We All Have Hard Choices to Make, Hillary

Okay. Some mistakes are bigger than others. But when you makes one, Hillary Clinton, it can turn out to be a real doozie. Take Iraq, for example, which you referenced in the video link below, when you were promoting your book, Hard Choices...

Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that your "mistake" in authorizing the Iraq invasion and occupation will end up costing the United States a cool $3 trillion.

And it costs us more every day. (It gets expensive when you buy a war on credit, huh, Hill?)

But real "Hard Choices" followed in the wake of that mistake, Hill, especially for the survivors and loved ones of the half-million Iraqis who paid for the war with something way more precious than money. They paid with their lives.

Big oops, huh?

Your apology is also probably not accepted by the 4,500 or so dead American servicemen and women and tens of thousands of other casualties whose lives were often irretrievably broken and shattered as a result of your vote, yet who still manage to live on.

They tend not to write books about their experiences, Hill — hell, some of them can't think or see — but I guess they're what you call "collateral damage," obligatory blood sacrifices on the altar of your political ambitions.

So, okay, it's a free country. You can posture and giggle as much as you like in trying to shrug off your complicity in the biggest foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history.

But I think you should realize that there are millions of Americans who still regard you in the same way that Bob Dylan referred to people like you in his ancient anthem, "Masters of War"…

"I see through your eyes | And I see through your brain | Like I see through the water that runs down my drain."

Sorry if it affects your desperate desire to be president, Hill, but we all have hard choices to make in our lives.

And I've already made mine about you.

It's #BernieOrBust.

Will The Political-Revolution-That-Could Be Derailed by Power-Politics-As-Usual?

Quinnipiac University Poll numbers released today, showing Bernie Sanders easily beating all GOP contenders.

If superdelegates steal the Democratic presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton in 2016, her “nomination” won’t be worth having.

That’s a view I’ve been hearing again and again in conversations with Democratic voters over the past two days, voters who do what they can to live as comfortably as they can manage these days in the quiet suburban streets ringing the giant hotel-casinos that form the empty, rigged, voracious heart of Las Vegas.

It’s a view I’ve encountered so often, in my role as as an out-of-state helper for the Sanders campaign, that I feel obligated to bring it up, for whatever consideration anyone might think it’s worth.

But the truth is that I feel stunned by just how many regular Democrats have volunteered to me over the past two days that they’ll never vote for HRC. A woman I talked today named Mary Ann just shook her head and said this: “She’s been around too long. I’m tired of her. Besides,” she added darkly, “Hillary has blood on her hands.”

A 66-year-old union guy named Duane told me that, even though his union leadership (“suck-ups,” he called them) endorsed Hillary, he’ll never vote for her. “I’d rather see Trump in there,” he admitted.

Most Bernie supporters, though, seem much more buoyantly pro-Bernie than anti-Clinton, although their optimism seems guarded, tentative, as if they recognize that Bernie’s little political-revolution-that-could might ultimately be derailed by power-politics-as-usual players from the past.

Then what? Head shakes. No one knows. We’ll cross that trestle when we come to it.

Others, though, are unabashed in their disdain for Hillary, and aren’t afraid to say so. They’re so, um, out there, and so willing to share it, that I was able to use the intensity of their dislike for HRC as a reason to caucus for Bernie.

“There’s only one way you can stand up against Hillary this week,” I told three different voters today. “And that’s to stand up for Bernie Sanders. Because he’s the only one running against her.”

That might seem a helluva piss-poor, superficial reason to vote for anyone, much less a cool, democratic socialist from Vermont with all the amazing bona fides that Bernie Sanders has accumulated over a lifetime of selfless public service, but the fact remains: There are a helluva lot of Democrats who genuinely don’t like Hillary Clinton.

And worse, there seems to be a helluva lot of insider Democrats set on tilting the outcome to her who are completely oblivious to that fact.

But no one ever accuses them of listening to people like me. They listen to big-dollar donors and each other.

That’s why I predict that if the Democratic Party nominates Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders in 2016 because of insider deals involving superdelegates, they will lose the election to someone named Trump or Cruz or Rubio or Bloomberg and they’ll never even know what hit them.

