Archive for May 8th, 2010
Thanks to everyone for putting us over the 9 million hits mark!
H/t Chrissy the Hyphenated
Thanks again to everyone for helping us pass the 9 million hits mark here at HillBuzz — in not even two years.
We can’t ever tell you how much your support means to us. To our regular daily readers, we hope you know how much you inspire us, how you give us the strength we need to grow and improve, and how much we love your feedback. We never could have made it this far without you.
And, honestly, thanks also to the Left for your constant personal attacks — you’ve made us a much bigger deal than we ever would have been without that added attention. Every time Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and other Leftist sites attack us, we get put on a bigger national radar…more people want to see why we upset you Lefties so much, and more people then take notice of us as an ally to fight against you. So, you actually do us a great deal of benefit every time you try to smack us down. You only make us stronger. You get us more attention. You re-energize all of us here to fight back against you harder. AND, most importantly, you inspire all of our tens of thousands of readers out there to stand up and help us fight back.
Probably a million or two, at least, of those hits have come in response to some attack from the Left. So, keep it up, Lefties! We aren’t going anywhere, and the more attention you give us, the stronger and better we become. So, in effect, you are creating your own nightmare. You keep encouraging us to do everything we can to take you down, to drive every Leftist from office, and to continue building stronger relationships with conservatives and independents to triangulate against you and drive the Left itself into the ground, utterly and completely defeated.
Your arrogance, blind irrational hate, group-think, and absurd devotion to your Lightbringer is only destroying yourselves.
Great strategy, guys!
Conservatives do themselves no good by attacking gays — you are throwing away allies every time you allow this to happen
This is another instance of breaking the Fourth Wall, but we want to share something that happens consistently to us that we’re just incredibly puzzled by, since we don’t see how behavior like this helps in any way to remove the current president and his corrupt party from power.
That’s our goal, see, and it’s something we are putting everything we have into. We put everything we had into stopping Obama from becoming president from 2007-2008 because we knew what he would do to this country. We did everything we could to stop him in the primaries. We put aside all of our preconceptions and personal bad feelings for the Republican Party and started up Democrats for McCain efforts — in Chicago, of all places — to do all we could to stop him from winning the general election. Post-election, we’ve done everything we could to rally as many people out there as possible to thwart his insane plans as much as possible. We do this because we love this country and do not want to see it go backwards — or, worse, to fall into ruin like Greece or other failed European, South American, or African states, the way this president wants the United States to become “just one of 190 countries in the world”. We truly believe this man wants to abdicate America’s, and the West’s, supremacy in the world…which benefits only this country’s enemies, most especially the would-be Global Caliphate of Islam.
So, we’ve put everything on the line to do everything we can every day to defeat Democrats in the coming November elections, always with an eye on making sure Obama does not get a second term in 2012. The Democrat Party needs to be taken down, completely destroyed, with the Earth salted so that Leftists can never again have so much sway over our government.
To say we are pretty committed is an understatement. These efforts have cost us everything, but it’s all worth it if we can help in any way to foil Obama’s plans.
So, considering all of this, it’s head-scratchingly bizarre that we are routinely attacked not just by the Left (which has reason to attack us), but the Right as well.
We’ve told you this before, about threads we read on Redstate and Ace of Spades, where moderators allow anti-gay comments to flourish — and there’s a decision made behind the scenes, clearly, to allow homophobia to run rampant on sites such as these which have a policy of banning people who bring up Birtherism or Trutherism and other things Redstate and Ace have decided they do not want to be associated with. So, when comments that are anti-gay are allowed to stand, while others are purposefully removed because they embarrass those sites, we have no other conclusion to draw other than Redstate and Ace believe homophobia is hilariously funny and something they want to embrace with relish.
It’s the same garbage over at Free Republic as well. Check out this thread, where someone posted a link to the Ann Coulter piece we did a few days ago.
It is almost instantly filled up with the most sophomoric, vile anti-gay jokes and sentiment imaginable.
Thankfully, some commenters scolded those responsible, but there really is a sickness amongst some people who call themselves both “religious” and “conservative”, who enjoy posting pictures with a “fudge-packing” theme.
We’d like to address this for a minute, while also giving some pushback to the apocryphal meme on the Right that enjoys attacking PUMAs and paradoxically blaming us for a McCain defeat in 2008 (when more Democrats voted for McCain than voted for Reagan in 1980…meanwhile, 6 million Republicans sat their sorry butts home because McCain was not “Reagan” enough for them, so they allowed what they claimed would be “Carter II” to become president, insisting he wouldn’t “be that bad”. Jackasses).
