Archive for May, 2009
Something is DEFINITELY fishy in the MSM right now: Chicago press hits Hillary, while liberal loons praise her
We got another email from someone very politically astute who believes there’s definitely something strange up in the media right now, in terms of treatment of Hillary Clinton that we believe is coming directly from Rahm Emanuel’s talking points.
Here’s what the email to us said — and we’d love to have your comments and thoughts on it below. We agree there is SOMETHING strange going on, but don’t know exactly WHAT just yet:
“Dear HillBuzz,
Checkout video from MSNBC tuesday May 19 and monday May 18. Cause they talked about Hillary Clinton on both days. yes, always watch the enemy, Chris Matthews, to see what he says. Maybe you can attach video clip and fact check the names of the guys and pubs.
On Monday he had Roger Simon of Politico and Chris Cillizza (sp) of Washington Post. Everyone was singing Hillary’s praises.
On Tuesday, yesterday, he had Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker and a Mr. Cook (I think) of Mother Jones (I think, or else it was another very liberal publication) and he was probing whether there was a Clinton-Obama alliance cause the administration is so Clinton-filled. He also spoke of HRC’s political future and how great she is, they all said she is great, even, especially, the lib pub guy.
This is lots of Hill chat from MSNBC and the Tribune in one week (remember the story the Trib did where they claimed Clinton was off the reservation as Sec of State and had too much candor?). What is up? And why is that Trib dude the lone voice about Hillary being out in the wilderness and acting crazy (as Trib claims)?
Since you got lots of comments on the first post about the weirdness with the Trib article, folks might be interested to figure out why MSNBC was so Hill-friendly this week. “Laud her in liberal media, bash her in the Chicago Tribune.”
What the What?!?
Chitown Anon
ACORN whistle-blower Anita MonCrief has a site of her own
Check out Anita MonCrief’s blog on ACORN and tell us what you think.
We haven’t had time to fully explore it yet, so we’d like your opinions on both MonCrief and what she talks about. There’s so much for all of us to learn about ACORN, which we believe is the greatest threat to our Democracy. Every day we want to learn something new about these crooks and radicals and would like to have a daily column on it too, so people could follow along learning lesson by lesson what makes ACORN tick so we can strategize how to eliminate it once and for all (and also prevent it from reforming under some other name, which is usually what happens with groups like this).
Oh, snap! Sarah Barracuda smacks Dr. Utopia but good!
There are two things that help us wake up in the morning to face the challenges of the world:
(1) That Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is out there, somewhere, working her heart out to keep the world from falling apart and babysit the fools, loons, and kooks of this current administration as much as possible.
(2) That Sarah Palin is in Alaska, every day becoming more and more the woman we want to see run for the White House in 2012, doing her thing, taking names, and telling it like it is.
Hillary and Sarah, baby. What a wonderful world we live in. Somehow, we think the two of them are going to become great friends in time as well, because there sure are a lot of us from both sides of the aisle who love the two of them immensely.
Here’s the latest from The Guv, in barracuda mode the way we like her best, standing up for another good guy in the GOP, Chairman Michael Steele:
The transition from Candidate Obama to President Obama has been as predictable as Alaska’s winter snow.
We are witnessing actions that will lead to a monumental shift away from free market capitalism and the strong work ethic that built this great country. ’Change’ in this administration has meant rapid movement toward massive government growth, huge tax burdens on future generations, and an unprecedented reliance upon foreign countries.
Today, we learned that Obama’s decisions continue to impact Alaskans; while we as taxpayers now own General Motors, Obama closes another dealership – this time in Soldotna as more of Alaskans’ hard-earned money and jobs are lost to big government. Government should not be in the auto industry business. In Alaska, we have also seen a shift in federal priorities that threaten the loss of subsidized village healthcare services under the same candidate who led you to believe he’d insure all Americans. The inconsistent messages and actions are unsettling.
