The Clinton Mafia

Sandy Berger stole sensitive documents to protect the legacy of Clinton 42. This is not conservative propaganda (though I wonder how he remains a free man).

When the scandal broke in 2004, John Kerry fired him from his campaign. Now Berger has signed on as an adviser to Hillbot.

“It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field.”

Adler told The Examiner that it is “simply incomprehensible to me that a serious contender for the presidency would rely upon him as a key foreign policy advisor.” …

Berger has admitted stealing documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. The documents, written by White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were a “tough review” of the Clinton administration’s shortcomings in dealing with terrorism, Clarke’s lawyer told the Washington Post.

Yet more evidence that the Clintons can’t be trusted. How much more proof do their loyalists require?

Andrew Sullivan says it best: Hillary is Nixon In A Pant Suit.

*UPDATE: Hillbot says Berger has no “official role” in her campaign. So, a reporter asked, does that make him an unofficial adviser?

“I have thousands of unofficial advisers,” said Clinton, “and, you know, I appreciate all of that. But he has no official role in my campaign.”

Then she let out a uncomfortable guffaw to cover up her her non-denial denial.

(And who are those thousands of unofficial advisers? The American people, silly.)

Paglia on Hillbot

I find it hard to believe that my fellow Democrats want to backtrack and relive every tedious scandal from the Clinton era. But that’s what we’ll get if Hillary is the nominee — a long, sulfurous night of the walking dead, with chattering skeletons tumbling out of every closet.

Read the rest of Camille Paglia’s latest column here.

The Columbia charade

After reading about the courageous demonstators at Tehran University standing up to their country’s fascist president, I’m more convinced than ever that Columbia made a huge mistake in providing a forum to Ahmadinejad.

They kept chanting to him: “Ahmadinejad, you Pinochet, Iran is not Chilli!” (sic) Also the university authorities were prohibiting the students from entering into the auditorium where Ahmadinejad was talking. The few students who were in there with silly placards supporting Ahmadinejad were the Basijis. Iranian TV ended up not broadcasting it live claiming technical failure. One person who spoke out asking to pose a question that was slightly critical of Ahmadinejad was dragged out of the auditorium.

Wonder what that student thought of his (or her) peers at Columbia who booed Ahmadinejad only when he disparaged gays? They could’ve challenged him — giving a voice to those silenced by his regime — but most demurred, conflicted by a shared hatred of Bush 43.

So much for intellectual solidarity.

Return of the self-loathing homo

Have you ever seen pictures from the Folsom Street Fair? These are tame.

I’m fine with sexual deviants, as long as they aren’t breaking any laws. But imagine how this kind of lewd exhibitionism plays in "that mass of land between New York and California called America" (credit Ned Flanders). Don’t be naive — organizations like the Catholic League never miss an opportunity to exploit the behavior of our fringes.

Sorry, but if you’re giving a blow job in the middle of a street, or paddling your lovers’ furry ass in public, you’re a freak — which is your right.

I sure as hell wouldn’t participate, and if asked I don’t hesitage to impugn. Perhaps that violates some sort of queer code, but these people frighten me. More importantly, they do a disservice to the movement for equality.   

A happy anniversary

(Warning: lefty fashionistas ignorant of history should avoid the following post)

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara‘s death, an event that should be celebrated, not mourned. Yet the revisionists persist:

Che the titan standing up to the Yanquis, the world’s dominant power. Che the moral guru proclaiming that a New Man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old one. Che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle against oppression and tyranny.

In fact Che was responsible for as much opporession and tyranny as he opposed.

Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for “two, three, many Vietnams,” he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …”— and so on.

Sounds like a terrorist to me. I’m almost convinced that if Guevara looked like Yuri Andropov he’d be nearly forgotten.

But Guevara’s iconic visage sells, and thus we’re subjected to a movie like “The Motorcycle Diaries” celebrating Che’s earnest “idealism.” It’ll be interesting to see if Steven Soderbergh maintains that empty-headed romanticism in his forthcoming biopics (the plural is intended) about the late revolutionary. I’m not optimistic.

Do pedophiles feel shame?

This excerpt from an AP story about an alleged pedophile suspected of ghastly abuse struck me as a bit odd:

Persson said he personally had opposed making the photos public because it demonstrated to criminals that police can unscramble pictures. But that consideration and the risk that the man could face public humiliation or even violence now that he is recognizable were outweighed by the desire to protect other children from abuse.

I would say a little public humiliation is in order. That, and a painful castration (photographic evidence shows the man sexually molesting 12 underage boys, ranging in age from 6 to their early teens).

Her right, our responsibility

It seems the Dutch government has grown weary of protecting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the modern day heroine who has faced death threats for five years after her comments about the mistreatment of women in Holland’s Muslim community.

To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud and too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn’t sound conciliatory, in the modern Continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as “brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women” to the German judge who, citing the Quran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have “expected” her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she’s “brought her problems on herself.” Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

Shameful. Hirsi Ali is currently in the United States under private protection. If the Dutch government abandons her, Christopher Hitchens writes that America should assume responsibility for her safety.

The Clinton Mafia

Sandy Berger stole sensitive documents to protect the legacy of Clinton 42. This is not conservative propaganda (though I wonder how he remains a free man).

When the scandal broke in 2004, John Kerry fired him from his campaign. Now Berger has signed on as an adviser to Hillbot.

“It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field.”

Adler told The Examiner that it is “simply incomprehensible to me that a serious contender for the presidency would rely upon him as a key foreign policy advisor." …

Berger has admitted stealing documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. The documents, written by White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were a “tough review” of the Clinton administration’s shortcomings in dealing with terrorism, Clarke’s lawyer told the Washington Post.

