You Get What You Deserve

Hillary Clinton, the former first lady will most likely win the Pennsylvania Primary on Tuesday, but probably not by the crushing margin she had thought six-weeks previous.

Barack Obama the Senator from Illinois is poised to win Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota in the weeks ahead, and by June 3 all the contests will be over. At the end of all the nominating contest he will be ahead in overall delegates, pledged delegates, the popular vote, states won, and he will still be polling better against John McCain than Hillary Clinton.

History will judge Hillary’s campaign for the White House as a failed experiment in girl-power. Looking back on the past twenty years it will be clear that the Spice Girls did more to promote a positive view of feminism and woman-empowerment than Mrs. Rodham-Clinton.

It's better for womankind though that the first female nominee for President from a major party not be the spouse of a former President. It's not just because it is a formula for defeat but because it would be regarded by the masses that the first woman to have a serious shot at the White House would only have had made things happen by virtue of nepotism and a certain sentiment of socially engineering affirmative action enabled by a certain core constituencies of the Democratic Party.

To be fair though, Hillary Clinton is in many ways a better candidate than most of the choices that were available in 2004. But in this most recent contest the fiery populist John Edwards 2008 (2.0) was a far superior product to not only the establishment hack Hillary Clinton, but also to the establishment lightweight John Edwards of 2004 (BETA). But what is most important is that Senator Barack Obama is better than them all.

It's no wonder Hillary is out for blood. She knew that in 2004 a White House run would have started in haste and ended in disaster. She would have lost as badly or worse than John Kerry. She had all along been counting on a John Kerry defeat so that she could have her time in the sun four years later. Even given the tragedy and disgrace that has ensued since November 2004, she would probably have still been crossing her fingers that John Kerry would sink his prospects of winning by eating escargot and almond-crusted brie at a Red Wings game if it could mean she had a shot at George Bush's job in 2008.

However, she didn't count on the fact that the Bush Administration would implode the way it did. Even those of us who saw it coming didn't have a clear idea about the complete clusterfuck of an economy he would leave us with and how our energy crisis would have persisted completely unabated. Nor would we have ever predicted that Hurricane Katrina would have exposed such disgraceful poverty and governmental incompetence. We didn't know that the Jihad For Jesus would have made a giant stink about Terri Schiavo leading to a repugnant and repulsive government overreach that came to be known as "Schiavo's Law". In looks as though like Iraq, which is the greatest foreign policy disaster in U.S. History, is only one part of the dystopian story that has unfolded over the past 7 1/2 years.

Because Hillary Clinton didn't count on these things, she didn't anticipate that the 2008 electorate would shift in such a way that provoked people to do more than demand a replacement for George W. Bush. Rather, they have been inspired to demand a candidate who as President could deconstruct the institutions and thwart the culture of Government that have made the failures, corruption, and malice of the Bush Administration possible. Voters at the moment seem generally wise to the fact that you can't fix the problems of establishment hackery with another brand of establishment hackery. Indeed, they finally appear wise to the fact that you can't fix your cavities by switching from Pepsi to Coke.

It is this change in sentiment that inspires Hillary to so viciously assault Barack Obama. Her blood-lust isn't inspired by an aversion to the defeat of higher ideas, but rather her own personal defeat. She probably has a good idea that she isn't going to win the nomination in 2008 and she also knows that if Barack Obama wins in November that she wont be able to run in 2012 when she will be 65 years old. And thus she understands that such a victory of her opponent would be a nail in her political coffin, as she is unlikely to pursue the White House in 2016 when she will be 69 years old. She is biting, clawing, and throwing sand in Obama's eyes every chance she can get in an effort to soften him up for John McCain in an effort to preserve the faint possibility that she might be the party's nominee in 2012.

In 1958 former candidate for President Adlai Stevenson (perhaps the Al Gore of his time) said, "people get the kind of government that they deserve". The retrospective context in the time since Stevenson made those remarks reveals them as a cruel, damning, and perhaps completely valid assessment of American Democracy and the American electorate itself.

But maybe, just maybe this time the people will get both what they deserve as well as something good. Just Maybe.

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"Well, look, I find it amusing that those who helped to authorise and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.”

Sen. Barack Obama when several of his fellow Democrats critisized his remarks about his willingness to attack Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

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Hook-Up Culture
It's Not Such A Bad Thing.

"What we have seen in American culture is not the erosion of morality, but rather a culminating defeat against a negative social construct that punishes healthy human behavior."