But we have another voice in Washington, DC – a man who understands what Alaskans believe: less centralized government control, restrained budgets, more opportunity for development, and fewer taxes. Today, we have a friend in RNC Chairman Michael Steele and his bold and courageous speech defines his leadership goals that will guide us all through this most difficult time for our nation.
- Governor Sarah Palin, 5/19/09
We. Love. This. Guv!
The United States Senate Needs Less Kennedys, Not More
The United States Senate needs LESS Kennedys, not MORE.
All that money, too cheap for a dentist.
It was bad enough that HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy thought she deserved to be a US Senator (because of all of her experience cutting the ribbons of new Armani stores, sneaking out for drinks at Japanese restaurants with Arthur Sulzberger, and rolling around in piles of Versace and Hermes silks at Bergdorfs to work up an appetite for foie gras on quinoa toast points at Pastis for lunch) and tried her bestest to snag Hillary Clinton’s vacated New York seat (I wants it! I wants it! I wants it! Do you KNOW who my, you know, father was? Do you KNOW who my uncle, you know, is? Do you KNOW how much people loved my, you know, MOTHER!).
Now, we’ve got another Obot Kennedy insisting on a Senate seat, but this time in Illinois, when we already have a perfectly good Democrat in the Senate working his heart out for us — a committed public servant and friend to all communities here in Illinois, Senator Roland Burris.
As far as we are concerned, there are three good Kennedys left: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kerry Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. And that’s IT, folks.
The rest of these people are horsey, out of touch, spoiled rotten, absolute loons. We know a lot of people who work at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, which Chris Kennedy treats like his own personal fiefdom. At one time, this was the largest commercial building in the world, complete with its own zip code, and sits like an art deco fortress on the Chicago River. And Chris Kennedy believes it’s his own private palace and playground. That’s Kennedy entitlement for you. Nowhere near what his cousin the Princess is like in person, but bad in its own right. We need less of this cockamamie Kennedy nonsense in the Senate, not more…especially in a state where we already have Mike Madigan as Speaker of the House, with his daughter Lisa Madigan as Attorney General (and the two of them constantly plotting and scheming together to elevate Lisa either to the Governorship or a Senate seat so the power-mad Madigans can officially become the Kennedys of Illinois). Plus, we’re burdened with Oprah here in Chicago too, the Charybdis of Lake Michigan, whose fiefdom at HARPO Studios is the only place more ego-driven and sycophancy-fueled than Chris Kennedy’s Merchandise Mart.
Meanwhile, Senator Roland Burris is working hard for the people of Illinois. ALL the people, not just the one with money that the Kennedys love. Instead of supporting a good man like Burris (who was behind the nation’s first anti-stalking laws, who worked hard to create baseball fields in Chicago so troubled youth could have something to do other than get involved in gangs and drugs, and whose work with the CPA societies helped increase government accountability in a bureaucracy WOEFULLY in need of more good men like him to hold the crooks accountable).
It’s going to be a surreal primary, because the White Houes wants to take Burris’ seat so they can install Alexi Giannoulias, one of Dr. Utopia’s “basketball buddies” in his old seat, which would be a rubber stamp for the White House. Chris Kennedy entering the mix is odd, since the Kennedys and Dr. Utopia are so completely in bed together these days that their futures are indeed inextricably intertwined (which is great news for all Americans, actually, depending on what happens in 2012: Dr. Utopia’s defeat could very well mean the end of the Kennedys, and there just aren’t enough hallelujahs imaginable for that). And then there’s Lisa Madigan, who realizes she can’t be governor now that Pat Quinn won’t give that up in Illinois, so she’ll have to settle for trying to be a Senator (I wants it! I wants it! I wants it! Do you KNOW who my father is? He’s Speaker of the Illinois House! I’m LISA MADIGAN and I wants it!).
Three terrible Democrats with deep pockets and the MSM propaganda machine behind them, all jockeying to take out a good man from the Southside without ANY money, who needs to defend against a pack of spoiled, rich, giants.
