...and I'm still hungry, damnit !!

"...We are supposed to believe that if Senator McCain wins this election, we will be subject to another four years of Bush policies. I deeply believe that if we continue to support these two political parties that have worked together to eviscerate the 1st Amendment by setting up 'Free Speech Zones' for demonstrators and tasering people that ask questions of our politicians and gutting the 4th Amendment by passing the FISA law, things will indeed get worse. These are developments that happened recently, I could write pages on how our rights under the Constitution have been violated in the past decade. If we continue to support the duopoly, after all that has happened, what incentive will they have for listening to the people? They will see it as a green-light to continue their anti-democratic behavior."

( L*w-C*rb Spam is Still Spam )

Ballot Access News gives some hard numbers and the usual carnage from the various peanut galleries. I don't know about you, but personally I find the local brawls at the regional/statewide level fascinating;Certainly a hell of a lot more interesting than Chapter 2,452,198,764 of ZOMFG McCain Scaaaaaaaaareee Get In Line And Vote Obama, Sucker !!

Feh. Keep it with my blessings.



( Out Of My @#*&!+% Way, TINA. )

...I would like to enhance Kennedy's famous words on this 4th of July when the country sets off on another celebration of gross militarism and the deaths of millions of people while we never pay tribute to our First Nation peoples who were exterminated so white Europeans could despoil a beautiful land. My new proposal for the 21st C. is:

Ask not what humanity can do for you, but what you can do for humanity...

...WE need to open our eyes and not blindly follow politicians because of the letter that goes after their names on the ballot. In almost every case this election season since the presumptive nominees have been declared, it has been very difficult to distinguish the D from the R. WE should be demanding more from politicians and not allow the lowest common denominator to grovel and pander his way into the oval office, again. Haven't we had enough?

What WE can do for humanity right now is break our individual ties to War, Inc. WE have to educate our children that politicians like Obama just want them to do the dirty work of War, Inc and have no feelings or compassion for their cannon fodder or the families of the cannon fodder who will be mourning instead of celebrating this weekend...

-- Congressional Candidate Cindy Sheehan, from a column called "Ask Not What," posted at After Downing Street, 7/3/08.

Meanwhile, Laura Love puts the color back in Bluegrass.
( A capsule history and some sweet sounds, too. )

Play safe with those explosives.

An oldie (in blog-time) but a goodie:

...For a number of reasons I perceive hope as detrimental to our sanity and survival. First, I have no interest in “taking back America” because the America to which most left-liberals refer when mouthing this empty slogan is not an America that I want back. I want no part of “lesser evils” and political parties that collude in the demise of the nation, the planet, and its inhabitants. As long as any of us “hopes” for the return of that America, we delude and infantilize ourselves, waiting like toddlers for the appearance of Santa Claus. Tragically, the plump, jolly St. Nicholas the left longs to have back is not a pal, but a predator who delivers economic, environmental, social, and spiritual devastation in packages with more appealing gift-wrap...

-- Carolyn Baker, 3/20/06, Killing Hope, Enlivening Options.

However, it may momentarily brighten up your lunch hour[sic]. It sure as hell has done wonders for mine.

"I hope to God that poor fretful Bob Herbert [of Times fame] is finally right about one thing -- namely, that the pastor is not going away."

...In the neighborhoods and communities where Wright and his colleagues and predecessors have worked for decades -- we might even say, for a couple of centuries -- they've been anything but invisible. In fact, they've been indispensable. But in the social representation sold by the "corporate media" -- as Wright quite correctly calls them -- the Wrights are merely a curiosity when they're noticed at all.

That has all changed. Obama may or may not be toast after this brouhaha, and I for one couldn't care less, one way or the other. But the lasting legacy, let's hope, is that Jeremiah Wright and what he has to say are once again on the agenda.

Dr King and Malcolm put some of these topics on the table, back in the day. Then they got killed, and Malcolm was shoved into the footnotes of official history, while King suffered the equally dire fate of plaster sainthood... -- Michael J. Smith at Stop Me Before I Vote Again, 4/30/08

( Your choice of chips or a cookie, behind the cut )

IOW, The Crank would really love it if you'd all just stop prattling to her about Obama and forwarding her the front-runner's confection du jour. She's queasy enough as it is.

Save your teeth by chewing on this for a spell instead.

...Every year, the National Urban League publishes a study, "The State of Black America," in which the ills and disparities that persist in this country are catalogued. Every year, the story is basically the same. The United States has a way to go that only public policy can address. However, when Harvard University/The Kaiser Family Foundation did a study on White attitudes about race several years ago, it found that Whites have little appreciation for the reality of Black life in America, from police harassment and intimidation, to imprisonment, to family income, unemployment, housing, and health care. But without an appreciation of the reality faced by many of our fellow Americans, the necessary public policy initiatives to change those realities will find difficulty gaining acceptance in the public discourse...