Yet more evidence that the Clintons can’t be trusted. How much more proof do their loyalists require?

Andrew Sullivan says it best: Hillary is Nixon In A Pant Suit.

*UPDATE: Hillbot says Berger has no "official role" in her campaign. So, a reporter asked, does that make him an unofficial adviser?

"I have thousands of unofficial advisers," said Clinton, "and, you know, I appreciate all of that. But he has no official role in my campaign."

Then she let out a uncomfortable guffaw to cover up her her non-denial denial.

(And who are those thousands of unofficial advisers? The American people, silly.)

The Columbia charade

After reading about the courageous demonstators at Tehran University standing up to their country’s fascist president, I’m more convinced than ever that Columbia made a huge mistake in providing a forum to Ahmadinejad.

They kept chanting to him: “Ahmadinejad, you Pinochet, Iran is not Chilli!” (sic) Also the university authorities were prohibiting the students from entering into the auditorium where Ahmadinejad was talking. The few students who were in there with silly placards supporting Ahmadinejad were the Basijis. Iranian TV ended up not broadcasting it live claiming technical failure. One person who spoke out asking to pose a question that was slightly critical of Ahmadinejad was dragged out of the auditorium.

Wonder what that student thought of his (or her) peers at Columbia who booed Ahmadinejad only when he disparaged gays? They could’ve challenged him — giving a voice to those silenced by his regime — but most demurred, conflicted by a shared hatred of Bush 43.

So much for intellectual solidarity.

A happy anniversary

(Warning: lefty fashionistas ignorant of history should avoid the following post)

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara‘s death, an event that should be celebrated, not mourned. Yet the revisionists persist:

Che the titan standing up to the Yanquis, the world’s dominant power. Che the moral guru proclaiming that a New Man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old one. Che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle against oppression and tyranny.

In fact Che was responsible for as much opporession and tyranny as he opposed.

Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for “two, three, many Vietnams,” he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …”— and so on.

Sounds like a terrorist to me. I’m almost convinced that if Guevara looked like Yuri Andropov he’d be nearly forgotten.

But Guevara’s iconic visage sells, and thus we’re subjected to a movie like “The Motorcycle Diaries” celebrating Che’s earnest “idealism.” It’ll be interesting to see if Steven Soderbergh maintains that empty-headed romanticism in his forthcoming biopics (the plural is intended) about the late revolutionary. I’m not optimistic.

Do pedophiles feel shame?

This excerpt from an AP story about an alleged pedophile suspected of ghastly abuse struck me as a bit odd:

Persson said he personally had opposed making the photos public because it demonstrated to criminals that police can unscramble pictures. But that consideration and the risk that the man could face public humiliation or even violence now that he is recognizable were outweighed by the desire to protect other children from abuse.

I would say a little public humiliation is in order. That, and a painful castration (photographic evidence shows the man sexually molesting 12 underage boys, ranging in age from 6 to their early teens).

Her right, our responsibility

It seems the Dutch government has grown weary of protecting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the modern day heroine who has faced death threats for five years after her comments about the mistreatment of women in Holland’s Muslim community.

To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud and too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn’t sound conciliatory, in the modern Continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as "brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women" to the German judge who, citing the Quran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have "expected" her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she’s "brought her problems on herself." Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

Shameful. Hirsi Ali is currently in the United States under private protection. If the Dutch government abandons her, Christopher Hitchens writes that America should assume responsibility for her safety.

“I was captured in Cambodia while cavorting with a Cambodian”

It was my 27th birthday. Some good friends came down from San Francisco bearing top-notch hallucinogens. I indulged. Overindulged, even. After presenting a breathless tutorial on the history of women’s tennis, I retired to the lavatory, where the visage of Huckleberry Hound (floating above the roll of toilet paper) politely requested my attention. Turned out H2 was quite the gossip, and naturally he spilled the beans on Snagglepuss.

I didn’t doubt the hound’s assertions about his pink contemporary, considering all the empirical evidence (the lisp, the bow tie, the drama … ). Keep in mind this was 10 years ago; Snagglepuss had not yet staged his minor cult comeback. 

Anyway, as dawn approached, I was granted one last birthday present, a 4 a.m rerun of “The Laff-A-Lympics.” Little did I know I had tripped (groan) upon a a most revealing episode.

As the Scooby Doobies, Really Rottens and Yogi Yahooies prepared to race to the top of London’s Big Ben, MC Snagglepuss set the scene with typical aplomb: “Who’ll be the first to mount Big Ben?”

Finally, a gay icon to call my own. Keep your Madonnas, your Streisands, your Sarkisians — I’ll take a witty mountain lion every time.

(Watch Snagglepuss defy his nemesis here.) 

Compassionate conservatism unmasked

Wanna know why I despise The Anchorman so? This video explains it all, and says even more about the dark influence of the Republican Party’s fundamentalist base.

The pettyness is stupefying; Romney opposes medicinal marijuana yet endorses a synthetic option (chemicals manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry are somehow more tolerable to the Christian right than the organic variety).

I thought the Almighty created Heaven and Earth — was marijuana His idea of a cruel joke?

Nope, that would be Romney.   

Bad songs make strange bedfellows

This might be my most inconsequential post ever, but did you know that Conway Twitty and the sisters Pointer both had Top 10 hits with “Slow Hand?” I’m a minor fan of the former’s career, but strangely I prefer the latter’s reindition. Blame it on “Night Tracks.”