feminist blogs

Interesting juxtaposition over at Men For Hillary

Referring to yet another race baiting article about Hillary written by a BObot, Mark writes:

I will tell you who should be ashamed of himself -- Mr. Herbert, for being willing to ignore the many statements of Senator Obama which were not only similar to Clinton's recent musings about exit polls, but were much more arrogant. Herbert either has a convenient short memory, or his biases are more than showing.

Either both Clinton and Obama are race-baiting or they both are not. They are either both racists or they both are not. Make up your mind. They have been entirely equal in their statements that can be construed as anti-black racism or anti-white prejudice. Obama, all along, has been able say things such as he said in he said in August of 2007:
"I'm probably the only candidate who having won the nomination can actually redraw the political map," Obama told a Democratic voter skeptical that he could defeat a Republican candidate.

"I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30 percent around the country, minimum," Obama said.

"Young people's percentage of the vote goes up 25-30 percent. So we're in a position to put states in play that haven't been in play since LBJ."

"If we just got African-Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state," Obama said. He said Georgia would also turn Democratic and South Carolina would be in play.

What dumbfounds me is that analysts (apparently, such as Herbert) will read Obama's comments and say "Well, Obama didn't say 'Clinton can't turn out the black vote' now did he? He just said he could turn out more black and young voters than anyone else, if he is the nominee." Context is everything. When you say "I guarantee a certain turnout, if I am the nominee" you are saying that NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THAT. In other words, you are saying Clinton will have a negative effect on black voter turnout. In addition, when you talk about black voter turnout based on you being the nominee and you are a black person and you don't explain on what basis you believe that will take place, on its face, it is clearly a statement of racial preferences.

On top of that, please note the words "if I'm the nominee." Given the context, one could conclude that if Obama isn't the nominee, he WON'T work to increase black and young people turn out. Interesting, don't you think? Mr. Herbert?

Not once in this entire campaign has Clinton made such an equally arrogant and clearly divisive statement about women voters, even if it may be true or it is supported by the data. She has never made such a divisive claim. But, of course, Clinton gets no credit for that.

More here...

There are fifty (50) states and 1 district, Washington D.C.

The 50 states are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia*, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
The last two states to join the Union were Alaska (49th) and Hawaii (50th). Both joined in 1959.

Washington D.C. is a federal district under the authority of Congress. Local government is run by a mayor and 13 member city council.

Washington DC is represented in Congress by an elected, nonvoting Delegate to the House of Representatives and residents have been able to vote in Presidential elections since 1961.

Puerto Rico is a commonwealth associated with the U.S. Its indigenous inhabitants are U.S. citizens. Puerto Ricans are unable to vote in U.S.Presidential elections but they do elect a nonvoting resident commissioner to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Dependent areas: American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island.

Note: from 18 July 1947 until 1 October 1994, the US administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, but recently entered into a new political relationship with all four political units:

the Northern Mariana Islands is a commonwealth in political union with the US (effective 3 November 1986);

Palau concluded a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 1 October 1994);

the Federated States of Micronesia signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 3 November 1986);

the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 21 October 1986)

Source: The CIA Factbook 2003Detailed information about each of the territories can also be found in this CIA publication.

They never quote these types of articles: The Fight Stuff

...If anyone has been guarding the rules this election, it’s been the press, which has been primly thumbing the pages of Queensberry and scolding her [Hillary] for being “ruthless” and “nasty,” a “brawler” who fights “dirty.”
But while the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she’s come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.
Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, that is the more trusted archetype.

Whether Senator Clinton’s pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that
when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude.
When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.

Susan Faludi is the author of “Backlash,” “Stiffed” and “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.”

Greenconsciousness notes: No Susan, it is NOT "particularly in the grain of white male working class voters" that the tough fighter is admired. Almost all people who have had tough times admire someone who does not give up when times get tough.

This is the ethic of our best people, the soldiers, protectors, the people you can rely on - the heroes. Hillary has not been "brawling". She has been conducting a skilled, tough, political campaign which has revealed her character as being solid gold - admirable.

That is why she has won the respect of almost everyone except the BO cultists. I saw a AA man who voted for BO say he wished he could have voted for both of them ..."because that Hillary, she's a sweetheart."