Well, we’re standing by Senator Roland Burris. It’s not the first time we faced down a spoiled, rotten Kennedy on this stie, and it sure isn’t the first time we’ve stood against Dr. Utopia and his Kool-Aid Gang (of which, interestingly enough, both Giannoulias and Madigan belong).
We’re rolling with Roland, and will continue to do so, Kennedys be damned.
Marco Rubio: this guy is going to be President or VP some day
Marco Rubio will be the first Hispanic President or Vice President some day.
He’s challenging Governor Charlie Crist in Florida for the Senate nomination and, unlike Crist, Rubio has no Orange/Green problems (orange, as in the weird shade Crist paints himself with Mystic tan and green, as in Iguana, and the various shenannigans that go on there in Tampa).
2020 sounds about right for Rubio.
He’ll be 49 years old in 2020.
It’s too bad he’s not a Democrat, because the DNC is MUCH, MUCH better at farm-teaming candidates for the future. Michael Steele admitted this here in Chicago when we met him: he said the DNC already knows who it wants to run in all races in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, possibly 2018. Republicans, however, don’t start thinking about a November election until February or March of that election year. And that’s why the GOP ends up with clown candidates like Rosana Pulido here in Chicago, and why Republicans don’t win statewide offices in a state that would be red if not for Cook County (Chicagoland). All it takes is another 4% in Cook County to win the state, but Republicans don’t even bother to try. And they certainly don’t groom and cultivate young talent the way Democrats do. Instead, they run rich ice cream and dairy heirs like that Oberweiss loon in the 14th Congressional, and not people who can actually win (so, in effect, the GOP surrendered a suburban Republican district to a bad Democrat because it keeps running rich, weird-looking, strange people with odd names when they could be fielding attractive, normal, hardworking, good people they just don’t bother to develop).
A lot of this goes back to what we said before about the Union League Club here in Chicago. That totally sums up the GOP in Illinois: let’s have an inclusive meeting at a place that excludes people, where we will sit around in khackis and blazers and be as stereotypically out of touch as possible, holding martinis and making sure there’s a VIP and Super-VIP section because it just ain’t a party lest there are parts of the room people with less than $28,000 in their checking account can get into.
File this all under free advice the GOP doesn’t listen to, from people who want to see them get their act together for 2012 (even if, after that, we don’t particularly care what they do, as long as good, moderate Clinton Democrats take back the DNC after Dr. Utopia is defeated).
But, Rubio is definitely one to watch. Not Jindal, not Crist, not Huntsman.
People like Sarah Palin and Marco Rubio and Michael Steele are the future of the GOP…if the GOP wants an actual future, that is.
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? May 20th 2009
930am – Testimony before Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State/Foreign Operations
130pm – Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Remainder of the day: being AWESOME
Go, Hillary, Go!
Bears Invade Chicago: IML 2009
This is one of those Boystown cultural things we share because probably 95% of you out there have no idea what IML or Bear Pride are, or why Memorial Day Weekend is always a very surreal time to visit Chicago if you are, say, a family of 4 from Davenport, Iowa headed to the big city for the first time, possibly with Grandma Emma in tow, not expecting to see so many assless leather chaps on Michigan Avenue.
International Mr. Leather (IML) is a leather convention/beauty competition held here in Chicago every year, where beauty’s typically accompanied by spontaneous exclamations of WOOF! (the absolute highest compliment anyone can get until Tuesday). Think Tom of Finland brought to life, and thousands of mild-mannered accountants, podiatrists, and actuaries donning their most polished and silver studded couterie. Every year, it’s held on Memorial Day Weekend at one of the fancy hotels downtown: this year, it’s the Park Hyatt. In previous years, it’s been the Palmer House Hilton. It is always a sight to behold.
