The Rake Magazine

Tag: clinton

  • Something in the Air

    I’m not easily moved — not
    by people anyhow, not by masses, that is. I was certainly moved by
    Brendel’s performance at Orchestra Hall a few months ago. And now, now
    I am moved. This time by people coming together. How sappy that sounds.
    How cynical I am.

    The Xcel is engulfed in bodies, live
    beautiful bodies, bodies of all ages, though I see few elderly folks
    (it’s harder and harder to leave the home), bodies in all tones, shades, and
    shapes, all styles, all types. Bodies everywhere.

    Something is happening here. That’s the overwhelming feeling. Something is happening. And I’m overwhelmed.

    A young blonde girl peruses a panel of Obama buttons held by an eager red-faced man in his early 40s perhaps.

    Three Somali women sit cross-legged on the grass behind her, next to six or seven teenagers sprawled across the cement.

    Something is happening and no one seems to want to miss it. They all seem to know.

    I
    get the feeling if it starts to rain these people will build a tent
    together. Perfect item for the 5-o’clock news. (We still have 5-o’clock
    news.)

    I’m a hopeless (helpless)
    romantic; it’s true. I live for this shit, but I don’t really believe
    in it. I’m skeptical, of course. I’m always disappointed. Something is
    happening, but is it? Should I be concerned that so many people think
    something is happening, when in fact, it’s not that big. It’s not that
    huge. Are we so easily impressed?

    No. We’re that desperate. And
    that’s OK. You have to start somewhere. And if this many people think
    something is happening, then, by Jove, something is happening.

    That’s something.


    More later… I’ll continue posting as the evening progresses.

  • Get the #Q)*?!#$ Off My Lawn

    On the well-manicured lawn that is the Democratic primary,
    there resides a two large groups of little old men shouting epithets at
    one another, screaming for "these kids" to get
    the fuck off their lawn    .

    Sadly, these arthritic individuals aren’t Edina’s most senior residents, as one might
    expect of these wizened figures glowering at any who would dare trespass on
    their pristine grass. No, these crotchety creatures shaking their fists at one
    another are the splintered remnants of the once proudly unified Democratic
    party. Now, after months of spewing bile and vitriol in the most closely fought
    primary in U.S.
    election history, the party is split – a camel toe on the hot pants of American
    politics, if you will.

    One group sides with the party’s Luke Skywalker – Barack
    Obama. With the Force as his guide and a lightsaber wit he has
    systematically thwarted the ambitions of his opposition in most states without
    a reputation for incest or goat
    love    . Up until a few months ago, Hillary Clinton was the presumptive
    nominee – basking in the collective adulation of the left-hand of American
    politics with a nigh-unbelievable midichlorian count. Now she has been pushed off her pedestal and is seeking to parlay her
    grip on America’s crotch into a last
    desperate hope for a presidential nod.

    Regardless of who is eventually chosen as the Democratic
    nominee, the party is in trouble. With a significant percentage of each
    candidates’ saying they’d
    never vote for the other    , what used to look like a potential majority in
    congress along with a nigh-certain seat in the Oval Office, complete with
    nubile interns ready to provide service with a smile, is turning into a potential tossup if
    Democrats embittered by the primary stay home or vote Green. Minnesota is a prime example of this phenomenon, with thousands of Obamites crying for blood in the event of what now looks like an unlikely Hillary win.

    Normally, this all or nothing mentality would seem to be
    something to be respected, or at least be a compelling argument for instant
    runoff voting    . And I have nothing but admiration for those who are willing
    to shoot themselves in the foot to take a stand against a cause they believe to
    be immoral. However, in this case it’s not shooting themselves in the foot so
    much as it is packing their collective rectum with C-4 and handing the
    detonator to the Evil
    Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight    .

