Showing posts with label Hillary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2008

CLINTON ORDERS HIT


The media consternation regarding Hillary’s RFK assassination comment is way out of proportion to their supposed interpretation of the remark. The pundits are afraid to say exactly what Hillary’s comment intended.

Senator Clinton’s comment was clearly a request that one or more of her supporters assassinate Barack Obama.

The only way, she suggests, to put her in the White House, and to keep a black man out of it, is to kill the black man.

Given her famous support among poor, uneducated, gun-owning white people, Hillary’s request could reach dangerous ears. Lone nuts don’t get all their instructions from Mars.

The assassinations of the 1960s set back US political progress forty years. Barack Obama is the first serious threat to the corporatization of all human experience since George Wallace was silenced by J Egger’s crew.

If Barack gets offed, there’s going to be some serious explaining to do.

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

BOOZE CLUES

One of the great scenes of the old Mary Tyler Moore show is when Mary invites her boss, Lou Grant (Ed Asner) to her apartment for dinner. Mary, of course, is nervous and wants everything to go right.

She offers Lou a drink, he says “bourbon on the rocks,” and follows Mary into her little kitchen. Mary puts ice in a large glass, then pours some bourbon into a shot glass slow and careful because her hands are shaking.

Lou grabs the whiskey bottle out of May’s hand, saying “That’s not how you make a drink… here’s how you make a drink.”

Lou pours directly from the bottle until the large glass is about half full, and exclaims, “THAT’s how you make a drink.”

Mary is non-plussed. She looks at the nearly-full shotglass in her hand and asks Lou, “What about this?”

Lou looks at the shotglass, grabs it from her hand, and knocks it back.

And Mary does a comic take.

Because it’s more visually complex, movies tend to portray boilermakers (shot and a beer) as depth-charges (shotglass in the beer). But, as I learned as a kid, and as Wikipedia points out:

Classically, the liquor is drunk in one gulp and chased immediately by the beer.
Then after a brief discussion of delivery methods, (sidecars, depth charges etc) Wikipedia states clearly:

Guides differ on the preferred technique, but all agree that speed is the essence of this drink: one generally aims to drink a boilermaker quickly.
This is fairly common knowledge among American working-class drinkers.

Because it’s a working class drink, and a heavy-drinker’s drink, boilermakers usually include well whiskey and draught beer (the cheapest).


So yesterday we see Hillary, full Deerhunter mode, doing a barroom photo-op attempting to drink a boilermaker.

We see Hillary sipping at the shotglass, reportedly filled with Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey, which costs a lot more than the bar’s well-whiskey.

Then we see her sipping at a beer mug (full pint).

It’s wrong in so many ways.

This shows that Hillary isn’t just elitist, her entire staff is elitist—not one of them could tell her how to drink a boilermaker.

When it comes to booze, an American presidential candidate need remember only four words:

Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

As jazz is to the world of music, so Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is to the world of booze--a uniquely American contribution.

Maybe there’s some local Penn. custom of drinking Crown Royal, that imported Canadian is superior to American stuff, with the crown and all, but this would be self-loathing and shouldn’t be encouraged.

And the beer should be served in a straight-sided glass that holds maybe eight ounces, not in a big old sixteen-ounce pub-style mug. The whole idea is down-the-hatch, and, after a hard day in the coal mines, who has the energy (or breath) to chug sixteen ounces?

Also, what kind of a working-class bar would allow a woman her age to drink standing up? Working class men would have offered their seats to her and refused to sit while Hillary remained standing.

The cameras would have enjoyed Hillary’s thigh-flesh draping over the sides of a barstool, like a real working-class woman.
Not gonna happen.


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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

TWO DEGREES FROM HILLARY

[I have to post this now, before Hillary gets knocked out of the race.]

Press me, I’ll admit I’m a communist. Or a socialist. Or a democratic socialist. I’m definitely a Marxist, or something pointing stiffly in that direction.

It’s pathetic that in the USA communism is taboo. Most European countries have (mostly small) Communist Parties, I think. No big deal.

So, in my mind, it’s kind of neat that Hillary Clinton, for a summer internship while at Yale Law, chose a self-described communist law firm.

I spent five weeks of the summer of 1969 house-and-dog sitting in the Oakland Hills, up and around a winding road from College Avenue in Berkeley. Two summers later that house would be visited by Hillary Clinton.

The house belonged to Mal Burnstein and his wife. Mal had represented me and nine co-defendants in a successful seven week trial of one group of SF State 1968 Student Strike mass arrestees. Acquittals all around. I mentioned this in a previous post.

Mal was way too good for the venue. The judge had to call a quick recess at the end of Mal’s day-and-a-half summation because three of the jurors were sobbing.



The Commie law firm where Hillary interned in the summer of 1971 was Treuhaft, Walker, & Burnstein. BTW: Bob Treuhaft’s wife was Jessica Mitford, who called herself “Mrs Treuhaft” on the phone. I don’t know about my attorney, Mal Burnstein, but according to many sources, Treuhaft and Walker were CPUSA.

And, according to this New York Sun article, TW&B’s clients included the Oakland Black Panthers, who, at the time, were being gunned down by Cointelpro, and charged with killing cops.

I bring this up to contradict Hillary’s claim that she, as opposed to Barrack, is “fully vetted.” She's been investigated, but not all the mud has been thrown, yet.

From the Sun story:

One partner at the firm, Doris Walker, was a Communist Party member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America's most "dangerously subversive" lawyers.

In her book, Hillary refers to Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein simply as "a small Oakland law firm," at least according to the Sun article.

Based on her internship with TW&B, the hot-button terms that can fairly be associated with Hillary in political ads against her include: Communist, Black Panthers, Cop killer, Huey Newton, Violent radicals.

As in:

Hillary interned in 1971 with a Berkeley based Communist law firm that helped Black Panther Huey Newton beat cop killing charges, and defended other violent radicals and dissenters.

Everything in that statement is true except for “Berkeley-based.” The law firm was located in neighboring Oakland, which doesn’t pack quite the same zing as “Berkeley.”

The implied charge is that Mrs Clinton is secretly still a communist, waiting to seize power before displaying her true colors. Most observers, I guess, would call this charge ridiculous.

For me, it would be a reason to vote FOR her.


But there probably are some undead voters somewhere who'd want to arise from their Barcaloungers one more time to vote against “all that hippy crap.”



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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

THREE WORDS SINK OBAMA

In last Saturday’s New Hampshire Democratic Debate, there was a remarkable TV moment. Here's a one-minute clip.


The massage of TV is rhythm. Dead air, and stoppage are the mortal sins of broadcasting.

So, when local newsman Scott Spralding asked Mrs Clinton a question in which he stated that she is not likeable, the rhythm was broken. Hillary paused, and gave a human (as well as gently rebuking) reply, saying that the question had hurt her feelings.

Dumbshit Spralding apologizes.

Hillary praises Obama for being such a likeable guy, then begs for some reassurance.

We see Obama think, then speak:

You’re likeable enough, Hillary.

Talk about damning with faint praise!

Talk about ungracious!

Who the hell is Barack to pronounce on Hillary’s likeability.

When New Hampshireites saw this condescending superiority they didn’t like it. Those three words, I surmise, made up a lot of last-minute minds.

I guess nobody briefed Obama on New Hampshire’s thing about whippersnappers.

A gracious response from Barack or from Edwards would have been:

With all due respect, Mr Spalding, I think that question was rude. I like Hillary a lot.


Even stepping over and giving a hug would have been in order.

No, Obama and Edwards are at least as plastic as Hillary.


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