tell Obama to inject his morality somewhere else

Meet the new GOP Democrat.

Barack Obama said Tuesday that if he were elected president he'd have his own version of President Bush's office of faith-based initiatives that would "help set our national agenda" and inject morality into policy debates about everything from AIDS to genocide.

Imagine this man, with his superior 'judgment', taking it upon himself to dispense morality single-handedly.

As soon as we fork over the trust, obedience, and submission we owe him, everything will be all set. We will be a moral nation. A Christian nation. And both democracy and the Democratic Party will soon be yesterday's news.

And to think I felt paranoid for suspecting he was some sort of GOP plant. It really did sound like conspiracy-theory land only a month or two ago, didn't it?

A commenter at Corrente:

Our party leaders have opened the gates to a GOP Trojan horse.

We’re trapped.

Yeah, but why have so many Democrats gone along with it?

And what are they going to do now?

The ruling: the votes can count, but only if we adjust for the votes as we woulda liked for it to have been instead of, you know...

...the way thing actually are?

There's been a lot of talk about party unity - let's all come together, and put our arms around each other. I submit to you ladies and gentlemen, hijacking four delegates ... is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.
- Harold Ickes

The solution to seating the delegates: since of course we're pre-committed to the idea that Hillary Clinton is not going to be our nominee no matter what, we can seat the delegates with "only" the penalties that the rulebook actually provided for situations like these, but more must be done - because Clinton might actually win.

See, the thing is, rules are rules, but there are times when rules don't count. See, it just wouldn't be fair to Obama for anything to benefit Hillary. So let's rewrite the vote totals to include the votes Obama "should have" gotten.

And the media will allow just a little bit of coverage of the enraged (and freshly insulted) Dem base, but only so long as we emphasize how appropriate that there's a zoo nearby*...

WASHINGTON -- The hotel where the 30 Democratic rule makers met Saturday -- to decide whether rules are rules or whether rules are made to be broken -- was within howling distance of the National Zoo.

Outside the stately Marriott Wardman Park Hotel were clusters of women with "Hear Me Roar" placards in their fists who came from all over the country -- $4 a gallon be damned -- to make what could be a last stand for their Hillary....

...and only so long as we drop in the new meme, that it's unfair to the people who voted but it's even more unfair to the ones who didn't, but could have.

None of that was the voters' fault (did they set the calendar?), and who winds up getting punished? The voters.

And not just the voters who voted, but also the voters who didn't vote -- the ones who might have turned out had they not been told about a million times that their votes weren't going to count. Who knows how they would have spoken.

To the DNC, the key to democracy means tinkering with certified election results as needed to make things...well, "fair"**.

And we have to accommodate all those poor unfortunates who would have voted, if only they...well, had voted.

Harold Ickes, a member of the committee and a top adviser to Clinton, said the panel had "hijacked" delegates belonging to Clinton.

"I am stunned that we have the gall and chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000" people who voted in Michigan, he said. "Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee."

Ahh, but who cares about legitimacy in elections? Certainly not the media - they've got priorities, and they know who pays 'em. And certainly not the DNC - they made that clear yesterday.

So - time to party, eh***? If you can't win honestly, well - so long as you win.

Democratic strategists say they expect Obama to secure a majority of convention delegates and put the final touches on an historic run for the presidential nomination by the middle of this week. Enough additional superdelegates are likely to ratify his victory over Clinton, once the final primary votes are cast, they said, to put him over the top.

Obama, who said the other day that he expected the general election campaign to start this week, plans to stage a victory rally Tuesday night...

But in the end - Obama won't. Win, that is. And neither will any real Democrats****.

...several hundred Hillary Clinton supporters chanted "Count every vote!" and waved signs announcing "Count my vote or count me out." A smaller number of Barack Obama supporters kept their distance. One woman, passing by a 4-year-old girl and her mother carrying pro-Clinton signs, shouted at them: "Cheater!"

The chaos and vitriol seemed to confirm Democrats' fears that they might blow an election that should otherwise be an easy victory for them. Nor did the party's compromise fit well with the Democrats' oft-voiced commitment to voting rights.

Superdelegates: This is what November will look like

She’s not going to get over it.

You still have a choice.

Do the right thing.

update: reading the comments at firedoglake (apparently where this video originates) and other "progressive" blogs, I am stunned at how the "winning" candidate's backers, the ones who defended Rev. Wright's righteous pulpit-humping, and still support Obama after seeing Pfleger make an obscenity of himself, think this woman (above) needs to be 'more civil'.

