Archive for December, 2008
Catch you on the other side of 2009
Most of us are headed to a fundraser for Equality Illinois tonight, so we’ll catch you on the flip side tomorrow. We close out the year anticipating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s imminent confirmation as what’s shaping up to be the most powerful Secretary of State in generations. Our very own Wonder Woman answering the call when the world needs her most…in our favorite video of 2008:
Here's a great way to ring in the New Year: crying RACISM!, RACISM!, RACISM! some more
Obviously reading from the Obama campaign’s well worn and successfully employed playbook, Bobby Rush and others supporting Governor Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of black former Attorney General Roland Burris to fill Obama’s Senate seat are today loudly screaming RACISM!, RACISM!, RACISM! at those in the Senate, like Harry Reid, who claim they’ll refuse to seat Burris next week when Congress reconvenes from yet another prolonged vacation.
You damn dirty RACISTS!
Racists one and all!
Now, we have to say, we’re conflicted this morning, torn in three separate and distinct directions as Bobby Rush embarrasses himself on the Today Show (which is hard to do, with Matt Lauer sitting there, normally excelling in that field himself). Rush, of course, has ramped up his RACIST!, RACIST!, RACIST! hue and cry, trotting out all the usual chestnuts: lynching, hanging, George Wallace, the cancellation of The Jeffersons, Angela Bassett not winning a much-deserved Academy Award for What’s Love Got To Do With It, you name it. Every imagined slight against blacks ever perpetrated is EXACTLY what’s being done to Roland Burris today, gosh darn it. It’s just that you damn dirty RACISTS! won’t admit it.
As Bobby Rush pointed out on CBS’s Early Show:
“You know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where schoolchildren — where you have officials standing in the doorway of schoolchildren,” Rush said. “You know, I’m talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Ark. I’m talking about George Wallace, Bull Connor and I’m sure that the U.S. Senate don’t want to see themselves placed in the same position.”
Rush is certainly a talented race-baiter to so artfully weave Byzantine links all the way back to 1957 Arkansas, from a Senate appointment made in 2008 Chicago. If race-baiting was an Olympic sport, Rush would be our Michael Phelps (mercifully, we hope, not squeazed into a Speedo). Way to go for the gold!
But, as we said, today we’re actually torn in several different directions over the Bobby Rush/Rod Blagojevich cabaret of chaos and race-baiting. Because we can’t stand Harry “tourists smell” Reid and all of this is making a huge mess for him, we snicker every time Rush gets in front of a camera and cries some more about RACISM!, RACISM!, RACISM!. There is just no way Reid will be able to politically or legally keep this threat to not seat Burris. It’s just not going to happen. And the more Reid tries to fight it, the more ridiculous he will seem, which further hurts his re-election chances in 2010.
So, for the first time in history, we’re actually enjoying all the RACISM!, RACISM!, RACISM! being tossed around so casually this New Year’s Eve. It’s HILLARIOUS to see the very same fools who sided against the Clintons when Obama employed RACIST! hue and cries against them in South Carolina covered in roosting chickens today. Reid should have called Obama out for using race-baiting in the campaign, and since he didn’t, race-baiting is available as a weapon against Reid himself now. Listen up politicians: if you allow this garbage to be flung at anyone, it will be flung at you sooner or later too. And the more damage this does to Reid and his political future the better.
So, in this sense, we revel in Rush’s outbursts and hope they are soon joined by the usual suspects in the Crying RACISM! Traveling Choir: the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Alcee Hastings, John Lewises, James Meeks, and Jeremiah Wrights of the world. With Christmas over and the carolers long gone, their harmony could be entertainment to carry us through the Inauguration.
But, on another hand, we do wish, collectively as a society, that we’d all FINALLY tell the black community to Shut. The. F***. UP. about RACISM! There will be a black president in the White House come January 20th. Black people, thus, can never cry about RACISM! holding them back ever again. Because if America was really the racist nightmare these opportunists and con men claim, then how on Earth did we end up with a black president? The further we get into Obama’s administration, the more we hope people out there start challenging the black community when they throw around RACISM! so casually, whenever they’re not getting something they want. We’re Catholic, so we know about guilt. Whenever we were kids and our mothers would want us to do something we didn’t want to do, they’d work a sigh and a hand to their backs to complain about how hard the labor was to birth us, and how much they wish they had the help, because ther backs still hurt, after all these years, from the day we were born. Catholic mother guilt like that worked every time. And the hue and cry of RACISM! works like a charm for blacks as well, because white guilt means many will bend over backwards to do whatever blacks want so no one can call them RACISTS!.