First of all, if you, in the year 2010, are making fudge-packing jokes, there’s a 99% chance you are gay yourself and either won’t admit it, are terrified of someone figuring you out, or you are too stupid or too much of an alcoholic to accept your own reality.
Those jokes aren’t funny, guys. Maybe they were before the advent of the internet, television, or even the radio. Maybe they were funny before people could read and write. Heck, there are people out there who think Carrot Top and Cedric the Entertainer are funny, so it’s true there is no accounting for taste. But, posting a picture of a fudge-factory to randomly take a swipe at gay guys — WHO ARE ON YOUR SIDE — is just so pointless and counterproductive.
Just how gay are YOU that you need to seize every possible opportunity to take a smack against someone else who’s gay?
Because we picture you sneaking into your mother’s basement, where you still live, at 42, and gingerly pulling back the old plaid blanket you use as a room divider. You creep behind the curtain and carefully unstack piles of Sports Illustrateds and Playboys you use as camouflage, to reveal hidden plastic milk crates full of all your treasures: the complete collected works of Barbara Streisand on mint-condition vinyl, vintage muscle posing strap catalogs from the 50s, your Charlie Crist for Senate campaign memorabilia, and an admittedly impressive collection of My Little Ponies. You won’t admit to your mother or anyone else that you are secretly gay, and you think nobody on Earth knows about your secret stash. You honestly believe no one suspects the reason you don’t have a girlfriend is that you “just haven’t met the right one yet”, and you think people really buy “it’s the economy, and I’m just saving up for a downpayment on a place” as the reason you still live with your mother. At 42. In her basement. While playing with dolls.
So, of course, to deflect attention off yourself, you seize every opportunity available to you to “rag on dem fags”. Hence, your fudge-packing photos.
What a clear sign of projection.
Which also ties into the weird attacks on PUMAs that still turn up on sites like Free Republic.
John McCain would be president today if 6 million Republicans hadn’t sat their sorry butts home on Election Day 2008, “to teach the GOP a lesson”. It’s as simple as that, folks. He lost states by the slimmest of margins because Republicans did not give him the support they gave to George W. Bush in 2004. Meanwhile, more Democrats crossed the aisle and voted for McCain/Palin than ever before in history. There were more Democrats for McCain/Palin than there were Reagan Democrats in 1980. We at HillBuzz are not anomalous. In every state where we have friends and family, people who voted Democrat blindly their entire lives pulled the lever for McCain/Palin and thus cast a Republican ballot for the first time ever. It was an immense culture shock to do so — like an all expenses paid sojourn to BizarroWorld in many cases, but we did it.
George Soros and the others behind the September financial meltdown gave Obama a lock on the election — when coupled with those 6 million conservatives who sat on the couches, in their diapers, and refused to vote for McCain. That is established fact.
Obama did not win, as the MSM loves to insist, because of an overwhelming surge of black, college-age, and first time immigrant voters that will guarantee Democrats a permanent majority forever. That is Orwellian propaganda from the Ministry of Truth, aka, our agenda-driven national media. Obama won because conservatives let him win. Conservatives dropped the ball and sat their sorry butts home.
You can continue to bizarrely attack Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote for McCain all you want, but you look insane doing it. Your argument is untenable and ridiculous, and goes something like: ”It’s all those PUMAs fault. There weren’t enough of them to make up for the 6 million conservatives who didn’t vote, so I hate PUMAs and gays are all fudge-packers and uh, Ma, I’m on the Internet, leave me alone, NO! I don’t want any more Fruit Roll-Ups. GEEEEESH!”.
You are a closeted gay male who is self-hated, so you project this by posting “fudge-packing” photos attacking gays.
You are a loser conservative who sat his ass home in 2008 “to teach the GOP a lesson” and now realize how mentally ill you were, so you project the contempt you feel for your self and your incredibly poor decisions on Democrats like us who did everything we could — at immense persona cost — to stop Obama from becoming president and destroying this country.
What did you do in the 2008 campaign to help Republicans win? We bet you sat your ass on the couch, or maybe you spent your time on message boards telling other conservatives they should stay home on election day “to teach the GOP a lesson”. That’s been your ridiculous, pathetic little mantra for umpteen years now. And yet, you have no idea how intensely foolish you are…because the DNC is what’s always been encouraging that garbage. It only helps the Left to think that way, or to do off on one of your insane third-party Libertarian jags. ”Keep it up”, the DNC cheers, “this is how we keep winning elections when only 20% of the country is Liberal, but damn near 60% of the conservative base is foolish enough to fall for this amateur hour garbage!”.
