4. Bill says "No onion rings?" and Hillary responds "I’m looking out for ya." Now, the script says onion rings, because that’s what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She’s "looking out" all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him? Carrot sticks! The one closest to the camera has a rather disgusting greasy sheen to it. Here, Bill, in retaliation for all of your excessive "O" consumption, you may have a large bowl of phallic symbols! When we hear him say "No onion rings?," the camera is on her, and Bill is off-screen, but at the bottom of the screen we see the carrot/phallus he’s holding toward her. Oh, yes, I know that Hillary supplying carrots is supposed to remind that Hillary will provide us with health care, that she’s "looking out for" us, but come on, they’re carrots! Everyone knows carrots are phallic symbols. But they’re cut up into little carrot sticks, you say? Just listen to yourself! I’m not going to point out everything.
Granted, this is one of the dumbest pieces of advertising I have ever seen.
I know everyone’s talking about the Soprano’s season finale, but why would Clinton want to play up the parallels between her own marriage and that of Tony and Carmela?
Tony is a psychopathic mob boss and Carmela is an outwardly dutiful wife who ignores his crimes so that she can continue to live in a nice white house. Maybe this ad is a dig at the crazies who think that Hillary murdered Vince Foster with bathroom fixtures stolen from the White House. If so, the joke is way too subtle.
Worse, the original TV scene closes with an implied hit on Tony.
Just a reminder, to anyone who snagged one of the Sparky and Blinky resin statue sets before the company went out of business and disappeared off the face of the earth: my standing offer to trade an original TMW strip for your statues remains in effect. Since I create my strips on the computing machine these days, there’s a finite supply of original TMW art, and I don’t let too much of it go.
Ohhh…I get it. Hillary Clinton was just killed by Johnny Sack. Seems like an odd way to end the campaign, but whatever.
As far as the choice of campaign song, picking “You and I” by Celine Dion is weak. Putting aside the fact that Celine Dion totally sucks (which is hard to do, I admit), does it strike anyone as strange that the campaign would choose a song by a French Canadian singer? It may be a petty complaint, but no more so than John Edwards’ haircuts.
On top of that, the lyrics of “You and I” are ridiculous :
High above the mountains, far across the sea
I can hear your voice calling out to me
Brighter than the sun and darker than the night
I can see your love shining like a light
And on and on this earth spins like a carousel
If I could travel across the world
The secrets I would tell
What the hell does that have to do with anything? Compare those lyrics to her husband’s much better campaign song, “Don’t Stop” :
If you wake up and dont want to smile,
If it takes just a little while,
Open your eyes and look at the day,
Youll see things in a different way.
Dont stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Dont stop, it’ll soon be here,
Itll be, better than before,
Yesterdays gone, yesterdays gone.
Yeah, it’s cheesy baby boomer bait, but it does a good job summing up the theme of the campaign. That is, unless the Clinton ‘08 campaign theme is that “this earth spins like a carousel”.
I’ve grappled many times with the question of whether conservatives are stupid or lying. Brad DeLong redefines the question, and in doing so provides the most plausible answer I’ve come across so far.
We want an “honest conservative”–a conservative intellectual adversary we can respect, who is also intelligent. But their first move is to define a “conservative” as a public supporter of the Bush regime and its deeds. That means, I think, that they are searching the empty set.
Slavoj Zizek applied this to the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe under the iron curtain:
The Trilemma: Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive…
But it applies just as well to the Bush regime. Sincere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters–and so are ruled out, and we are left with Larry Kudlow and Ramesh Ponnuru.
Emphasis added. More here, including a proposed system of classification.
If you’re in Chicago, there’s going to be an interesting event downtown this Thursday the 21st discussing nationwide efforts to impeach Bush and Cheney. Well worth attending if you can.
Prominent Anti-War Voices To Discuss Politics of Impeachment at DePaul Law School
WHAT: John McNichols (The Nation), Elaine Brower (Military Families Speak Out) and David Swanson (Progressive Democrats of America) discuss national efforts to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney
WHEN: Thursday, June 21st, 6-9pm
WHERE: DePaul University College of Law, 25 E. Jackson Blvd., Rm. 803, Chicago, IL
On April 24th, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to impeach Vice President Cheney. Eight representatives — including Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois — are now co-sponsoring the bill.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to stonewall congressional investigations on all fronts — including its rationale for and prosecution of the Iraq war, the outing of an undercover CIA agent, warrantless wiretapping, and politicization of the Justice Department — while sectors of the administration push for war with Iran.