“Well, there’s a black president, so racism’s obviously not a problem anymore, so quit your crying,” needs to be said more and more often, with increasingly firm resolve to move passed white guilt and force accountability on the black community. We all need to grow up and change our tune sometime, and the days of playing race victims are officially over on January 20th when Obama puts his hand upon that Bible. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almight on that day we’ll all be free at last of the constant, careless, unwarranted, and opportunistic cries of RACISM!
And yet, we are torn in a whole other direction because not only are we thrilled Harry Reid’s getting a taste of Obama’s medicine while simultaneously wishing this is one of the last times blacks can cry RACISM! to get what they want, but we’re actually excited Bobby Rush’s guilt-mongering allows us to invoke one of our most popular tools of the primary and general election campaigns: because the only way we know to combat ridiculous charges of RACISM! is with gratuitous doses of hot guys in their underwear. Whenever blacks cry RACISM!, we gays send in the Speedo clad swim team…because there’s just no way to rationally counter the emotional terrorism race-baiting explodes into the air, so we might as well distract everyone from that ridiculous ugliness with beefcake hijinks of our own.
So, take this, RACISM!
Take that, Bobby Rush!
Get a new schtick, black community!
Because if you keep crying that everything’s always about your skin, we’re going to keep showing all of ours.
Proposition 8 and Rick Warren sure taught us what the black community and Obama respectively think about gays, so if you race-baiters want to bring it, consider IT BROUGHT in Boystown.
We guarantee we’ve got more shots of hotties in their undies than you’ve got race-conspiraces to cry about.
Don’t make us open up a can of fabulous on your sorry codependent Oprah-loving butts.
Resolutions
Can we all just agree on one thing? None of us are ever going to lose that last 20 pounds, or squeeze into those size 28 Dolce & Gabannas we rocked back in high school. It’s just not going to happen, people. The food in Chicago is just way, way too good (well, what’s left of it after Oprah’s finished, our beloved Lake Michigan babbling Charybdis).
So, let’s not waste resolutions on weight loss this year, because that’s just not going to happen.
Instead, let’s all resolve to do something that matters, and let that something be directed at closing the gaping partisan divide in this country.
We don’t know about you, but we’re a bunch of guys here in Boystown who were forever changed by Election 2008. We failed in our efforts to make Hillary Rodham Clinton the nation’s first female president. Though we are chipper and snarky as a rule here, you will never know how much this will always haunt us. Whenever we knock back too many Pilsners at Sidetrack’s, and the hour gets late, and we find ourselves alone walking home, past all the venues we threw fundraisers, phone banking parties, or held Team Hillary meetings in, we break our own rules and dwell on what could have been. IF ONLY. Could have. Should have. Would have.
Because she would have made a fantastic president. But, her friends here in Chicago tell us repeatedly that she’ll never run again — this was it, and that she won’t put herself through the sexist and misogynist grief again. She will work her heart out as Secretary of State for the next four years…and after that, who knows? Those in the know tell us there won’t be any more campaigns…but we’ll always hope for Team Hillary to rise again in 8 years.
Not that Team Hillary’s gone anywhere, or HillBuzz is going anywhere. We look forward to continuing our snarky take on politics going forward, from our vantage point as moderate Hillary Democrats watching American domestic and foreign policy closely, telling you what we see between the lines. Maintaing this site takes more work than most of you realize — which makes us laugh every time some troll makes their nasty little remarks. If you have so many opinions and can do things so much better, then start up TrollBuzz and show us all how it is done. Otherwise, grow up, and move out of your mother’s basement. Because you smell.
Besides resolving to keep improving what we do here (and committing to learning new skills like photoshop and flash animation that will allow us to move HillBuzz to an interactive .com or .net on our own server in 2009, once we figure out how exactly to do all of this), we also promise to keep working hard to force a moderate, rational Democratic voice into prominence on the net. For too long, the political conversation has been dominated by the polar fringes on both sides, while the nation sits more or less in the middle. Until this election, we wore our blinders like good little unthinking Democrats…always towing the party line, calling Republicans nasty names, unquestioningly doing whatever the Kennedys or Pelosis or Deans of the world told us to do.
Those days are gone.
Never to return.
When Democrats are right, we’ll say they are right. When Republicans are right, ditto. When either side is wrong or steeped in crazed, cultish megalomana, we’ll call the deserving parties out. Because this election proved to us, for the first time, that the Congressional Democratic caucus is no Hall of Heroes. There are good Democrats, and then there’s Harry Reid, John Kerry, Claire McCaskill, and other people we hate. And for all the Republicans on our bad side, there are members of the GOP we truly like and admire, like John McCain, George Voinovich, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and, most of all, SARAH PALIN.