We’d like to see a day when Redstate, Ace of Spade, Free Republic, and other conservative sites wise up and start policing their comments and content for anti-gay attacks, the same as they moderate for racist jabs. We’re 100% positive posters would be banned for making racial jokes, using the “n-word”, and posting images relating to anti-black stereotypes. The fudge-packing tripe was acceptable to sites like this, but we’re sure pictures of watermelon eating contests or lynchings would be verboten. As they should be.
The real irony in all of this is just how much damage conservatives do to themselves by attacking gays — and they don’t even realize it.
Lesbians, in particular, are naturally conservative, but the Right doesn’t realize this. Ever go shopping with a lesbian? It’s an all-day, sometimes all-week process, to find the best deal on something. Lesbians will drive hours out of their way to save $10 on something, if they calculate the gas mileage and wear on the car comes out to $7.00 or less for the trip, if they net a $1.50 savings at least on that item, they are buying it clear across town. They are like this with everything. It’s amazing. They honestly should be Republicans — every last one of them, from Ellen down to Rosie with every lesbian in between. Republicans one and all.
The reason they aren’t Republicans is because they don’t feel welcome in the GOP, because of the very loud and vocal anti-gay contingent, particularly those that call themselves “religious”. So, women who should be voting their economic best interests…who should not be paying enormous taxes as property owners to fund the graft and corruption that benefits only the black community and other Democrat pet voting blocs (because, face it, the DNC does not send any money to lesbians, and does not fund any largesse in the LGBTQ community…which is an island left to fend for itself at all times)…consistently vote Democrat because they don’t really have another option.
People making those fudge-packing, anti-gay remarks take that option away from them.
The same is true for gay men, but they are not as sensible and financially savvy as lesbians. Gay men don’t care what happens to their money, by and large, and often spend their entire paychecks the weekend of pay day. We wish that wasn’t true, but it is. So, before they can vote in their economic best interests they need a better handle on economics in general. What keeps them voting Democrat is the fact that Redstate, Ace of Spades, Free Republic, and other sites keep reinforcing all the boogeyman stereotypes the Left puts out about Republicans. 99% of gay men believe everything they hear Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann say on TV. ”Republicans are evil, Brenden, I heard it from some guy who saw it on TV.” ”Oh, I know, Brenden #2, they are so evil. I heard from someone who said he was told by the guy at the Starbucks, you know, the really cute one, that those religious people hate us and make those fudge-packer jokes, and so I just hate them back and anyone who is gay that votes Republican is a Jewish Nazi”. ”Oh, Brenden, that’s totally deep.” ”I know, right, Coop said it the other day, and he’s just totally dreamy”.
We wish we were kidding. That’s practically an actual conversation in Boystown.
Gay men don’t stop to think about how much voting Republican would benefit them, because the Left has effectively prevented them from ever considering the option by promoting the meme that gay men voting GOP are “Jewish Nazis”…and are only giving support to the ignorant, bigoted, loudmouth, “religious” idiots like those posting that fudge-packing photo.
So, every time a conservative lets one of these people get away with that garbage — and every time Redstate, Ace, or Free Republic allows a photo like that to be displayed and an attitude like that to stand — you are only helping the Left.
We could write 25,000 more words on the subject, and we still won’t be able to come up with any way to get that to sink in for those of you out there who are either too stupid or too blind to realize this — BUT YOU ARE CONSISTENTLY ALIENATING NATURAL ALLIES WHEN YOU ALLOW HOMOPHOBIA TO STAND UNCHALLENGED IN CONSERVATIVE RANKS.
2008 proved, definitively, that a few votes here and there make all the difference in the world.
We all know nothing will ever magically increase the intelligence of conservative voters who choose to sit home and let someone like Obama win, because they want “to teach the GOP a lesson”. These people have serious mental problems if they really believe that’s what they are accomplishing. You might as well just consider those fools to be Democrat votes all along.
BUT, we truly believe in 10-15 years a sizable portion of the LGBTQ vote could indeed be going to the GOP — if only these ignorant bigots would stop handing these votes to the Left by encouraging and promoting the stereotypical hate the Left uses to paint conservatives as boogeymen.
There is truly no reason on Earth for a conservative to ever attack us here at HillBuzz.
If your goal is to stop Obama, then we are on your side.
If your goal is to defeat every Democrat in office currently, then we are on your side.
If your goal is to see Sarah Palin in the White House, then we are on your side.