The other day I was listening to Talk Of The Nation with Neil Conan. His guest that afternoon was Laura Sessions Stepp, the author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. Stepp denounces what she calls the "hook-up culture" as being poisonous for the emotional and mental health of women.

Has she considered that uneven expectations among ascribed gender roles is a boon for males and that in the end, it all balances out?

Seriously, my biggest problem with her supporting evidence is that she uses case studies from stupid girls. By stupid girls I mean the ones that are easily manipulated by cunt-hunting club-hopping assholes who feign emotion and actively use deception for the purposes of sex acquisition. Perhaps fair criticism can be made about about the woman who particpate in such interpersonal fallacies, but it is not forgivable when some gel-haired douchebag preys upon a woman's emotional frailty to gain access to her Rosy Mound. Women have a responsibility to themselves to be more cautious and to learn the distinctions between earnestness and smarminess.When women are tricked into giving up sex under false pretenses, males too bare responsibility for their actions, and they deserve equitable admonishment.

* The website says that "The Rosy Mound is open year ‘round".

Stepp argues that women who are willing participants in the hookup culture contribute to a broader cultural phenomenon that facilitates a male’s ability to treat women like meat. The economic principles of the free market (or rather the free meat market) does tend to favor women who are kind enough to know that Blue Balling isn't a sport that men enjoy.

But Stepp refuses to acknowledge that there are many emotionally healthy women who are willing participants in the hookup culture who want the same things as the male participants. A woman whom partakes in casual sex is not necessarily being tricked or duped; a male does not necessarily have to propose false pretenses to convince a woman to enter a mutually beneficial sexual arraignment.

I happen to believe that people in this generation who are in their 20s value emotionally healthy relationships with reciprocal respect and admiration at least as much or perhaps more so than previous generations. But, I also believe that our generation appreciates the rarity of such premium quality human relationships.

We have grown up watching divorces; we have grown up watching dysfunctional relationships and broken marriages preserved for the wrong reasons. As a result, many members of my generation have high hopes and low expectations about what we can expect from a significant other, or at least many of us know that we can’t thrust upon one person all of our hopes for happiness and fulfillment.

Each of us wants to end up with someone who is right for us, but some of us are fine making due with less through our youth, especially since many of us are focused on career development and since many of us find ourselves enriched by platonic friendships.

Many folks these days accept the terms of less comprehensive romantic relationships the same way we might drive a noisy sub-compact through grad school with the hopes of one day owning a Mercedes Benz. For me personally, I see the emotionally healthy relationship not as a vehicle toward happiness, but rather as a destination along a rich and full life journey.

There looms another important question: If neither party is deceptive or misleading about his or her intentions and they both want the same thing, why shouldn’t they hook-up? For many, the hook-up culture is a welcome alternative to the joyless puritanical Youth Group culture American's endured through the 1950s and 1990s.

Bare with me. Courtships that center around a non-romantic and mutually beneficial sexual relationship existed long before the terms “hook-up”, “fuck-friend”, “bed-buddy” and other variations. But over the years, the viewpoint that sex and love can be different thing has become more prevalent.

Ms. Stepp appears to be totally closed to the idea that all along throughout our history that guys and gals have been pursuing primarily sexual relationships but ascribing erroneous meaning and false emotion to it for no better reason than to adhere to puritanical cultural expectations.

What we have seen in American culture is not the erosion of morality, but rather a culminating defeat against a negative social construct that punishes healthy human behavior. Attitudes are embracing the possibility that perhaps it is more healthy to go through life without the expectation that every person we kiss and every person we date is really a candidate for marriage.

Another problem I have with Stepp's argument is that she looks at the "Hook-Up Culture" through the lens of American culture. To apply narrowly embraced puritanical social values to a global phenomenon of human interaction is just as ignorant as touting American Exceptionalisim as a basis for regime change in nations that jingoistic sociopaths consider primitive.

Western Europe has more relaxed attitudes about sex and relationships and none of the hazardous symptoms of cultural demise that Stepp predicts for our own culture have yet taken place. In fact, the Euro is up along with foreign investment in the E.U. nations, so it appears that Dutch sex shows and horny Frenchman are not negatively impacting the value of European currency not has it caused the other half of the Western World to sink into Dante’s’ Inferno.

Inversely, many Islamic nations is the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia whom embrace values similar to Ms. Stepp remain, lets say, states of concern.

Thats right, I went there. Which side of the culture war are you on now?

Laura Stepp: In need of a good rogering.
Any volunteers?
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Continued From Part 1.(CLICK HERE)




Dave F.A.Q. Originally aired Friday January 12, 2007
© NBC News


Matt Lauer: What should we do about the war in Iraq?