That brings us to our biggest resolution of the New Year: we are going to do everything we can to make sure Sarah Palin wins re-election as Governor of Alaska in 2010. We’re even planning on heading up to Alaska to campaign for her in whatever way we can (and that’s so not because we want to go snowmachining with Todd, though we wouldn’t say no). And, we truly do hope she’ll run for President in 2012, when we’ll offer to run Illinois for her campaign. Team Hillary loves Team Sarah. For some reason, that drives trolls crazy, because the left’s trying its radical best to paint Palin in shades of Anita Bryant, but we see Sarah for who she really is: the only person we see on the field who has any chance of beating Obama in 2012.
Yes, Hillary is not Sarah and Sarah is not Hillary, but we are, in fact, allowed to like and support both of them for different reasons. Oprah’s allowed to like and devour both pizza and burgers, which are very much not the same, and no one’s critical of her ability to love both (because, really, it’s washing her butt with soap she doesn’t like, while all food’s top of the charts). We don’t agree with either Hillary or Sarah on everything, but we trust them both, and want to see them both succeed. When we wake up in the morning and feel especially lazy after too many Pilsners at Sidetrack the night before, we kick ourselves into gear remembering somewhere on the East Coast Hillary Clinton’s already kicking ass and taking names over something…and somewhere on the far West Coast, Sarah Palin’s doing the same thing, you betcha. In different ways, in different parties, on different coasts, but both with a burning love of this country in their hearts.
Here in Chicago, we resolve to continue doing our best to bring people who feel the same way together, and honing all of our campaigning skills for 2010 and beyond. We’re going to be the bridge in Boystown that makes Chicago’s Young Republicans and its Moderate Hillary Democrats see we all have more in common than the media leads us all to believe. Republicans and Democrats do not have to be the Hatfields and McCoys anymore. We can be friends. We can work together. We can make fun of terrible people in either party, with gratuitous slams on Oprah’s smelly butt to boot.
Because the biggest thing we took from campaigning this year was just how great the people of this country are. We went to 27 states for Hillary Clinton and John McCain combined, and phone banked into about 40 total. We had experiences we never dreamed we’d have, and met people in places we never knew existed. We’ve seen how good most people are at heart, and how stupidly party labels get in our way.
We’ll never call a Republican a vampire again…and we hope more than a few Republicans stop calling us Hildabeasts or Dumacrats too. The name-calling hasn’t gotten anyone anywhere. Neither has rehashing longstanding battles on social issues like abortion or gay marriage. For the next four years, can’t we table these two divisive battles, take a breather, and maybe work on saving our economy, getting us off foreign energy dependence, and creating an election process that’s fair, tamper-proof, and CREDIBLE. Among other things a first-ever true bipartisan movement in this country could achieve.
Once we’re all back on our feet, and the world as we know it’s no longer crashing around our ears, we can all go back to bickering and sermonizing on social issues…but for the time being, let’s set our sites on ECONOMIC ISSUES, and cutting the waste, corruption, and fraud out of our government.
Or maybe we moderates can ultimately bring about the CHANGE! Obama’s promised, which all of us know full well he has no intention of delivering.
We’re just a bunch of guys in Boystown who love Hillary Clinton (and now Sarah Palin too), who were activated and brought together by this campaign. We started this site to reach out to others who want to make a bipartisan difference…and think we’ve found a few of you out there. In 2009, we resolve to work hard, amp things up, learn new skills, and keep the snark flowing. And maybe lose those 20 pounds, too.
‘Cause the vintage Dolces in the closet are KILLER.
Happy New Year, everyone – from Boystown to your town.
Today in History: December 31st
1599 – British East India Company is chartered
1695 – Window Tax imposed in England (shopkeepers just brick up windows to circumvent it)
1775 – Battle of Quebec: American forces defeated by British
1857 – Queen Victoria makes Ottowa the capital of Canada (because she hates Canada)
1862 – Abraham Lincoln admits West Virginia (the best Virginia) into the Union, dividing Virginia in two
1879 – Thomas Edison displays incandescent light for the first time (forever allowing the little used pickup line, “Is that an incandescent light in your pocket, or do you just have an erection?)