If you’re one of those khaki pants and blue blazer little Romney punks, then we’re kind of your worst nightmare because we’re going to make sure he, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, and other cucumbers-and-mayonnaise bland losers do NOT get the GOP nomination.
But, if you’re a firebrand, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face, boot-the-socialists-from-office conservative, then we hope you have sense enough to accept an ally that’s not only ready and willing to fight to the end — but who is battle-tested, field-trained, and runs a daily operation with readership in the tens of thousands and is laser-focused on defeating the absolute worst president this nation has ever had.
Attacking us is counter productive.
We understand the hits we take from the Left on a daily basis — clearly, we are effective on some level, or they would just leave us alone and ignore us. The fact we’re such a high target for them must mean we’re doing something right.
So, it makes no sense for the Right to take punches at us too.
We really wish those of you out there who frequent Redstate, Ace, and Free Republic would put a stop to that garbage. Trolls can indeed be banned. They should be banned.
If your goal is to win in 2010 and in 2012, we just can’t see the logic in alienating any allies…and, longterm, we just don’t understand why you want to keep throwing away the LGBTQ vote when the only thing you have to do to start winning it is to just stop the sophomoric hate and insipid anti-gay jokes.
That’s it.
Cut that crap out, initiate zero tolerance policies towards it, and win more elections.
It is that simple, folks.
Chicago Fire Chief Retiring — more to the story than is being reported
John Brooks, Chicago’s fire commissioner, is retiring…out of the blue…and the media here in Chicago says it’s because of some sexual harassment suit that’s been brought against him.
Which is weird, because Brooks is often seen at The Lucky Horseshoe in Boystown, so unless he was sexually harassing a male employee, we doubt he has anything to worry about when the charges against him are investigated. You would be surprised who turns up at the Horseshoe. The Chicago police chief is there quite a bit himself, and it’s not for license inspection or to ensure the dancers are covering up everything they are supposed to be covering.
This is such a strange town to live in sometimes, especially for people like us who try to stay as active and involved as possible, and keep our eyes and ears open. The media here never reports the actual news — it’s like they just write fiction in Bizarroworld.
Or, it often feels like episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the Scoobies catch a Sunnydale newscast, and the demon and vampire activities are all blamed on street gangs…and the giant hole that opened when a monster tried to belch out of the Hellmouth is chalked up to a “sinkhole caused by sewer construction”.
As someone noted in the Open Thread, there was a bizarre murder-suicide at the Old Navy store on State Street today…which happens to be the Old Navy we all shop at. The Old Navy we were at just yesterday, in fact, the one next to Marshall Fields and across the street from Block 37 — which is one of Daley’s failed disastrous pet projects.
You’d think a murder-suicide would get some play, but checkout the Tribune site today:
As much as we love photos of hockey guys being awesome, a story about the Blackhawks should not trump a murder-suicide in broad daylight in an Old Navy on State Street.
That great street.
The street Daley is desperate to reinvigorate.
As a reader noted, it does feel like Daley’s been putting pressure on the media to clamp down on all stories about crime and violence in the city…especially near Block 37. This is one of the biggest boondoggles in Chicago history, and a story people don’t like to talk about for fear of enraging the Mayor-Emperor. Daley wasted close to a billion dollars on this pile of junk. It was supposed to be the station for a pie-in-the-sky pipedream for two massive underground superspeed rail lines connecting the Loop to the two airports here in Chicago. But, the problem is that the city is built on a marsh, below the water table. Not only would it require use of both Chunnel-digging excavation machines to dig the tunnels, but the hydrology issues involved would cost hundreds of millions to resolve, with an unsustainable financial burden in perpetuity to keep those tunnels dry ones the trains would start running, sometime in the 2030s or so, by the time this would all be completed.
Daley is counting on federal spending at some point in the future to build the tunnels. He’s already built the train station shell, at great tax dollar waste, and on top of that he built an eyesore of a retail complex…with few retailers at all interested in setting up shop.
The last thing Daley needs is for people to start thinking State Street is unsafe to visit…because for Block 37 to ever recoup any of its money, it needs to attract lots of visitors. That’s not going to happen if murder-suicide stories at Old Navy are what people associate with the street.
Hence, the Tribune seemingly doing whatever it can to bury the story.
Welcome to Sunnydale.
Who's Dressed Better? The First Spouse, or Two Grimaces Butting Heads While Out For A Shake?
With Mother’s Day coming, somebody better thank her momma for a butt like that.