    Voting Green isn’t equated with explosive asses as a general
    rule, but those are the stakes set by Democrats this year. According to
    virtually every one of them, this next election is the one that will determine
    the country’s position on the world stage – a plausible theory given that
    Canadian money is now as valuable as the U.S. dollar. If that’s not a sign of America’s
    pending doom, what is? But why is such a significant percentage of Hillary
    Clinton and Barack Obama’s supporters so willing to throw away the chance to
    set the direction of the country for years to come when the candidates’
    policies bear incredible similarities, especially when stacked up against the
    Republican competition?

    The bottom line is that the entire election campaign has consisted
    of talk about the necessity of change, about change for the better, about the
    country being unable to afford four more years of the same failed foreign
    policy. So why are so many Democrats already so bitter that they’ve made up
    their minds before the chosen candidate, whoever it may be, has a chance to
    make his or her platform known without getting a Democratic donkey punch
    after every speech – thus risking the very change they claim to want more than
    a sweaty night on a circle
    bed     with Scarlet Johansson and the winners of The
    Rake’s Most Beautiful People at the Capitol contest    ?

  • John McCain Nude – 64 Results

    It was on the far right, literally. A tiny block of space someone had purchased to help The Rake live another day. Pay up, and you can paste your sign/add your link/sing your song on my web page/television/telephone/window/door/floor/car/bus/butt/etc…

    In
    the ultimate capitalist pervasion of everyday life, this heat-seeking
    piranha of an ad jumped at me, propelled by the finely tuned instincts
    of specialized software, somewhere in cyberspace, sensing Barack
    Obama’s name on the page and inferring from it the presence of
    intellectual prey.

    There I was, and there it was, so close:

    "The Real Barack Obama (link) The truth behind the canditate (sic)" – "Barack Obama Exposed – Free!" (with another link)

    I hesitated. The piranha bit down hard. I clicked!

    …and could almost feel the blood rush:

    "From
    his radical stance on abortion to his prominence in the corruption
    scandals that has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media,
    Barack Obama is not fit to be Senator — not to mention the next
    President of the United States. Obama has declared his presidential
    intentions, but it is up to well-informed and energetic conservatives
    like you to spare our nation from the scourge of a far-left President
    Barack H. Obama."

    Presidential
    politics is the grand stage of the most aggressive promoters, the
    truest believers. Neglect their theater and they will seek you out,
    seek to turn you out. I slept through the 2004 and 2000 elections. Even
    now, I was placidly detached. But this impassioned gnome of an ad leapt
    from the stage, snatched me from the placid pages of an innocent,
    literate webzine, and forced me, drove me, deep into its chosen thicket
    of passion and intrigue.

    I was in the hunt. I clicked a link, then another, and got:

    "It
    must be just me! I mean, does anyone else see the lying racist? The
    Obamination of this country is about to walk right into the Democratic
    nomination and no-one is doing a damned thing about it! PEOPLE…Obama
    hates this nation and WHITE people! HELLO! Is anyone out there? Are you
    folks so stupid and blind that it is already over? Is America already
    doomed from the inside out? Was President Lincoln correct when he said
    this nation will only be defeated from within?! Jesus people…can’t
    you see what is happening here? Wake up! The man will not cover his
    heart during the National Anthem…oh god…I could go on forever!"

    Hokey
    smoke! From clever, benign, literacy to full frontal attack in three
    clicks. I recalled twentieth century sites affixing Bill Clinton’s name to
    the legends of dead people, many legends, many dead people – the
    Clinton Body Count, they called it. One page had animated graphic blood dripping down the sides. I
    remembered admiring the enthusiasm (and the graphics!) more than the
    argument. Had I convinced myself that towering invective was unique to
    Bill? The question begged for investigation.

    I enlisted Google.

    "Barack Obama exposed" brought 38,500 Google "results". Oh, my! A huge number. But compared to what? I tried for context.

    "Hillary
    Clinton exposed" scored 12,600 pages, a bare third of Obama’s total; "John McCain exposed" an almost negligible 2,350. It’s an Obama
    phenomenon. But why?