And here’s the real hell of it: They won’t even know they were holding a winning hand until they threw it all away.

Where To Invade Next: Michael Moore’s New Love Letter to America

Hey, you! (That means you, specifically, if you’re reading these words.) (If you’re not, I wasn’t talking to you, anyway. Duhhh!)

Far be it from me to tell anyone else how to live, who to vote for, or what to think or believe, but may I suggest that you make the very next film you see Michael Moore’s “Where To Invade Next.”

Michael Moore in a scene from his remarkable new documentary “Where To Invade Next”

It’s the most extraordinary and optimistic film, I think, of Michael Moore’s entire inspired, acclaimed, and controversial career, and if you’re at all like me in your admiration of his no-frills narrative power and people-first focus, you know that’s saying something.

As you probably know, Michael’s suffered through a bout of pneumonia in recent weeks and, at last report, he was still confined to an intensive-care unit—which spells trouble for the new film because he hasn’t been able to criss-cross the country to promote the film properly and personally. 

And what that means is this: If “Where To Invade Next” is going to attract the audience it so richly deserves (and perhaps succeed even modestly at the box-office), it’s up to people like us, friends of Michael Moore who’ve never met him, to promote it for him.

So here’s my best shot:

“Where To Invade Next” is an amazing documentary. It will make you laugh and cry—at least, it made me cry, which isn’t exactly an everyday thing, although yelling at the TV when Hillary sneers that Bernie’s ideas “just aren’t practical” has become one. 

Regardless,“Where To Invade Next” may very well piss you off, too, and make you wonder exactly how our nation went so wrong, before it makes you start to imagine ways we can still fix it.

I’d tell you more, but I’d rather let Michael Moore’s work speak for itself — just as soon as you’re able to shake yourself free from the Blogger/Facebook/YouTube trance you’re in, pop into appropriate clothes, and get yourself to the Cineplex Maximus of your choice, maybe even with a friend or two.

You’ll probably want to thank me, after you do all that. But don’t thank me. Thank Michael Moore.

“Where To Invade Next” is his Valentines Day love letter to us all, America. Please don’t miss it.

Click this link to check out the trailer.

Then get moving. There’s still plenty of time to make the next showing, but only if you stop fucking around.

Then There Were Two. Then Came Another.

And brother, what an other!

Over the weekend, I made a case against what seemed then to be the ultimate Big Lie in Hillary Clinton’s desperate arsenal of slash-and-burn rhetorical slop hurled against Bernie Sanders.

I argued that male Bernie supporters — me, for example — are not woman-bashing misogynistic trolls just because we hold Hillary Clinton to the same standards to which we hold male candidates, Bernie included. We just find her lacking.

Birds of a Feather: Clucking together.

That, I thought, would be that. End of her campaign’s fanciful, artful smear involving the so-called “Bernie Bros.”

Then came the sad, dueling displays of the once-iconic Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright on national TV, alternately trying to scold and shame young women for backing Bernie Sanders in such overwhelming numbers.

To Steinem (before she tried walking her comments back and explaining it all away), this meant mostly that young female Bernie supporters are basically clueless, boy-crazy bimbos, which in Albright’s mysterious mind ultimately destines them for nothing more than ringside seats in hell.

But, hold everything — as corporate media outlets used to say (before we stopped listening to them and started listening to each other): This just in…

The latest narcissistic nuggets rendered on Hillary’s behalf come from the mouth of the biggest serial philanderer and personal prevaricator in modern political history.

And since it probably plays out best in undiluted form as the unforced farce it is, let me switch to my best carnival barker rhetorical voice, because that’s all this mockery of political discourse deserves:

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s put our hands together (but, ladies, please keep your knees together, just in case) and welcome to the stage, the original Democratic Party “Ho-Bro” Bill Clinton*!

I could ramble on in excruciating detail and pander at great length about the sheer absurdity of Bill Clinton lecturing anyone on personal morality and public sexism (much less Bernie Sanders) but I won’t. It’s likely to only bring up ugly memories that are better left alone.

What I will cite, though, is a derisive sneer that Bubba hurled at Bernie for having the shameless audacity to describe our current economic system as “rigged,” which could only come from a worldview that exists in a “hermetically sealed box.”