Give her some fries for that shake-shake-a-booty, because if pants could kill, those would be an Uzi.
It’s a smackdown, who’s best dressed thang, between the current First Spouse and two Grimaces from McDonaldland out for a shake.
Who’s dressed better?
Who makes less of an ass of themselves?
Would you ever wear pants with eyes sewn into the seat that makes your backside look like, well, two Grimaces butting heads while out for a shake?
Whatever happened to Salt n’ Peppa anyway?
They had mad skills with those rhymes.
Why did you choose the Avatar you've chosen?
There was a request for a special thread to answer the question of how you chose the Avatar you’re using.
Ours is the red “Hot for Hillary” tees we all wore as uniforms during the 2008 campaign. These are all framed and hang in our apartments, and here at Buzzquarters, after being signed by all sorts of Hillary surrogates on the campaign trail (and Hillary herself, in most cases). Those tees went to 27 states between us, and clocked in a lot of event and travel time, countless hours of canvassing, and more phone banking than we’d ever care to do again (except for another Hillary run…or for Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann).
We all became friends in those shirts. We met so many people we’ve long respected and admired wearing them. We started HillBuzz, actually, in those shirts. So, that’s why we keep that particular avatar for HillBuzz on this site. We have no intention on ever changing it, because those red tees are part of our soul, our DNA.
What’s the story behind your own Avatar choice? Don’t worry about posting a pic of it, because as you answer the question, your Avatar will automatically appear with the comment. If it’s a photo, that makes it obvious why you chose it — clearly, it’s you — but there might be some special reason you chose THAT photo and not some other. It might be interesting to hear it.
If you don’t have an avatar of your own and don’t want one, maybe you could also explain why, too.
Some of you might not realize this, but every time you write something on here, and we read it, our understanding of the American (and sometimes international) public grows…and that makes us better at what we do…and it improves our logic, reasoning, and writing…and all that helps us build the mental muscles we’ll need to go up against the Left in the battle royale that is 2012. Even the littlest insights and bits of info contribute towards that greater goal in ways you might not imagine.
Great Merciful Zeus: If you are a fan of awesome, then get a load of Gabriella Sesito
Someone reach out to this woman and start backing her to run for office.
She should be on the City Council in Tucson, instead of some of those idiots sitting there now.
Who’s in Tucson who can start the ball rolling on this.
Go, Sesito, go!
Class vs. Crass: A History of First Spouses — Part One, Dolley Madison
Click picture to embiggen
We’re going to re-run the entire Class vs. Crass series, a history of First Spouses, with illustrations by Chrissy the Hyphenated. All of these great images, plus other Chrissy originals, can be found in The Golden Age of Hope and Change page above. We know the layout of this site is not the best, and when we’ve created a new site, things like this will be easier and more intuitive to find. Our focus is always on keeping up with the news and churning out original content, and we’re not tech guys, so it’s an excrutiating and difficult process to create a new site that truly meets all our needs.
In the meantime, we want to make sure the great work people like Chrissy have contributed to us gets as much exposure as possible, so hence the re-runs of this series. We might, actually, start folding these into the Daily Open Thread, and have them serve as the illustration for that post going forward. It would liven those threads up, and you’d get used to looking for great Chrissy artwork everyday. And, as the Class vs. Crass series continues to grow (it’s up to Part 11, Nancy Reagan, already), we’ll ultimately have more than enough to have a different image each day for at least a month…and more when the series starts awarding more than one post to each First Spouse — past and future.
Todd Palin, Bill Clinton, Philip Perry, and Marcus Bachmann are all future First Gentlemen of the United States, so expect to see them featured in the series too at some point.
You can use the Googles to figure out who Perry is. You’ll smile and cheer on that one, trust us.
In the meantime, please use this thread to add any great Dolley Madison stories you know of so we can continue to build the Class vs. Crass archives and fill it with everything a person could possibly know about these great First Spouses.
It’s our sincere hope some day soon Michelle Obama realizes what an ass she’s making of herself in the East Wing and has the foresight to ask someone how she could improve herself and be less of an embarrassment to the nation. ”Well, there’s this whole Class vs. Crass thing that highlights how crass you are, and how much you need a lesson or eleventy in class, so maybe you can start by looking through those. Plus, they have beautiful illustrations, and we all know how much you love picture books, and seeing photos of yourself, and bright colors, so you’ll be entertained while you learn a thing or two”.
Just imagine if something like this COULD actually get through to Michelle…and she became a better person, if only to avoid giving us any new material for the series. It would be win-win for everyone.