Everything asserted in this article is proved by the nature of the comments accompanying it which you should also read.


From The Progressive:

...It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he [Barack Hussein Obama]did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees.

My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency.

What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.

The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain.

This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate’s own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama’s case, the license taken not only underscores Obama’s more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley’s Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.

There is also something disturbingly ritualistic and superficial in the Obama camp’s young minions’ enthusiasm. Paul Krugman noted months ago that the Obamistas display a cultish quality in the sense that they treat others’ criticism or failure to support their icon as a character flaw or sin.

The campaign even has a stock conversion narrative, which has been recycled in print by such normally clear-headed columnists as Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt: the middle-aged white woman’s report of not having paid much attention to Obama early on, but having been won over by the enthusiasm and energy of their adolescent or twenty-something daughters. (A colleague recently reported having heard this narrative from a friend, citing the latter’s conversion at the hands of her eighteen year old. I observed that three short years ago the daughter was likely acting the same way about Britney Spears.)

Princeton Professor Sean Wilentz, a Clinton supporter, noted that the Obama campaign advisers have tried to have it both ways on the race question. On the one hand, they present their candidate as a figure who transcends racial divisions and “brings us together”; on the other hand, they exhort us that we should support his candidacy because of the opportunity to “make history” (presumably by nominating and maybe electing a black candidate).

Increasingly, Obama supporters have been disposed to cry foul and charge racism at nearly any criticism of him, in steadily more extravagant rhetoric.

The campaign’s accusation that the Clinton team made Obama look darker in a photo or video clip than he actually is—and what exactly are we to make of that as an accusation?—and the hysterically indignant reaction to Geraldine Ferraro’s statement that much of Obama’s success stems from the fact that “the country is caught up in the concept” of a black candidacy are no different from the campaign’s touting its “historic” character.

Obama supporters fulsomely attacked even Clinton’s attempts to portray him as inexperienced, which is standard fare in political campaigns.

They also charged that she was playing to racism. See most recently Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo’s characterization that she was “disrespecting” black people, a leftover canard from Jesse Jackson’s campaigns (which, lest amnesia overtake us, were also extolled as historic firsts).

More Here

Hillary bloggers you don't know about - join hands.

Brilliant writing - evolving analysis

Riverdaughter (Confluence) on the Creative Class
Sometime Girls
and Are you telling me I turned...DD Ape?

Anglachel's Journal Revolution of the Saints

I DECIDED YOU DESERVE AN ENTRY ON THE CREATIVE CLASSES BY ONE OF THEIR OWN - THE DEFINITIVE STATEMENT - here it is - read it and be educated you bitterers.

Changing Of the Guard
by: Chris Bowers
Thu May 08, 2008 at 15:15

Just like Mike earlier today, I would also like to compliment Matt on his outstanding Obama's Consolidation of the Party article last night. Unlike the previous two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry, Obama has not only won the nomination campaign, but he has actually built a huge infrastructure within the party. The Obama infrastructure is enormous, and is the first intra-party movement to have surpassed the infrastructure built up by the Clintons over the past two decades.

The Dean movement from five years ago was the first major threat to the Clinton power base in the party, but only the Obama movement actually surpassed it. This build-up was a necessary move on Obama's party, since otherwise it would have been impossible to defeat Clinton in a grueling, virtually 50-state campaign.

So, unless Obama somewhat surprisingly does not become the next President of the United States, the Democratic Party will experience its first changing of the guard since the late 1980's. What differences will be in store? Here are the three major changes I expect:

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives:

There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types.

Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR.

These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades.

Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

Policy Shift: Out with the DLC, up with technocratic wonks.

My sense of Obama and his policy team is overwhelmingly one of technocratic, generally less overtly ideological professional policy types.

We should see a shift from the more corporate and triangulating policy focus of the Democratic Party in the 1990's, and see it replaced by whatever centrist, technocratic policies are the wonkish flavor of the month.

It will all be very oriented toward think-tank and academic types, and be reminiscent of policy making in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. A sort of "technocratic liberalism" that will be less infuriating than DLC style governance, but still not overtly leftist.