...I am glad that candidate Obama mentioned the existing racial disparities in education, income, wealth, jobs, government services, imprisonment, and opportunity. Now it is time to address the public policies necessary to resolve these disparities. Now it is time to have the discussion on how we are going to come together and put policies in effect that will provide real hope and real opportunity to all in this country... -- Cynthia McKinney, 3/18/08

Frankly the only good thing The Crank could see coming from all this Obama worship would be a mass rejection of all things Democratic. Should Iron Lady II manage to finagle a win for herself at the convention, despite her obvious inability to communicate with desperate people as readily as Senator Pastry Chef does, it could happen.

The Crank places a very special emphasis on the word "could." For all their accusations that the GOP is the "fear party," it's likely that McCain will be a very effective vehicle for Democrats to flog each other with their very own special version of the tactic. Hell, it's inevitable. If there's one thing Democrats love to do, it's shouting from the rooftops every ten minutes to anyone who'll listen about how very FEARful they are of McCain or whomever. Only to scratch their heads five minutes later and wonder why this openness about their fears does not make their leaders behave towards them in a more respectful manner.

Oh, never mind. Can I have a piece with more frosting ? Oh, and a scoop of gelato, Please ? Somebody has to put the dentists' kids through college, right ?

Loyalty oaths are a crock of shit. Almost as bad as the kind you have to consciously sign are the ones you find you'd unconsciously signed. You think you've found a friendly lodging where at least a few people will share your quirks and then just like that, you realize that you can't live there any more.

I've bailed on debunkingwhite. I've learned a lot from the space and made what I think are some valuable connections. Maybe you folks who I've connected with will now be done with me, too. Well, that's your right. But frankly I can't abide all the pro-Obama hype over there and the subliminal fine print that seems to say that nobody can be a committed anti-racist unless they want to genuflect before the glory of Obama. I don't genuflect before Democrats. I think the party is a loathsome pile of shit that more or less gave Bush a blank check to do whatever the fuck he wanted. Which includes continuing to wage both a global and domestic race war that's plenty vicious even if it doesn't quite measure up in clarity to the baroque fantasies of villain-du-jour, Ron Paul. I don't sign loyalty oaths to any Democrat, in the name of any cause, anywhere. For that reason and many, many others.

You are good people doing important work. In some ways I wish I was more like you, but not in this way. It infuriates and grieves me to see you falling for a charlatan from a party teeming with charlatans. I just don't, in my heart of hearts, believe that he gives a damn about the things you give a damn about. I think he's a user running with other users. More anger and more grief is something I don't need to seek out deliberately, as it finds me on its own most of the time. I've been through this before. I've been the "bad feminist," the "bad Unionist," the "bad Jew," etc. because I left the DP and refuse to come back. Life goes on.

...If people ask me why I have to roam
I say that 90% of all accidents occur in the home...
-- Peter Case

( Stolen Moments from the Anti-Divine Madman )
[Cross-posted, w/minor alterations, to Mo Betta Meta]

Help. The stench is in everything and I can't make it go away.

So now you know. It really does matter who's President and which party controls Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction abortions and, in flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, lacked an exception to preserve the health of the woman. A Democratic President would never have signed such a bill...

Katha Pollitt dishes out her customary fare right after the inevitable bad news. Plus the obligatory backhanded swipe at those pursuing 3rd Party access. A few weak jokes. Scolding NARAL for supporting a Republican or two, No point in further excerpts. You know the drill if you've ever read La Nation. Nowhere to be found are the following names: Harry Reid, Bob Casey, Democrats For Life. Also MIA is the DP's high-priced 2006 sandbagging of pro-choice Green Carl Romanelli in PA. Likewise any reminder of the DP's failure to attempt a filibuster of Alito or to stop any of his buddies for twenty years running. No reminders that Henry Hyde and Jimmy Carter began the tradition of slapping restrictions on the rights of poor women when the ink was scarcely dry on Roe. Nothing of John Kerry's promise to consider pro-life SC judges if elected, even as he pocketed pro-choice money.

( Throw It Away )

Cross-posted to Stop Me Before I Vote Again.

Alternate Title: Why I Love UFO Breakfast Recipients

The Arch Satisfaction of the Vampire Sphincter

No one is going to hand you a viable third party. You can work to make a third party viable, if you want to. If you vote for someone with a track record of fucking you over, you have all the moral authority of a drunkard bitching at the liquor store owner, which is why people ridicule you. Playing stupid at great length isn’t working. Try something else. Have a nice day. -- jalvascruggs

Attend for the justifiable outbreaks of rudeness, stay for Pretty Pictures and show-stopping melodies.

Woo-hoo !! Cinema 21 in Portland will be showing An Unreasonable Man from March 2nd through March 8th, according to the movie's homepage. Reviews and other promo stuff here.