    My
    brain churned through the usual suspects. Is the web’s free wheeling
    candor a cultural Petri dish, nurturing explosions of racist bacteria?
    Does Obama’s generic celebrity merit the poisonous paparazzi pursuit of
    Paris or Britney? Are the White Knights of the Right so certain of
    their enemy that they write off Hillary as a dead woman walking?

    Or
    was I, naive in the ways of The Web, missing the connotation of
    "exposed"? Perhaps it’s that Obama is, how to put this delicately, hot?
    I tried something else.

    "Barack Obama nude" brings 725 results, but "Hillary Clinton nude" launches 21,200 pages.

    Aha! The light goes on. Sealing the deal, "John McCain nude" scores a pitiful 64. That’s it!

    It’s
    about testosterone. The Bad Old Surfer Dudes want to see women naked
    and new kids trashed. What about McCain? 64 "results" close that
    question. Nobody cares about the old guy. He’s not a threat.

    I’d
    like to think elections are about ideas and principles, about who would
    do the best job. But there’s waaaay more than that. Frank Luntz
    theorizes it’s about talking to the reptilian brain: "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect." I think I’ve found supporting evidence.

  • A+B=WTF

    On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Sen. John McCain jumped the
    shark.

    Now, I’ve got a lot of respect for the man. He’s always been
    something of a straight shooter. And when a man spends time in a POW camp and
    can’t raise his arms above his shoulders as a result, I’m inclined to cut the
    guy some slack. But in a campaign stop in Pennsylvania yesterday, McCain claimed that pork
    barrel spending caused the 35W bridge to fall down go boom    . Pork barrel
    spending didn’t cause the bridge to fall. All reports up until now point to
    trade school engineers from the 60s who were likely too baked to carry the
    damn one. And given how commonly politicians have taken the "If I say it, it
    must be true" approach this campaign season, I would’ve much rather watched the
    GOP’s candidate for president actually jump the Mississippi on a
    motorcycle     than listen to a man formerly known for candid statements trying to score political points by holding court whilst spewing
    forth a toxic slurry of obfuscating crap that would rival the noxious sludge at
    the bottom of the Mississippi itself.

    But why do candidates feel so comfortable hocking these
    juicy loogies of misinformation at us? They know that the words
    tumbling forth from their forked tongues are simply a devious combo of smoke,
    mirrors, and sweet pandering nothings that smoothly caress the genitalia of
    their base constituencies, thus lulling them deeper into a bullshit-induced
    trance, right? Most blame television for forcing politicians to compress complicated
    issues into easy to digest bites. TV conditioned people to want
    their news spoon-fed – meaning whoever screams the loudest with the most glib
    sound bite generally is regarded as the prophet of truth. This applies even when the person screaming the loudest is the crazy fucker having a dance
    party in his underwear in front of Block E.

    But the honest truth is that the blame for the sorry state
    of affairs that is the American political system falls squarely on the eagerly
    nodding culture whores known as American citizens. It’s us. We’re the reason Jeremiah
    Wright’s sermons make such effective weapons in a campaign. It’s our fault John
    McCain feels justified in using the deaths of 13 Minnesotans to make an
    unrelated point about earmarks. And it’s my own damn fault I’m wondering why Al Franken
    couldn’t find a nice Jewish uncle to keep his books. We’ve become a
    society of listless zombies who claim to be too busy to understand the issues
    at hand, but also refuse to devote any of that precious time to information
    that may contradict opinions or worldviews developed by listening to the chorus of malformed mewling
    creatures     polluting the public dialogue.