Coalition reorganization: Out with party silos, in with squishy goo-goos.

In addition to a shift in culture and policy focus, I also expect a different approach to coalition building.

A long-standing Democrats approach of transactional politics with different issue and demographic silos in the party shift toward an emphasis on good government (goo goo) approaches.

We will see lots of emphasis on non-partisanship, ethics reform, election reform instead of on, say, placating labor unions, environment groups, and the LGBT community by throwing each of these groups a policy bone or two.

Now, the focus will be on broad, squishy fixes that are designed to appeal to several groups at once. George Lakoff wrote about this a couple months ago.

I know this is all pretty vague, but it does sum up my basic sense about the coming Obama administration and Democratic Party. Overall, instead feeling like Blue Dogs, Joe Lieberman and media pundits are running the party, it should feel kind of like PIRG, but a bit more right-wing, academic and well-to-do.

In other words, PIRG without seeming like DFHs run the show. That should be an upgrade from the 1990's, but expect quite a few times where progressives will need to take oppositional stances.

Chris Bowers :: Changing Of the Guard

A example of the work of the Creative Class can be found at "Alas a Blog", which is a blog with feminist pretensions, owned by a male. AAB posters often initiate attacks on women for being racist or Islamaphobic or insensitive to class issues. This is what passes for cutting edge feminism on our left.
The latest example is an attack on Hillary by Ampersand. Hillary said:

"There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,”

Then what follows is quotes from various members of the left creative class finding that Hillary has called blacks lazy watermelon eating scum. Seemingly, any compliment from Hillary about her white supporters is an insult to the AA race and People of Color everywhere.

The Creative Class views complimenting white people, especially white women, to be understood as an insult to POC. This is one way the Obamabots play the race card. They first race baited when Bill Clinton referred to Jessie Jackson doing well in a state with a large black population.

This is simply demographic referencing in political campaigns - done by Obama as much as the Clintons, done by every media analyst discussing and planning the campaign.

But when the Hill does it, and (horror) compliments the white working class which is part of the dems base, the BOFB misogynists call her (or Bill) a racist. How convenient and how especially unifying.

Hillary has an actual track record of political accomplishments for POC from Selma, through voter registration onward whereas BO has his identity. Yet, the AAB left "feminists" of the creative class, whose credentials as to institutional change for POC are a mystery, feel free to gather their evidence of Hillary's racist implications. That evidence consists of the opinions of other left members of the creative class. We used to call this trashing but nowadays I guess it is called analysis. By the creative class anyway.

It is not what Hillary means that counts, it is how you can twist what she says. This is the new Politics of Unity.

Yeah, I BELIEVE.

Please, Please, Please go to Angry for A Reason and read

What is wrong with the Party

...Want to hear my theory? I'm sure you do. Democrats nowadays don't think of themselves as that. Look at our recent nominees, excluding Bill. Kerry, Gore, Dukakis. What do they all have in common? They are seen as elites. No matter what Jon Stewart says, people don't want someone like that in the WH. Even if they do have progressive reform for working class and poor people (which I firmly do not believe that Obama has) they're going to take it as you telling them what's best for them. The reason that Bill was not painted as such is because he grew up working class, he went to public school, even though he eventually made it into the power elite.

And of course last night there was Donna Brazile on CNN

BRAZILE: "Well, Lou, I have worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, and I respect Paul.*** But, Paul, you’re looking at the old coalition. A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics. We need to look at the Democratic Party, expand the party, expand the base and not throw out the baby with the bathwater."

(Sidenote here: Except you can't depend on blue collar and Latino voters. If they don't feel that you are working, and I mean actively working, for their financial well-being (health-care, unions, etc), then they will be values voters. You are one of the people IN CHARGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. HOW THE HELL DO YOU FORGET ABOUT "REAGAN DEMOCRATS" AND THAT OBAMA'S SUPPORT BASE IS THE SAME AS (10 state) DUKAKIS!!!! Stop blowing off the people the dems need to win in the fall, ffs. )

...this above is only a small part of one of the best posts all year -- so long I have been trying to say this ... so brilliantly Angry for a reason does say it

From Lambert at Corrente an excellent post pointing out that $30.00 buys a lot of school lunches but not many lattes and croissants. All of Corrente's posts are really informative including one with pictures of Eight Belles down on the track looking at the camera, see Au revoir, cherie.