Simultaneously, the weekend is also Bear Pride, which is a celebration of gay men (and those who like them) who don’t fit the typical Boystown mold: they’re older, hairier, and larger, with a definite and specific joie de vivre. They drink a lot of beer, eat at an absurd amount of cook-outs around town, and generally have an absolute blast. They laugh heartily, their energy is infectuous, and they pretty much turn Boystown upside down and pump a huge amount of money into the local economy.
What’s amusing is that all of this goes on every year out in the open all around Chicago, and it never fails to take the rest of the city by surprise. ”Why are all these people wearing leather? There sure are a lot of big men holding hands today. Is something going on? There must be some kind of biker convention in town.”
This is the first year any of us here at HillBuzz have understood IML or Bear Pride, because as those of us here turn 33 or 34 (or 35, in one case, not to rub that in), we’re starting to age out of the typical Boystown crowd (where, by 35, no one really wants anything to do with you). It’s a very time-stamped, superficial, dazzling little iron pyrite sort of world. As you pass 30, and start to see the new crop of fresh faces out there to replace you, you mature enough to appreciate the differences around you, and realize how awesome it is that people not accepted by the mainstream have confidence enough to celebrate themselves free of any shame or self-limitations.
Our good friend Panda came with us on a little boat trip last weekend on Lake Michigan and wouldn’t take his shirt off, even though the weather was great and everyone else was jumping in the water, because he said he has a hairy back and didn’t want to be embarrassed. So, he just sat there in the captain’s chair, with his can of Tab, looking all sad and lonely, while everyone else swam and had a great time. No one cared if he was Sasquatch under there, and he was totally amongst good friends, but Panda just couldn’t get passed the hirsute-issues society somewhere drilled into him.
And that’s what so great about these people who come to IML and Bear Pride: THEY DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK OF THEM. How awesome is that? They’ve got extra pounds. They’ve got hair growing out of places you don’t want to know about. They won’t ever win any traditional beauty contests, but dammit if they aren’t going to have their OWN contests at IML, where the best of Boystown wouldn’t even place a distant 112th.
You just have to love that.
We WISH we had more of this in us, but in a way 2008 and the primaries especially brought a lot of this out in the lot of us here. Everything awful Dr. Utopia’s followers did to us over the course of a year made us stand up with pride in who we are. Being a Hillary Clinton supporter in Chicago was not easy: white, “progressive”, liberals backing Dr. Utopia called us racists every day because we had on our HILLARY! buttons (and never took them off, thank you very much, right through to November 4th). At first, that stunned us so much we didn’t know what to do, but very quickly we learned to shout SEXIST! or HOMOPHOBES! right back at those clowns…who would, immediately and without fail, wilt on the spot and slink away, so unaccustomed to being yelled back at. Because that’s the thing with bullies: they talk smack a lot, but don’t know what to do when someone with confidence roars back. The whole PC-movement of the 80s and 90s deliberately created a generation or two of utter cowards, so afraid of being labeled a racist or whatever that those words have this magical power to shut people down and make them acquiesce to anything.
Well, you know what, we are never going to take that cockamamie nonsense ever again without shouting right back at whatever fool is hurling those insults at us.
And we realize that the Bears and Leathermen have this same spirit too. They are who they are. Sure, the twinks and Aberzombies of Boystown will make fun of them all weekend: but they better hope a bear doesn’t hear them, because, wowie, that little ignorant twink will get SCHOOLED in some manners by people older, smarter, and with better sense of humor who will just rip little Brendan and his frosty locks to shreds. Growl.
There are a lot of conservative people who often say things, even here in comments on HillBuzz, that they don’t have a problem with gay people, but that they have a problem with gay pride parades because “they are too showy and they put everything in our face”. So, that’s the kind of response things like IML get from some people, including us in the past. But, you need to understand where this all comes from. IML and Bear Pride, and the Pride Parade in June, are chances for people to be themselves in public, where they might have bottled up all this energy for a full year. It’s like Halloween in a way, for a very specific subgroup of Americans who get this one chance a year or so to really be themselves and not have anyone shout them down, tell them to shut up, or make them sit down. So, hence, the assless chaps and the flag waving, which might be ridiculous to you, but try and understand where it comes from.