Bill Clinton: The Pot Calling the White Linen Napkins and Tablecloth Black.

There. I said it. I told you that thinking about Bill Clinton, too often or for too long, is a bummer.

That’s why I’ll keep the rest of my particulars brief — which, we know now, is where Bill Clinton should have kept his particulars while in the Oval Office: in his briefs.

Does that make me sexist, Bill? And is it even possible to be sexist when ridiculing a member of my own sex?

And lest I say anything else that may eventually serve to feed the Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton slime-machine so squarely aimed at Bernie Sanders, I’ll sign off on this installment of Dirty Dog’s Delicious Dig of the Day in my own voice, so not to confuse Clinton campaign followers, who actually believe in both “Bernie bros” and bimbos:

“I’m Jim Parker and I approved this message.”

If I could afford it, and right about now, I’d float a tiny disclaimer over the bottom of the screen: 

“Not affiliated with any campaign or political party, especially the corporate whores and shills in charge of the Republican Party and Democratic Party.”

Then I might even hurl a last splash of slop of my own as a final tag line:

“Bill Clinton would have been better served if he’d kept his own ‘rig’ in a ‘hermetically sealed box.”

Because, me, I’m no gentleman. I’m as lost and lowdown as Bill Clinton.

* * *

*Ironically (and not uncoincidentally), Urban Dictionary’s “Top Definition” for “Bill Clinton” still reads this way: “To get a blowjob while at work.”

Playing the Gender Card

Another day, another dull, dumb act of desperation from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Old People Say the Darnedest Things: Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Cory Booker yuck it up.

This time, it centers on the presumptuous presumptive nominee pushing Clinton Administration Secretary of State Madeline Albright in front of a microphone and a crowd of 200 or so (and the obligatory television cameras) to play the gender card on Mrs. Clinton’s behalf, so that Hill could act surprised and delighted that she didn’t have to play it for herself.

She must think it looks more presidential that way. I think it looks more pathetic, and here’s why:

If the only thing separating Hillary Clinton’s always egocentric — and, now, gendercentric — campaign from Bernie Sanders’ authentic grassroots movement was her status as a woman, I’d switch sides in a heartbeat.

The fact that I haven’t done that — or believe I ever will — speaks to my hard-earned distaste for Hillary Clinton as a deeply-flawed, superficial, slash-and-burn pol of the old school and a bought-and-paid-for tool of Wall Street and corporate special interests. But it’s certainly not her gender.

In fact, if Hillary Clinton weren’t a woman, I’d express my contempt for her in far plainer terms than I have thus far, rather than having to confess that I find her status as a woman to be the least objectionable thing about her.

In fact, I’d use the same words that I’d use to describe a male candidate of equal egotism, artifice, and power-lust — Donald Trump, for example, or Ted Cruz:

I can’t stand _______ because he’s a fucking asshole.

That’s why I’ll end on a high note by simply saying this about Mrs. Clinton: What do I think of her as a presidential candidate? Not much.

But I thank God for Bernie Sanders.

The Biggest Big Lie

The biggest Big Lie in this campaign is that Bernie Sanders supporters, male, female, LGBT and Q (and, presumably, all others who don’t back the former First Lady) are somehow anti-feminist.

I was about to say “I don’t know how self-serving political lies like this get started...” but as soon as I felt myself actually begin to wrap thoughts around those words, I realized they were intended for rhetorical purposes only, since they weren’t even true, because I certainly do know how they get started. And so, probably, do you.

Big Lies aren't that much different than little lies, and both kinds get started because somebody makes them up. 

Then some semi-skilled pressroom hack (or intern) copies-and-pastes them into daily talking point memos for candidates and surrogates, who amplify the lie and spin it to suit their particular audiences or constituencies.

Then it morphs into something even less real, until somebody — me, maybe, or you — finally stands up and says something like: 

Who made up this bullshit? It’s not even true!

That’s the conclusion I come to when I consider the anti-feminist lie, anyway. 

The 2016 Democratic Dream Team: List them on the ballot in any order, at all. They'll get my vote, either way.