    Make no mistake, it is pollution. Yes, Rev. Jeremiah Wright
    said "God damn America."
    In fact, he danced on the altar while a chorus of seraphim drifted down from
    the heavens to sing those very words in a bawdy sea chanty written by the
    Archangel Gabriel himself. It doesn’t matter all that much though, since Wright isn’t
    running for president. Plus, it’s highly unlikely that, should Sen. Obama be
    elected the next president, he’ll take punitive steps against white America.
    Steps like outlawing rugby, New Balance sneakers, Volvos, Joe Mauer and his thrice-damned sideburns or any of the other ridiculous crap we fetishize. But because we’ve spent the
    last two months with politicians and pundits alike regurgitating bile and
    chunky bits of flag-waving rhetoric, Sen. McCain’s health care proposal hasn’t
    gotten the coverage, or scrutiny, it deserves. The lack of details in Sen.
    Obama’s plan hasn’t exactly been called out as a particular failing either. And
    because we’ve been too busy obsessing over what appears to be an innocuous
    accounting mistake on Al Franken’s part, no one has taken the time to marvel at
    the profound stupidity of Hillary Clinton staging
    a press event at a gas station     to demonstrate just how in touch with the
    plight of the common man she truly is while advocating for a gas tax
    holiday     that would save the average American about $30 over three months.

    A well-informed populace is vital to the operation of a
    democracy, according to our slave-owning, and banging, founding father Thomas
    Jefferson. And sad to say, we’re not well-informed. We’re well-indoctrinated. So we debate over whether Obama is,
    in fact, an Islamo-fascist for not wearing a flag lapel pin. We fight over whether McCain’s
    "senior moments" are the result of campaign trail exhaustion or a sign that
    he’ll be in Depends
    before his second term. And we shiver in fear as we wonder whether Hillary Clinton is a creature risen from the
    grave by sheer force of will, determined to win the presidency in order to
    secure access to the delicious babies necessary to sustain her unholy semblance
    of life. And all of that pointless noise pollution goes a long way toward explaining why, in the midst of this
    interminable, abominable election season, our status as one of the greatest and most influential superpowers
    this world has ever known can now be summarized in just under two minutes by Grand Theft Auto IV’s Serbian protagonist –
    Nico Bellic.

  • Hillaright and Hillawrong.

    I am not exactly sure what I am trying to say with my headline. While I won’t pick nits with her politics, I fear that if she, my fellow sister, were to gain the white house (I may be the only that holds a candle–for my own reasons) she will raise the CAFE standards even further than 35MPG.

    The Saint in me says she is right.

    The Devil says, "death to her and all her pets."

    Why must she remain so polarizing?

  • How Clinton Wrecked His Ferrari

    When you have enough money, you call your son Clinton or Caufield or something stilted enough to create an affect. You also (or so the guys at the Porsche dealership tell me) buy your kid a car he or she should never try to pilot. Of course, this results in great websites.

    The pictured vehicle is not a Ferrari. It is the new Audi exotic. Some stupid kid drove and wrecked the thing all the same. I cannot vouch for his name, but I am virtually certain it was not Bill, Barrack, or pray tell something as plain as "John."

    The sugar daddy was likely a big contributor to Bill or Hillary’s campaign and decided to give his first born by his fifth wife the naming rights. The new wife being of firmness other than mind decided to score still more points, perhaps, with the original political lothario.

    It seems recently, however, when the little Clinton screamed for his first car dumb Mommy went out and purchased an Audi instead of a beast from Maranello.

    This could be payback.

    And yet, it may not last for long. Read "Why Rich Kids Don’t Stay Rich."

  • Fiscal Lubrication

    For those of you lulled into complacency by auspicious
    recent events such as Britney’s brief
    flirtation     with lucidity, it’s important to note that, not only is the
    entertainment industry still pumping out fucking loons
    at a heretofore unheard of pace, but our politicians are providing ample
    evidence of a world view so profoundly divorced from reality that it’s likely
    only a matter of a few short days until Gov. Pawlenty declares "Blame it on the
    Rain"     our state song and Speaker of the House Margaret Kelliher declares her
    undying love for Michelle Bachmann’s fabulously taut ass. In other words, take
    heed, Minnesota denizens, for the Oh Shit meter has gone from a subdued puce to
    an alarming ochre.

    And what has triggered these dire portents? What could
    possibly be serving as the harbinger for yet another pending apocalypse? The
    answer is disarmingly, deceptively simple – nothing more, or less, than the
    overwhelming demonstration of the profound stupidity endemic to all levels of
    our representative democracy.