Just imagine if it was socially unacceptable for you to go to church or play Monopoly, and those were the two things that you loved more than anything, but you felt like you always had to do them secretly, for whatever reason, but then one day a year there was a big mass you could go to or a giant Monopoly tournament you got to be a part of. You would be decked out in your choir robe singing hosannahs like crazy, or dressed up like Mr. Moneybags chasing after Boardwalk or Park Place with gusto. Because this was your one chance to celebrate yourself and the things you enjoy that other people constantly try to put under a bushel.
When you see drag queens out in public acting FABULOUS or guys trussed up in leather at something like IML, remember it takes a certain kind of courage for them to be out there, swimming against the tide, being themselves despite the stares and snide remarks. In the LGBTQ community, it was the drag queens and the leathermen who started the Stonewall movement. A drag queen actually threw the first punch at Stonewall, by some accounts, and started the push for LGBTQ rights that allowed a place like Boystown here in Chicago to exist in the first place. Guys out at Sidetrack’s cruising each other on a Friday forget this, if they knew it at all. But it’s true, and all Americans owe a debt to people of all walks, all stripes, who are bold enough to be themselves and not take anyone’s gruff without giving as good as they get.
We feel about drag queens the same way we feel about people who choose to spend all day in big box churches hooting and hollering and rolling on the ground, carrying on, being healed by the spirit or whatever it is they are doing. It’s all outrageous, outsized, and ten shades of ridiculous, but if that’s who these people are, then by golly we say go for it. You like it, we love it, as a sassy friend of ours named Gale used to say. Be a raving fundamentalist loon if that is who you are inside, and be comfortable being that person in public around others like you. Be an over-the-top sparkle-sassy drag queen if that’s who you want to be, and be FABULOUS as you wanna be.
Hell, the current First Lady of the United States wore a monstrously drag-inspired Wilma Flinstone costume made from old coffee filters to the Inaugural Ball, a dress designed by drag costumer Jason Wu, most famous for gowns made for the fabulous drag diva RuPaul and transsexual Amanda LePore. So, if Mrs. Utopia can celebrate drag in the White House like that, how can any American look down on men who sometimes dress as women, or women who choose, on a daily basis, to dress like men who dress as women?
IML and Bear Pride are reminders of how important it is for people to be themselves. None of us here at HillBuzz own any leather, aside from belts and shoes, and none of us would ever dress up in Wilma Flintsone costumes, no matter how vociferously the current First Lady recommends them, but we’re not about to judge people whose boats this floats. Let your flags fly, people. Be who you are and make us all hella proud of you.
Life’s short. Coming from places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Detroit, and Milwaukee and moving to Boystown, we never forget how spoiled we are in a city and gayborhood where we can be ourselves without any of the fears, resentments, or general small-minded nonsense we dealt with for, in some cases, almost 30 years back home. Being afraid to show even a glimpse of your true self in a place like Cleveland, where you’d be beaten to a pulp by townies isn’t the way to go through life. The drag queens and bears have always battled against this by being in-your-face with who they are. We like to think those of us here are battling that ignorance and prejudice in our own way, by running pieces like this that might get some of you out there, of the more conservative bent, to just think about your knee-jerk reactions to things.
Say you’re in Chicago this weekend and suddently realize 2/3 of the hotel you’re staying in is packed with leather-clad dentists and furry opticians woofing it up for IML. Do you grab Grandma Emma and high-tail it to the minivan to burn rubber back to Davenport — or do you head down to the bar and have a beer with the bears, and maybe buy Emma a leather, silver-studded biker cap of her own? ’Cause, honestly, Grandmas can surprise you — and when the music’s playing and the good times are flowing, people who thought they had nothing in common can have an uncommon amount of fun together, which is the whole point of being yourself and accepting others for who they are too.