Apparently whether your behavior is civil or not, in their world, is not based by how you actually behave, but rather on whether the outrage is justified or not - whether one's opinion matches the Opinions That We Have Deemed Worthy vs. the opinions that people just shouldn't have.

This woman out-and-out suggested that the raving hatred of white women vs. the special rules for black people thing is unfair. This automatically makes her evil and therefore worthy of degrading jabs based on her being (a) old and (b) a woman. (Mother is not supposed to be a dirty word, guys. 'Course we all know you hate your own mommies - because they didn't raise you to be respectful toward them or any other women.)

I'd say attacking this woman for being old and female should be out, we should stick to the issue, but that appears to be the issue. People should be young and beautiful and should obey the rules for what looks good. Old women violate everything Obama's "movement" stands for.

These people also blame Hillary for Obama's total unelectability. They still don't see anything wrong with him, or with what happened. They don't see any disconnect at all between their own raving raging hatred of old white women on the one hand, vs. their expectation that these old white women should fall in line like worthless old white bats just ought and vote for the candidate they're goddamned told to goddamned vote for.

(shudder)

I am working on a way to define the difference between "angry" vs. out-and-out "hateful". I don't want to be the way they are. I think I might start with a list of what I object to most about them - for instance, the hypocrisy of calling people bigots even as you jeer at them for their age, cheer the rancid lady screaming about "white trash", and laugh at the misogynistic jokes. Maybe after I write down all the things that make me dislike them so much, I can get control over how they are infesting my reality, and the immune system can get a grip. But I do not want to be serene. I think there is a time for anger - it exists for a reason, it really does. And the key to me is to articulate what is actually wrong (vs. just hating on the other people), and what needs to change - the first step to fixing something is setting good goals....

It has to come back to ethics. Real ethics. We need to rediscover integrity. We really really do.


___________________________________
* "hear me roar" - Helen Reddy song, "I am woman, hear me roar" - put them next to the zoo, because feminists are like animals - DID YA GET IT? DID YA GET IT?

** on the bright side, at least we won't be hearing much more about affirmative action "never hurt anyone".

*** or is that time to crash the party?

**** our votes were stolen, suppressed, manipulated, minimized. "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Something to think about when you read press coverage of those enraged Obama supporters calling us "cheaters":

Our candidate is running on the idea that votes need to be earned.

The other candidate is the one relying on the idea that votes are something to demand, steal, suppress, manipulate, minimize, and in the end, declare oneself entitled to.

hard work

Right now it looks pretty bad for Obama - he can't win the general. Some have said his career might be over. I don't think his career is sunk, if he is willing to take a major humiliation so that he can have a "rise again" moment. Then he could repent, denounce any philosophies that need denouncing, and could start building again.

What is more troubling is that he doesn't seem to want to build. This would not be happening if he had researched, learning about the voters, offering us what we want. I don't think we really need to learn more of his own bio, his single mother and all that (as if we didn't all know about that "typical white" granny who raised him). Once more we have that liberal mentality, Brad Pitt on ice skates, when really the rest of us want it to be all about us. How come he can't seem to say one articulate thing about what he's going to do to address our immediate crisis - that is, economic insecurity?

Put this together with how little real good he did in Chicago and how little real good he has done in Congress and it's hard to escape the conclusion that Obama doesn't seem to like to work hard, and maybe he doesn't even know how to do what I mean when I speak of working hard:

• how to identify and solve problems
  
  
• how to receive input and deal with feedback
  
  
• how to accept responsibility or take the initiative
  
  
• how to fight - taking a stand and all the risks that go with it
  
  
• how to persevere instead of quitting when things seem impossible (is he really "bored" already?)
  

All of these things seem to be problems that are not just his, but are problems I associate with liberals past and present. And the more "liberal", the more true this seems to be.

An example from Riehl World View:

There's a lesson in this. And it isn't how evil or mean can be the Right. We all know both sides have their unhinged elements capable of writing pathetic emails, or issuing mostly ridiculous threats. The lesson is represented by the decision both Marcotte and McEwan willfully made - to play the victims and lose, as opposed to coming out on top....

At some point you have to fight for what you want. If you're just going to roll over like you're Nancy Pelosi faced with the probability of (gasp) conflict - well, might as well stay home from the start.