    These portents have appeared at a furious pace as of late. John McCain’s assertion that Purim is
    the Jewish Halloween    , thus disappointing a highly influential voting block
    as they continue a hallowed tradition of offering a big "Fuck you" to yet
    another culture that tried to annihilate them, was only the beginning. And Dick
    Cheney’s apparent pleasure at providing a big
    "Fuck you"     to the American public as polls indicated two-thirds of
    Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq was just a cherry on top of the mountain of asshattery displayed whilst our policy-makers grandstand and
    pontificate on how best to take advantage of the economic reaming the average
    American feels
    they are about to receive    .

    To address the assembled citizenry’s fervent desire for
    fiscal lubricants to ease the anticipated pain, Obama and Clinton
    have released their economic stimulus and oversight plans. McCain, of course,
    is standing pat, toeing the GOP line as he has for the last few years and
    stating that the check going out to taxpayers in May, not to mention the tax
    breaks for businesses that will surely convince them to invest in added
    infrastructure while consumers aren’t buying anything, is plenty to arouse the
    economy and stimulate a good old-fashioned consumer orgy.

    What baffles me, however, is that the plans put forth by
    these august candidates are, for the most part, predicated on becoming
    president despite all three having plenty of legislative power. And since statistically, recessions are generally over within a year to a
    year and a half, meaning any fiscal policy levied after scoring the presidency
    won’t take effect until January of 2009. Much like downing the morning after
    pill nine months after the condom breaks, that’s long after it could possibly
    do any good.

    Then you might think to yourself, "At least our local
    legislators, staunch realists like Marty Seifert and the Iron Range’s Tom "The
    Sex Hog" Saxhaug, are carefully balancing Minnesotan needs against the harsh
    reality of the budget deficit threatening our government services and
    benefits". If you were harboring such thoughts, you may want to relieve
    yourself of them via repeated
    blows to the cranium     with a blunt object, since you’d be laughably wrong. To
    address the state’s approximately $1 billion deficit, GOP legislators offered a program
    of cuts to higher education, dips into the state’s rainy day fund, and
    bizarrely, a token tax cut to make Minnesotans feel better about the panty raid
    Gov. Pawlenty proposed on the state’s health care access fund and budget reserves. DFLers universally
    derided the deficit fix, calling the proposal shortsighted and damaging. House
    Majority Leader Tony Sertich went so far as to say, "Everyone knows people from
    Eagan are twats. And Tim Pawlenty is a twat among twats. The alpha and the omega of twats, if you will."

    One might imagine the DFL, after such an ideological salvo,
    would come back with a solution to the state’s budget woes. A solution that
    would salvage programs to salve the economic doldrums afflicting our state’s
    citizens whilst securing Minnesota’s solvency for the biennium and beyond.
    Sadly, it seems we’ll sooner see Michelle Bachmann in an Amsterdam donkey show
    than have a budget proposal that actually addresses the real issues facing the
    state. The budget that the DFL’s greatest financial minds came back with dips
    even further into the rainy day fund. And while the $23 million in extra
    education spending is nice, the proposal doesn’t provide any details on the
    program cuts necessary to cover that spending. Nor did they make any attempt at ensuring solvency in the next biennium. Much like the Pawlenty
    administration and inflation, reality and the DFL have never quite meshed.

    Frighteningly enough, the group we must look toward for
    fundamental change in our fiscal policy is the Bush administration. They’ve
    bailed out Bear Stearns despite outcry from left and right, thus avoiding a
    repeat of the market crash that triggered the Great Depression. And we’ve
    already seen some small changes – allowing the Federal Reserve and treasury
    some additional oversight of investment houses and mortgage originators. But
    more meaningful changes, changes that will allow the hand of government to wrap
    itself around the balls of America’s financial system and give a great tug when
    necessary are not yet forthcoming. Can an administration that has spent the vast
    majority of its time in Washington on a ranch in Crawford, TX or up its own ass
    aggressively move to create meaningful legislation? Can a man whose sole method of
    reassuring the public that the economy is in good hands consists of letting us all know
    the government worked over the weekend     actually trigger substantive change?