I was struck by one of the comments under Lambert's post on eating for a month on $30.00 Submitted by FrenchDoc on Mon, 2008-05-05 21:18. FD said something I have been trying to articulate about the left for many years now. Said it better than I have done. Think about this and go over to Corrente - there is much there worth reading.

Let’s face it, the “creative class” is part of what Leslie Sklair calls the transnational capitalist class, at least, its ideological component. They focus more on process and identity politics and are not the least interested in bread and butter issues.

Another sad realization of this primary.

Another comment, Submitted by elixir on Tue, 2008-05-06 09:48.
at Corrente under, "Must be my Irish Guilt":

...Taylor Marsh, “With Right Props and Stops, Clinton Turns Into Working Class Hero ”
This piece highlights a subtle but critical point about HRC, even though she doesn’t live the working class life, doesn’t pump her own gas, doesn’t make her own coffee and hasn’t had to worry about a paycheck for years - she gets it. She understands what people are going through and connects with them. That’s the difference between being “elite” and not. Elite is a mindset not a balance sheet.

For more go to Blue Lyon

Two prostitutes, one a pimp, who had the names of men of power in their black books and threatened to tell if they were convicted, are both found HANGED after they are convicted. The cops immediately conclude BOTH committed suicide. One told a radio station there is a contract on her and she is being followed. Nothing happened to their customers who are Congress members and Generals as well as other members of the wealthy elites, not even a municipal fine. Spitzer's prostitute is in hiding.

Women, especially the abused and the poor are witnesses to the outrageous fascism of the patriarchy, the lie of the rule of law. And if they talk too much, they are silenced - one way or another.

Today in the Kentucky Derby a female horse, 8 BELLS mysteriously went down at the finish line, both ankles just broke while the 20 to 1 pick BIG BROWN won. They killed 8 Bells on the track. On board ship, eight bells signified the end of one watch and the beginning of another

It was a warning.

I have said before that there is very big corporate money supporting the untested BO because corporate interests feel they will be able to manipulate him more successfully than the battle scarred Clintons.

Do you know what the male left bloggers are doing to WI Representative Tammy Baldwin, who is a lesbian, because she will not abandon Hillary? Do you know what they are telling her and post to her voters about the Clintons? They are saying the Clintons are homophobic and organize politically against Gay people. Yet it is BO who has the Baptist homophobe on the stage with him. There are videos of it and speeches that are on tape.

Here is the cite to the left boys on the Clinton's alleged gay people hatred with even hints that the Clinton's deliberately did "nothing" about AIDS. Read the left boys lies posted as facts and ask yourself if such hysterical desperation is not being PAID for by some very big money - left progressive money. Ask your self if it sounds like Democrats or corporate big money talking through the Daily Kos?

And to other segments of the democratic party, BO supporters claim the Clintons are doing black voter suppression in black majority states. No one is being prosecuted. They just repeat the charges in multiple posts until people believe it because "everyone" is saying it.

In the meantime Howard Dean angrily demands that this be over - that Hillary gets out of the race and leaves it to the men who are serious and have a "real" chance. He moans that Hillary is hurting BO's chances. See Rad Geek for how the convention is threatened if the Democrats don't toe the line.

Be careful Hillary. They kill uppity women in this country just as they do all over the world. But here they make it look self inflicted. Women are made to look crazy or criminal or have bad bones. If they cannot shout you down, marginalize you, shut you away in the crazy house or prison by unequal and selective prosecutions or destroy your credibility and reputation or bury you in poverty by taking all your material possessions, make you unemployable, or neutralize you with grief, if you remain a threat, they will kill your animals and they then they will kill you.

Be careful my heroine Hillary, you are the hope of the people against the wealthy elite in the US. Big money here, left and right, is unchecked in the US. We have seen over and over, from the women who fought big nuclear to big lumber to big coal that they will kill with car "accidents" and beatings, false suicides and political assassination. Then they will close the investigation files for 50 years for the "good" of the country.