David: This kind of escalation is not the answer. The only hope we have is securing Baghdad with a troop ratio from 3 to 1 to 5 to 1 like we had in the first Gulf War. This could allow the Iraqi government to operate without the threat of violence and it would allow the Iraqi police to recruit and appropriately train forces without being attacked. Increased troop strength does not guarantee success as it does not necessarily mean that the Government will be able to get its shit in order. Increased troop strength definitely will not end sectarian violence, it holds only the narrow possibility of allowing the Iraqi government to handle said violence on its own in the long term.

Matt Lauer: [Chuckles] That's nutty! Why don't we do that then?

David: Ultimately the troop strength would have been more helpful early on as it could have helped prevent the culmination of strength of the insurgency. The reason we couldn't do it then and we can't do it now is because the man-power just isn't there. Remember, the first Gulf War we had a coalition of 34 nations and the good will of the world behind us. The first conflict was much smaller in scale in terms of area and goals. Back then we were overturning an invasion, in this one we were ourselves staging one. Our need for and our inability to produce a large number of troops ultimately shows that Geroge W. Bush's arrogant unilateralism has led to the worst foreign policy disaster in American history.

Matt Lauer:: True but, who could have predicted this? No one, that's who!

David: You don't know the history of the Iraq War, I do. In a 2002 column I wrote,

"If the United States invaded Iraq, it would require more than the 600,000 troops (400,000 of them were American) used in Desert Storm. Indeed, if we stage an invasion, it may take up to a million or more troops to successfully decapitate the government and keep the peace." - Detroit Free Press, 10/16/2002

Matt Lauer: Whatever, dick. Why not just withdraw troops or redeploy?

David: Redeployment and withdrawal is what we probably should do right now, and ultimately what we will have to do. Just because that is the best idea, it doesn't mean that it is without consequences. It is popular to say that "Defeat in Iraq will be devastating for the United States." That is true, but thanks to Bush administration there really is no solution that will prevent such madness. It is what foreign policy experts call a "clusterfuck".

If we do a withdrawal or redeployment, the sectarian civil war will exacerbate and it will probably make Darfur look like Seattle. It will be similar to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The eventual Soviet withdrawal led to an insurgency, a rise in Islamic fundamentalist rule. From Afghanistan, extremist groups still train fighters and terrorists to cause Russia major problems in Chechnya. Also, this was the base of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden whom operated in comfort to plan attacks on the United States.

A withdrawal will probably lead to a similar climate in Iraq. I am not saying we can prevent this in the long run, but I am saying this is a consequence of withdrawal. It would not be the fault of those who oppose the war and want a withdrawal, it would be the fault of those who supported the war and planned it poorly.

If we stay in Iraq and escalate, we are going to endure more casualties, inflame tensions with Syria and Iran, and we will further deteriorate our relationships with regional allies. To add insult to injury is it likely that the sectarian violence will ultimately persist. In the end, the scenario above will probably happen anyway.

Were are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Matt Lauer: You seem like a John Edward's guy to me.

David: Right now I can't imagine supporting anyone other than Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. I have reservations about the other candidates for the same reasons I had reservations about John Kerry in 2004.

Matt Lauer: Do elaborate.

David: While I worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign, I did not support him in the primary. I was worried about his electability, sure, but I favored candidates like Howard Dean and Wesley Clark because they had good judgement that going into Iraq, and going in the way Bush wanted us to go in would be a colossal mistake. Guys like John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton made the popular decision to support the war in 2002, and now they are making the popular decision to oppose the war in 2007 in anticipation of the Iowa Caucus. Obama is only decent candidate to have the same wisdom that I did as a junior in college when we both laid out our case against invading Iraq.

Matt Lauer: I was the first guy to call Iraq a civil war, did you know that?

David: That is not exactly true, you announced that NBC would now characterise the sectarian violence in Iraq as a civil war. I guess that it is a good thing you call it that, because even if you did not call it that, that is still what it would be.

Matt Lauer: [Shuffles papers, stares confidently.] I also told Roker to get the gastric bypass. Why do you keep a blog and why didn't you just revive your old one?

David: I keep a blog because I have long been looking for a creative outlet that allows me to be full faceted. My old blog was all political stuff, and it was a catalogue of my writings, speeches, and policy positions. This blog touches on politics, but it also allows me to do social commentary. There was no room for fiction, metaphor, or humor in the old blog, and I wanted to dabble in those things.

Matt Lauer: Tell me the story of that knife fight that you had in Chicago?

Check back soon for part 3!!!!!!

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