    Yeah, I know. We’re fucked. But I, for one, welcome our new
    Chinese overlords, and will enjoy receiving the benevolent treatment afforded
    all China’s provinces    .

     

     

  • Primarily Screwed

    If astronomers and astrophysicists are correct, we’ve got
    another 13-16 billion years until the universe collapses under its own mass and
    hubris in a Big Crunch – making it all the more impressive that it has taken just a few short months for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s
    world to implode, compacting itself into a fiery mass of universal healthcare and
    primary-hued pantsuits. And best of all, emanating from deep within the core of
    this soon-to-be black hole from whence no screams or painfully contrived holiday
    greeting     can escape, is a sound familiar to anyone with an eight year old –
    whining.

    Yes, even as we eagerly hang on every word about the hard
    fought Democratic primaries in Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont and Ohio from MPR
    correspondents and CNN pundits, tuning in to Naked
    News     just in case that austere and respected bastion of quality reporting
    may have picked up on a polling nuance that others haven’t, the Clinton camp is
    engaging in an entertaining campaign of whining and finger pointing. Top
    campaign advisors Mark Penn and Harold Ickes have already started to distance
    themselves from what is rapidly starting to appear to be a Dean-esque clusterfuck,
    with Penn saying something to the effect of, "I just stopped in to use the
    wi-fi and surf porn. They asked me about some campaign messages, but I didn’t
    think they’d actually take my advice. Dumbasses."

    And at this point, none of this comes as a surprise. The
    attitude of the Clinton camp from the launch of the campaign was that of the
    anointed standard-bearer of the Democratic party. As a result, the campaign
    became that painfully attractive guy/girl who feels like they can just lay
    there while we do all the work. What the Clintons didn’t realize was that
    liberals across America just wanted to get their freak on, and would happily do
    so with an upstart senator from Illinois with a populist message and a knack for oratory that can
    moisten progressive panties     from sea to shining sea.

    But since they were the front-runners for so long, don’t
    they have every right to be obnoxiously whiny? Are they not well within their
    rights when pointing fingers at the media for being so hard on Sen. Clinton, at
    each other for not providing winning strategies for undermining the hope for
    change that Obama uses as his rallying cry, and at Sen. Clinton for being the
    unappealing, though well-intentioned and profoundly intelligent, battle-axe
    we’ve all come to know and love?

    The simple answer is yes, they’re free to whine. This is
    America after all – a land where freedom reigns supreme, former Mickey Mouse Club members can parlay fame into
    failure and Cristina Aguilera
    turns out to be the sane one. But if they feel the need to whine, they should
    be whining about the right things – such as the fact that the campaign never
    recovered from its failures in Iowa, where underfunding and understaffing
    doomed Clinton to finishing in third place. Or perhaps they should focus on the
    painful truth that Bill Clinton’s hubris lost them several southern states as
    he fought a doomed campaign in South Carolina when he could’ve done far more
    good elsewhere, failing to make up for the lousy
    aim     that landed him in only the second presidential impeachment trial in
    the history of the United States. Or even worse, that the same political strategists
    who raked in $5 million in January alone, $10 million in total, can’t come up
    with a better idea to counteract Barack Obama’s surging popularity than the chimpanzee
    approach     – throw a whole lot of shit at the wall and see what sticks.

    Sadly, not much has seemed to as of yet. While Clinton is
    reeking of desperation, frustration and, in a futile attempt to appeal more to
    females aged 18-34, copious amounts of Axe Body Spray, Obama seems
    largely untouched. And despite the stench, Clinton says she’s "…just getting warmed
    up    ." Apparently the old girl needs a lot of foreplay. It’s a good thing Sen. Clinton
    is finally ready though, since by the end of today we ought to know if Hillary is as
    well and truly boned as the women Bill has been picking up along the campaign
    trail.