on digg.com about…well, you can read for yourself, here’s the description of the article: “Hillary Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.”

According to Newsweek, this was one of “a handful” of endorsements that Senator Clinton received before the Pennsylvania primary (which is today, for those of you who have been paying attention). The paper (not Newsweek, the other one) claimed that Obama was too inexperienced and that his “recent comments about bitter voters living in small towns showed a lack of respect for middle-class values.”

Well, I know this post is supposed to be about Hillary, but allow me to discuss the many issues I have with this endorsement. So, besides the fact that the paper is endorsing Hillary, a person whom I despise in many, many ways and for many, many reasons, the paper is attacking Obama — just like every other news outlet — for “lack of respect” or “elitism” or some other nonsense like that.

But that’s not even the worst of it. Seriously, “middle-class values”? What are those exactly? As a middle-class American myself, I don’t count hating gay people (note the group called “Repent America” which harasses people at LGBT events), being a gun nut, or being so insecure about my religion that I feel the need to foist them upon others as being amongst my “values.” This is, just like every other the term “values” is employed by the right, another bastardization of the term.

read more | digg story

Comments (1) »

When Enough is Enough (That’s Now, By the Way)

April 22, 2008 · Filed under Election 2008, Internet · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

I feel like this video summarizes my feelings about the “Bittergate” nonsense that’s been seen everywhere on TV recently.

For those who don’t know what happened, Senator Obama was giving a speech in San Francisco when he said the following allegedly damning words:

it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So, perhaps some of that could have been taken by some as somewhat offensive. But, given the reaction of the American media, one would have thought that he had called someone a macaca, a cunt, or a gook. But has the entire American media painted John McCain as a misogynist or a racist? No. It hasn’t. In fact, neither what he called his wife nor how he referred to the Vietnamese was covered particularly widely. Many Americans haven’t even heard either of those stories. Yet, somehow, everyone has heard about Obama’s allegedly offensive remark.

This is the sort of frenzy that calls to mind the Onion News Network’s pieces on “bullshit issues” and “idgit voters“.

Granted, this election has been going on for so long that, perhaps, the news media have run out of actual issues to discuss (as perhaps revealed in the last Democratic primary debate). Yet, on the other hand, it seems to me that the American media have never really expressed much of an interest in educating American voters on the issues.

I’ll never forget watching the Iowa results come in and hearing the reporter say “Well, it looks like Obama came in a surprise first with 38%! And Senator Clinton came in last! Now let’s take a look at the Republican race!” Anyone else notice something missing? Maybe Senator John Edwards, who came in second?

But of course that doesn’t matter to them. John Edwards was “too far to the left“, I suppose, or “too anti-corporate and anti-corruption” or some bullshit to actually win. With the Pennsylvania primaries tomorrow, I’d like to take this chance to remind everyone that neither Obama nor Clinton are particularly reliable when it comes to monetary ethics and taking money from PACs; because, while Edwards “never took a time” (in his own words), Obama only stopped taking money two weeks before he started his campaign and Hillary has continually refused to stop.

digg story

Comments (1) »

A Few Good Reasons to Oppose Senator Clinton

April 14, 2008 · Filed under Election 2008 · Tagged , ,

Though it might be for others, Hillary’s gender is not amongst the many reasons I oppose her. I oppose her because her husband made many very nice promises when he was running for office, but once he got in he did a great job of breaking a lot of them. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, he is responsible for NAFTA, and he’s responsible for the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Why? Because he thought it would be easier to win again if he just caved in to the Republicans on key issues. I’m afraid we’re going to get the same thing from Hillary Clinton. It was only after John Edwards came out with his universal healthcare plan that Hillary proposed hers — which, for the record, is almost identical.

It was only after John Edwards and Barack Obama started hammering Hillary on the war in Iraq that she started to shift towards pulling the troops out, and she still hasn’t apologized for her Iraq war vote.

Let’s also not forget that the health care industry has given the most money to Hillary Clinton. That fought for health care during Bill Clinton’s administration is a moot point. What matters are the facts /now/, and the facts /now/ are that the Clintons are people who will pander to the right and the center in order to make it easier to win, and that Hillary has taken more lobbyist money than either Barack Obama or John Edwards.

The fact is that Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the corporate Democratic Party.

Which brings me to yet another reason why I oppose Hillary: she won’t win. Hillary is hated by the far-right in a way that no other Democratic candidate is hated. Right now, it’s looking increasingly likely that John McCain will win the Republican nomination. If he wins, the far-right won’t be thrilled about it, and they probably wouldn’t turn out to vote for him if he were running against John Edwards or Barack Obama. But if Hillary wins they will turn out to vote /against/ her, or, rather, /for/ John McCain. We can’t afford another eight, or even another four, more years of Republican leadership in this country.

As for Hillary having the “best policies on iraq, global warming, abortion, gay marriage and health care” let me say a few more things. All of the Democratic candidates have essentially the same positions on abortion: they support it.

When it comes to gay marriage, however, Hillary’s performance on the gay rights forum should be scrutinized. When confronted about her /OPPOSITION/ to gay marriage, Hillary ducked the question and said, “I prefer to think of it as being very strongly in favor of civil unions.” When Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Hillary Clinton for President committee, came to speak at Columbia on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, I went to see what he had to say. I asked him why Hillary opposes gay marriage and his response was this: “She just does.” I don’t oppose Hillary merely because she opposes gay marriage (both Edwards and Obama oppose it). I oppose Hillary because she has never really presented a coherent reason for opposing it. I can bring myself to support John Edwards because he has a principled reason for supporting civil unions but opposing marriage. Hillary’s continuous ducking and inability to form a coherent sentence justifying her opposition smacks of pandering to the center — yet again.

Furthermore, whereas both Barack Obama and John Edwards advocate completely repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (which was signed into law by her husband), Hillary merely wants to amend it. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), by the way, federally defines marriage as between one man and one woman, (unconstitutionally) exempts states from the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (which requires them to honor all “public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State”), and prohibits the federal government from recognizing a same-sex marriage, even if the marriage has been approved by a state.

Let me leave you with a couple of thoughts on Clintonism. Many of us are clearly not old enough to remember the Clinton years, and I highly doubt the vast majority of young Americans know that much about them. So let me take this time remind everyone: Bill Clinton is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (even after the gay community supported him in force); he is NAFTA (which caused the loss of millions of American jobs, and which he signed over the protests of American labor); he is the Defense of Marriage Act; he is the destruction of welfare and the Democratic Party’s concern for the poor. Bill Clinton encouraged the Republican idea that we need to “get big government off our backs” and said that the “era of big government is over”. Oh, and, yes, let’s not forget: “oh, no, there’s a genocide in Rwanda? I think I’ll sit back and do nothing.”

And Hillary Clinton will bring nothing but more of the same. During her time in the senate, Hillary has been even more conservative than her husband, and she’s worked alongside numerous Republicans, including Frist and Graham (it should also be noted that her ‘bipartisanship’ will not help her in the general election – just look at the polling data). The Times says that her voting record places her only a “few paces to the left of Lieberman” on foreign policy issues — and I’m sure we’re all aware of the possibility that she’ll invade Iran. In 2002, she voted for war. More recently, she voted, once more, with the Bush administration, to declare the Iranian what’s-it-called a terrorist organization.

Leave a comment »