Is it time to invoke the process of impeachment? What efforts are occurring at the state and local level? What are the prospects for impeachment in the current political climate, and how do today’s events compare to historical attempts at impeachment? Hear from these provocative voices:
John Nichols is an American author and journalist best known for his activism on issues related to the U.S. Constitution. He writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent; his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers. Nichols is the author of the book, The Genius of Impeachment, and he has interviewed US presidents and world leaders from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to Nelson Mandala and Desmond Tutu.
Elaine Brower is the outspoken mother of a US Marine who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a member of Military Families Speak Out. She is a leader of The World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime and of several other antiwar groups. She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “Fox & Friends,” Ashaki TV, NOVA TV, BBC’s “Morning Show,” and most recently on “The Montel Williams Show,” advocating for the removal of the Bush Regime. She has been featured in numerous New York area newspapers, as well as national radio talk shows, and writes at Op-Ed News.
David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com and co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and of the Backbone Campaign. He serves on a working group of United for Peace and Justice. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign. His website is davidswanson.org.
Endorsed by:
Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild
Progressive Democrats of Illinois
Northside Chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America
Chicago Area Code Pink
Are you guys really drinking this “Vitamin Water” shit? If you are, please stop. Despite the marketing that would suggest that you’re drinking regular bottled water that’s been “enhanced”, it’s really just Kool-Aid with a multivitamin in it. Take a look at the ingredient list for “Charge” :
Just like any other soft drink, the first two ingredients are water and sugar. Here’s what the trade group “The Sugar Association” says about “crystalline fructose” :
Crystalline fructose is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup.
Now if that corn syrup were of the “high fructose” variety instead of being “fructose-enriched”, would it stop being a health drink?
Even more revealing is how Glaceau (and parent company Coca-Cola) use the oldest trick in the book to blur the drink’s nutritional value :
Serving size: 8 fl oz, Servings per container: 2.5; Amount per serving: Calories: 50;
Which, assuming you aren’t one of the few who only drinks 8oz of the 20oz bottle, gives you a calorie count of 125 (barely more than Coca-Cola’s 140 calories per can).
On their website, Glaceau’s slogan is “hydrate responsibly”. Good idea. You can start by avoiding this over-hyped sugar water.
Tony Soprano didn’t just get whacked; he practically got a funeral
Finally saw the Sopranos finale last night.
My opinion: Tony didn’t just get killed, kids; if you were watching closely, David Chase seems to have even given him a traces of a good Catholic funeral at the end.
Want your curiosity piqued? In Catholicism, the administration of the Eucharist to the dying is known as Viaticum, derived in part from the Latin word for… “Journey.”
Ohh, doooon’t stop… belieeeeevin’…
Utterly unimportant show business fluff. But it’s the weekend, and I’ve been working my ass off on another upcoming book. So, well, there.
During the first Democratic debate, Mike Gravel mentioned that of his fellow Democratic candidates, “some of these people frighten me”. Well, you know what frightens me? This video released by his campaign (via TPM Cafe):
Oh my god…Presidential candidate Mike Gravel is trying to penetrate my brain. My mind is slowly beginning to melt….
It’s starting to hurt now….
The tiny pieces of my brain still left can only concentrate on one thing….
U.S. envoy to mideast on Palestinian civil war: “I like this violence”
So Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian government today, with US approval. Here’s State Department spokesman Sean McCormack this afternoon, publicly decrying violence in Gaza:
…we haven’t seen the spread of violence in the West Bank and I think everybody’s glad for that and everybody’s pleased for that. Nobody wants to see violence.
Yes, the US sure hates all this violence!
Here’s Condoleezza Rice, speaking in public on February 15, 2007, after Fatah and Hamas agreed in Mecca to form a unity government:
Americans did not want to see Palestinians killing Palestinians. Palestinians should be living in peace among themselves and with Israel. And I know how difficult it was to watch the violence and to watch innocent people lose their lives. And so the calm, the hopes for a ceasefire between the Palestinian factions, that’s something we very much support.
This violence! We hate it!
Now, here’s David Welch, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and US Envoy to the Middle East, speaking in private several weeks before Rice. This appears on p.21 of the leaked report (pdf) by Alvaro de Soto, former UN coordinator for the Middle East:
…the US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fateh and Hamas — so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence”, referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas”.