1891 – Immigration depot opens on Ellis Island
1904 – First New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square (survivors are still drunk and cold to this day)
1923 – Chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on the radio for the first time
1946 – Harry Truman declares hostilities over in WWII
1955 – GM becomes first US company to earn $1 billion in annual profits
1961 – Marshall Plan ends, after distributing $12 billion to rebuild Europe
1983 – AT&T Mamma Bell system broken into regional Baby Bells by federal government
1987 – Robert Mugabe becomes president of Zimbabwe (pay attention: 80% chance US will overthrow him in the next 4 years under Obama…just watch)
1991 – All official Soviet institutions cease operations, dissolving last remnants of the USSR
1999 – Boris Yeltsin resigns, making Vladimir Putin President of Russia
1999 – United States hands Panama Canal over to Panama (Rod Blagojevich wonders why it couldn’t go to him)
2004 – Taipei 101 opens as tallest building in the world (depending on how you define “building”)
2007 – Boston’s “Big Dig” finally completed. Kind of. Not really. You so crazy.
Confirmation Hearings for the incoming Cabinet are being scheduled
According to Politico, Confirmation Hearings for the incomng Cabinet are being scheduled. So far, they’ve identified dates for:
Tom Daschle = January 8th, for Health and Human Services
Hilda Solis = January 9th, for Labor
Arne Duncan = January 13th, for Education
These are all under Senator Kennedy’s purview, as Chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It’s not clear if only one Cabinet member will be vetted each day, or if other Committee chairs will also hold hearings the same days Kennedy does.
We’re, of course, most interested in Hillary Clinton’s hearing and when that will be. We know it won’t be January 15th, because Clinton’s in New York that day for an event. Politico says the Senate wants to confirm the Cabinet as soon as possible, so on January 20th the new administration will be up and running. If more than one hearing can be held on a particular day, then we’d imagine Clinton’s would be fairly early — maybe even the 8th.
Not only are we looking forward to Clinton’s confirmation, but figuring out what date that will be gives us a clue into when Princess Caroline’s Senate quest comes to an end. Governor David Paterson has repeatedly said he will not announce Clinton’s replacement until she actually vacates that seat, and Clinton said she will not vacate until her confirmation as Secretary of State. So, the date of her confirmation lets us know how much longer Princess Caroline and others hoping for appointment to the Senate will have to wait to hear Paterson’s decision (and how much longer those wishing to stop Kennedy have to convince Paterson to snub America’s princess).
Sue, Vikki, sue (and we're not talking Robinson, here)
Vikki Iseman needs to take the New York Times to the cleaners. We personally take the Times out with the trash, after we’ve wrapped fish in it. And we don’t even eat fish. We’ll just buy it so we can rub it on the Times, since that’s what we think of that rag.
What the Times did to Hillary Clinton was bad enough, but what the Gray Lady of tabloids did to Vikki Iseman and John McCain was the last straw for us. Nothing would make us happier than to see the Times either go under, or be forced to become an online-only daily.
Caroline Kennedy’s boyfriend friend Arthur ”Pinch” Sulzberger’s financial mismanagement of the Times in recent years has forced the tabloid to put its lavish new headquarters on the line to cover its mounting debt, so Iseman might just get the Times’ last two dollars as settlement for character assassination and defamation. The Times claims it will prevail in this suit, but the guilty all say that. And then they quietly settle. The Times humiliated Iseman in its pro-Obama zeal…and now it’s time to pay.
We just hope Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher’s filing a suit of his own against both Helen Jones-Kelley and the state of Ohio as well…every innocent bystander attacked by either the media or Obamabots needs to hit back hard and take as many of these clowns to court as possible. Since people like Jones-Kelley and Sulzberger enjoy destroying people’s lives so much, maybe they should spend their time in depositions thinking about how misguided their efforts on behalf of Obama have been.
Delmarie Cobb discusses Blagojevich's Burris appointment on FOX Chicago tonight at 9pm CST
If you are in Chicagoland, you won’t want to miss FOX Chicago tonight at 9pm CST. Delmarie Cobb will discuss Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace Obama in the Senate.
Cobb is Chicago’s leading political consultant and best commentator on local politics affecting the black community. She tells it like it is, and made headlines this summer when Emil Jones called her “Uncle Tom” in Denver for supporting Hillary Clinton instead of Obama.
We are counting the minutes to hear what she has to say about Burris. We’ll update with our thoughts on what she has to say once her segment airs.
Must. See. TV.
Update: Delmare Cobb actually ran Burris’ last two campaigns for Governor and knows him well. Burris is a good man, a perfectionist, and is dedicated to doing good. He has always carried himself in such a way that nothing bad can ever come back to haunt him. Burris was Blagojevich’s SECOND choice to fill the seat, after Congressman Danny Davis turned the job down on Christmas Day.
We have to say — Burris really is a great choice. We know Delmarie Cobb and what she stands for…and if she’s behind Burris, so are we. And the fact all of this gives Harry Reid heartburn tonight is just gravy.