To be a Republican at its extremes is to accept no excuses (which is nice if you happen to be born rich). Anything is possible if you just choose to make it so. Inspiration frequently involves motifs such as the person who falls - to be crippled physically or mentally or spiritually or socially - rising up to do great and miraculous things anyway.

Of course the big problem with this is the failure to recognize limits. Some things genuinely aren't possible. The 'no excuses, no blaming, no whining' approach frequently turns to dumping it on the victim, as if to say "oh well doing that was never my responsibility anyway". Meanwhile W. is still trying to bluff off failures as successes by ignoring or sometimes even just rewriting reality.

Democrats, though, live at the other end of this extreme. Nothing is their fault. They encourage blame and victimization. Look at Jeremiah Wright.

From ShrinkWrapped Conspiracy Theories and Victimization:

...Those conspiracy theories are the ones that support the holder's view that he or she is the victim of circumstances, forces, and people that are much more powerful than they, are inimical to them, and are beyond their control. Those beliefs lead to passivity and anger, and away from self reflection and responsibility.

Why should a young black man who is struggling in school put in the hard work required to learn when it is all for naught? If the "white man" is only going to keep him down, what is the point?

...Once a person has embraced victimhood, which includes the belief that their problems are essentially not of their own making, they are lost. The typically short sighted and cynical empowerment movement is designed to reinforce victimhood and extort reparations of one kind or another from those who have the money and the disinclination to fight back. The victim "wins" by getting what he deserves from the "man". This leaves the victim forever at the mercy of others, unable to change in ways which could enable them to live more productive and successful lives, and basing their entire sense of self on their grievances. A community that accepts such a designation can only be an abject failure.

(emphasis mine)

Obama frequently falls into the conservative-sounding rhetoric of positive thinking (in fact, a lot of the appeal of his campaign appears to rely on that nice conservative miracles motif). The problem with his affirmations are that they are just words. Magical thinking. There are no actions to follow up with. It's as if he is trying to combine the worst of both worlds - wedding the politics of blame and victimization to the delusional belief that you can do anything if you just want to hard enough.

Bill Clinton did it exactly the other way around. He rejected the politics of blame and victimization, and he didn't go in for feel-good beliefs about how you can do anything if you just buy New Age prayer beads. Instead, he gave us accountability and expectations coupled with real action toward increased opportunities.

That is what is meant when people say he "moved to the center". He broke the Republican monopoly on the issue of personal responsibility. That might sound ironic, seeing as how later Clinton would get busted for not taking responsibility for what he did with Lewinsky. But before Clinton ran for office, liberals were all about blame and victimization. Nothing was within your power to achieve. Everything is out of your control - everything was legacy and environment. That is what Bill Clinton weeded out of the party when he "moved to the center" and became what Michael Moore famously called our "best Republican President".

If Bill Clinton was really a Republican, I'd switch parties. It's too bad the wing libs can't see that. There is a real split between two groups who want an inclusive society - but differ sharply on the best way to achieve that.

The old-style liberal approach is not the only option out there. Those who act like Democrats who reject their victimhood are "not true Democrats" or are "Republicans" are not being fair to the changes that have happened. They say, "but poverty/injustice/inequality still exists". True enough - but that does not mean all the dynamics are frozen in place, and wanting to go back to 1968 is not a very good answer.

From this article on bell hooks:

Rather than associating "white people" with being the "enemy" or the "man" as most radical dogma is known to reiterate, as well as within the "white guilt" sentiments of white liberals, she suggested an approach that mirrors Buddhism (ms. hooks is also a Buddhist), to have a sense of "agency" when faced with racism, and, in turn, to confront your opponent with love, not in reaction with hate. This way, the offensive party will walk away with a greater sense of awareness about his/her own prejudice rather than have a tendency to stay on his/her side based on race or sex.

Most Eugenians could not wrap their minds around this concept...basically because it is common for ethnic studies programs to be steeped in a victimization mentality, comparable to the tendency for white liberals and radicals to have a knee-jerk "white guilt" reaction when faced with race issues; but for me, hook's disdain for "victimization" was my key into ethnic and womens studies.

It takes a certain out-of-touch quality to not get that things have changed. Most people who have not acknowledged that reality are either so angry they are actually creating the bias against them (as in the hostile, aggressive witness in the Bell shooting) or are just, like John Kerry, incredibly out of touch. Throw in college students who don't know a lot about history, and haven't seen a lot of the world - and you see the groups who support Barack Obama even into his digging in about race and the politics of victimization.