Full disclosure: I’m a 65-year-old white male and I truly believe that my antipathy towards Hillary Clinton has nothing whatever to do with vestigial chauvinism in a capricious character or a battered, tattered soul.

Because I’d follow Elizabeth Warren into hell itself, if she led a charge there to free our “rigged economy” from its diabolical gatekeepers.

Conversely, though, to me, Hillary Clinton is hell — an inept, inauthentic political hack, using her own gender to distract from the insincerity, desperation, and duplicity at the core of her campaign and, seemingly, the depths of her political being.

How long can she go? Pretty fucking low, as I recall from the 2008 campaign. 

HRC and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland doing the same number on Obama then that she's doing on Bernie now.

I mean, I still hear echoes of her “Shame on you, Barack Obama” tirade come rolling through my head whenever she starts ragging on Bernie for actually believing what he's saying, all in that rushed, shrill, angry-mom tone, and I swear to God: I wish I'd never heard those words or that tone, and I can't wait until I never have to hear that woman's voice ever again.

I just don't like you, Hillary. I'm sorry. Maybe if you had a goal in life to do something, anything, other than to proclaim yourself the only qualified candidate in the country to be president, it would be different.

But if that were different, you’d be different, Hill. And that’s the problem: You just never are. 

America got tired of the same-old same-old because, among other things, it created the biggest levels of income inequality in 85 years. 

And the same-old same-old is all Hillary Clinton has ever been. She’s Hubert Humphrey in a pantsuit. And Bernie Sanders is the Bobby Kennedy a bullet didn't kill.

The Morning After | What Does Goldman Get For All That Money?

Only Hillary Knows For Sure, But No One’s Betting It's a Lecture on Greed.

As usual, after televised national debates and town halls, social media is all a-twitter this morning with one burning question: Who “won” last night’s Democratic debate?

Leaving aside the simple-mindedness of our collective preoccupation with framing political processes as horse races, rather than the competitions of ideas and governing philosophies that they are, at least, supposed to be, I’ll go way, way out on the elliptical limb I’m currently pedaling  —  as I one-finger jab my way through this note on my iPhone  —  and say simply this:

Ditzy Damage Control: When in doubt, shrug and make something up. Pretend everybody picks on you unfairly.

Bernie Sanders “won” because he actually answered the single most-important question put before both candidates by the debate’s moderators.

The reason I say that he won an entire debate simply by answering a single question is this: Because his answer plainly revealed the starkest stark contrast between the Senator from Vermont and the former Secretary of State in anything other than judgment, which may only impact future war and peace, perhaps. 

It's a question of integrity and potential (if not real) conflicts of interest.

And it also happens to involve an issue that’s right smack dab in the heart of his candidacy: He’s got nothing to hide. And Hillary seems to have plenty.

Hillary’s response was her typical angry campaign retort, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,”  other than trying to deflect attention away from her inability to explain why Goldman Sachs would dispense such large “speaker fees” repeatedly to the same, politically well-connected speaker. 

If Mrs. Clinton’s “fees” were meant as a gift, why didn’t Goldman Sachs offer and report it as a charitable contribution to the Clinton Family Foundation? I hear they burn through lots of money, and always have their hand out.

And if it’s not a form of charity (as it certainly does not appear to be) doesn’t Lloyd Blankfein, as CEO of a publicly traded corporation, have a fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders to expect (or extract) something in return for their $675,000?

What no one but Bernie Sanders seems to understand is this: Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, health insurers, and crony capitalists do, indeed, get something in return for keeping Hillary’s “tip jar” full: VIP treatment at the highest levels of Clinton and Clinton, Inc.  —  both now and in the future.

And influence pedaling (or the continual appearance of it, which seems as bad, particularly in this campaign, which many view as a contest for the very soul of the Democratic Party and the republic itself) raises many, many questions that Mrs. Clinton seems to prefer to answer with a wink and a nod — and an angry outburst aimed at Bernie Sanders.

And such clumsy avoidance inevitably leads to the ultimate question: Why are Wall Street investment banks and Fortune 100 firms so chummy with the Clintons? 

What does Goldman (and all the others), get for all that money?