03.28.15
Stillson for President!
Hillary Clinton could make it happen.
I’m more than 90 percent convinced a Hillary Clinton run as the Democratic Party’s nominee could depress base voter turnout so badly a Republican psychopath/theocrat could be elected.
I’m not the only person who thinks it.
Clinton will never be able to shake her imperiousness. She stands for little except being Hillary Clinton, famous, super-wealthy, powerful and ubiquitous.
Surrounded by other millionaire yes-men who only care about money from billionaire donors and, ludicrously, landing heavy blows on their perceived enemies, Clinton will phone it in for her campaign and lose.
Rolling Stone’s political reporter, Matt Taibbi, did a column on Clinton a couple weeks ago, entitled “Hillary Clinton is Turning Into Richard Nixon and Bill Belichick.”
It was an amusing read. Unfortunately, it also seemed an accurate assessment of her character and ways.
There’s little that’s palatable about 2016. On one side, the Queen. On the other, an American mullah.
And maybe we should wake up to a straight-up religious fascist in the White House.
Which brings me to the “Stillson for President!” moment.
Greg Stillson was the presidential candidate in Stephen King’s The Dead Zone. The novel’s protagonist, Johnny Smith, gains the ability to see fragments of people’s futures after being in a coma. He gets interested in seeing the future of various politicians and maneuvers himself into getting a glimpse of Stillson’s.
Smith is horrified to see Stillson responsible for triggering an all-out global thermonuclear war, the event that produces “the dead zone.”
Right now, Ted Cruz is an American Greg Stillson. I’m laughing blackly.
Cruz would possibly use a baby as a human shield. He frightens children.
“Your world is on fire,” he’s notably said.
So let’s get behind it! Stillson for President! Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
In today’s installment of wrestling with the problems of WhiteManistan, Paul Krugman writes:
Most important, people are moving to places with mild winters …
And as I also pointed out, the search for mild winters can lead to a lot of spurious correlations. With the exception of California — which has mild winters but also, now, has very high housing prices — America’s warm states are very conservative. And that’s not an accident: warm states were also slave states and members of the Confederacy, and a glance at any election map will tell you that in US politics the Civil War is far from over.
The point, then, is that these hot red states also tend to be low-minimum-wage, low-taxes-on-the-wealthy jurisdictions.
I’ve argued for awhile now that the South has won the Civil War.
The human stain of Dixie has effectively paralyzed the country. Its culture of cruelty as virtue, of hatred of the poor and the not-white and the gay, its oppressive American Jesus Christianity, and the twin loves of wealth and war are ascendant.
Do you think a shaming campaign and business boycott will reverse the anti-gay bigot’s law in Indiana? Will it stop it in Arkansas?
WhiteManistan will march on. If its leaders are deemed pariahs by those wanting a more humane society, its citizen soldiers for Jesus are affirmed.
Today, from the LA Times, more from the ramparts of the hate-the-gays states:
“I don’t understand why Indiana is getting a bad reputation,??? said Krissi Johnson, serving hot dogs at a community gathering inside the firehouse in Austin, southern Indiana. “It would make more sense if we were the only ones.???
Indiana residents note that the same furor could have arisen at any time since similar legislation passed in places including Alabama or Idaho. Bills are also pending in Georgia and South Dakota.
Sarah Winchester, a 32-year-old nurse, isn’t thrilled with the new spotlight on her home state.
“It’s annoying that Indiana is getting the attention,??? Winchester said in Austin. “Southern states have done similar things for years.???
Study maps of conservative movements in the U.S., and it’s clear that Indiana’s vote to join the brigade of religious freedom states is of a piece with its larger role as the northernmost conservative vanguard east of the Mississippi.
“For some Hoosiers, it’s all rather upsetting and sad,” adds the paper’s reporters.
Not enough, though.