WOOF!, indeed.
Wednesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
(1) If you are in Chicagoland, head over to PieHole Pizza on Halsted and Roscoe for the best deal we’ve seen in a while: it’s all-you-can eat pizza with unlimited fountain drinks for $7.99. The pizza’s the best in the city, in our opinion, and a large is normally like $24, so it’s a great way to still have pizza night but do it on the cheap, big time. Plus, it’s fun to eat at PieHole and not just order in or get takeout. PieHole is this funky little hole in the wall right off Halsted in Boystown, where all the bars are. They have a little bar in PieHole but no one there’s an actual bartender, so anything more complicated than a shot leads to hilarity. One time, we were in there and someone asked for a White Russian and the girl behind the counter, with zero irony, said, “That’s just racist.” The customer said, “No, it’s a drink”, and the girl said, “I’m going to have to look in one of these books we have back here to check on that, because I still think that’s racist.” She flipped through the brand-new, seemingly-never-used bartender’s bible and incredulously said, to no one in particular, “Well, I’ll be. There are all kinds of drinks in here that I’ve never heard of, and it tells you just how to make them. We don’t have most of this stuff though, but it sure looks fancy!”. You just have to love that.
If you have any good deals in your town, please share them as well. We are all about saving money these days, and so we’ve been having fun getting creative and scoping out the best deals in Chicago. We’d love to hear what you do for fun on the cheap where you live too. Sometimes, you can’t just talk about politics, but also need to give each other these kinds of tips too. We will never be as good as our friend Abbey is at stretching a dollar, but even here in Boystown we know a good deal when we see it.
(2) Michael Steele’s remarks to the GOP…read this today…essentially what he’s been saying on the road in places like Chicago where we heard him speak. Great stuff, and why we couldn’t agree with him more. Steele is a smart, smart man.
(3) This is worthy of an essay of its own, but until we can get to it, here’s an article about Dr. Utopia now owning the auto industry and dictating what cars should and should not be made. Here’s the question we have: what happens when consumers don’t want the junky little cars this administration wants them to build? Have you seen those little SMART cars zipping around? They are ridiculous. And that’s coming from a bunch of average-sized gay guys who are supposed to be the target market for zippy little cars. We might not have become economists, but all of us had Econ-101 as a high school and college requirement: if people don’t want to buy these cars, and if US automarkers only make these cars, people will be buying the cars they want from someone else. Watch the Germans, Japanese, other Asian car makers, or even the Brits set up shop in Mexico to make the cars US automakers are no longer allowed to make = the cars Americans actually want to drive.
Must See TV tomorrow: O'Reilly cracks ACORN
Heads-up everyone: tomorrow night, Bill O’Reilly will be airing his report on ACORN’s funding sources.
Please watch it and report back on what O’Reilly says. We’ll have a thread up about this tomorrow too, but we want to make sure you set your VCRs, TIVOs, or whatever other gadgets you have to hear what O’Reilly has to say. He and Glenn Beck are the only two in the media digging into ACORN right now.
This all leads back to the White House and the current administration…if Republicans don’t allow what happened in the 2008 elections to go away, there are a great many twists and turns this could take that make burglars in an office building in DC in the 70s look like small potatoes indeed.
Here’s hoping O’Reilly really cracks this nut.
They Came in Peace. They Offered HOPE! They Lied.
Are we talking about Dr. Utopia’s 2008 campaign, or space aliens on television?
You decide.
The fascinating thing about this V remake on ABC for the fall is that about half of what we read online about it agrees with us, that space lizards selling HOPE! and CHANGE! while secretly working hidden agendas to take everything valuable Americans have sure feels like the current administration in Washington. But, on leftist sites, this V remake makes them think of Republicans. Why that is, we don’t know, but it’s interesting two groups see something totally different in the same 80s remake show.
Hope it’s a hit…and hope it makes it to Hulu for those of us who’ve gotten rid of our TVs.