Hats off to Cinema 21 for picking this up. I can't wait to see it. As a bonus for my comrades in snark and/or boozing on damnportlanders, I promise to either drink one beer or donate twenty-five cents (through the month of March) to a really cool local charity (to be determined) every time somebody responds to this thread with one of these all-too-familiar comments/phrases*:

"...Purist..."
"Thanks For Bush."
"You're worse than those people who liked Franco in Spain."
"...Republican Dupe..."
"It's a Winner-Take-All-System..."
"...Lesser Evil..."
"...took votes from Gore..."

*Or unreasonable variations thereof;One comment/phrase per customer;Offer void where prohibited, etc...

From San Francisco Indymedia (East Bay Chapter), a former Democratic candidate for Governor explains why she made her getaway:

...Barbara described how she had been against the Death Penalty before viewing [Stan Tookie] Williams' execution, but left uncompromisingly against it. Before, she said, she was able to rationalize it as something her political allies regularly compromised about to win votes for the sake of promoting their larger progressive agendas. After the execution, however, she pledged to never again vote for any candidate who supports the Death Penalty.

Becnel described how [DP nominee] Phil Angelides once made light of a question she put him about whether or not he supported the Death Penalty. By later running for Governor, she said, she hoped to get in his and Arnold Schwarzenegger's faces about the issue.

"But it didn't happen," she said.

Blacklisted from being invited to key Democratic Party events, Barbara said she felt like Fannie Lou Hamer.* "The Dixiecrats have become the 'Richiecrats'," she said referring to the Democratic Party gatekeepers who can bar a black woman from full participation in 2006 the same way they did in 1964...

-- Robert B. Livingston 1/15/07

Unsparing imagery and strong language in the full article.

*Info about Hamer added by Yours Truly, since far too many DP faithful neither know of her nor understand the tremendous value of what she did.

The trouble is not that Bechnel discovered her breaking point but that most Dems don't have a breaking point. I wish we were growing folks like her in this town. Maybe we are and I just haven't heard of them. Yet.

Funny story, if you're a Crank, too:

In early 2005, I made the pilgrimage to Seattle because Ralph Nader was speaking. Good as the speech was, it doesn't stick in my mind at the moment. What does is the Brother Crank who was selling anti-war buttons and stickers out front where they were collecting the (modest) admission fee. He had on one of those Kucinich '04 shirts, and I asked him why he was still wearing it.

"To remind me," said the Brother.

"Of what," I asked.

"To not fall for this line of b.s. again," he replied, pointing to the "fear ends, hope begins" slogan.

I grinned, bought myself a few buttons, and went on to hear the talk.

So yesterday, Dennis Kucinich announced another Presidential campaign. Well, joy.

mr_xeno, devoted Kossack that he is, says that the buzz over there claims Kucinich will "move the dialogue to the Left." Uhhhh... sure he will. That's what happened before, right ? When Dennis last delivered his confused and crushed delegates into Kerry's hands with nary a whimper, Kerry immediately became anti-war. [snerk.]

( Rachmones... )

Back at Stop Me Before I Vote Again, Michael J. Smith is disappointed in Katha Pollitt, and who can blame him ?

"...It's all downhill from there. It's an abortion column, basically, and Katha ties herself in knots trying to argue that single-issue reproductive-rights advocates should not be supporting candidates based on their reproductive-rights record. Rather, they should support Democrats no matter what..."

The worst of it for The Crank is that Pollitt knows that all manner of rights are tied to the right to end a pregnancy. The converse right, for instance, to have a baby if you want to and to feel like that decision doesn't condemn you to a lifetime of scrabbling for crumbs while respectable folk look down on you for daring to spread your legs at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and so on. The Crank has no babies and wants none, but she also wants no coercion for any woman. A woman who aborts a pregnancy she wanted but could not afford is no victory for any feminist, regardless of Cranky personal feelings about kids and parenting.

( Stop If You Must )

On a related, equally grim and yet much funnier note, The Crank directs you to the one and only Stop My Abortion. Track down the anti-Suicide Girls rant (9/12/06), which is worth the visit by itself.

"...Word on the street is the management at SuicideGirls, who like to pretend they’re young, hip, independent riotgrrls, are actually a bunch of fat, balding 45 year-old men who hang around Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion all day, hoping for leftover handjobs from the bunnies. I’ve heard SuicideGirls also pays up to $300 for a set of photos ($500 if you bend over a motorcycle and part your cheeks in an arty way). That’s big dollars for desperate babes..."

Shake your head at The Crank if you must, but take note of the fact that she actually got through an entire political post without once using the word w*ngn*t. (A word that has overstayed its welcome in the public consciousness nearly as long as anything related to pirates.) When was the last time you managed as much ?

You Might As Well Tell The Truth.

With the philosophy portion is out of the way, The Crank finally weighs in on Lieberpalooza '06. It's not as though there were any rush. His constituents' public rebuke was long overdue and sadly limited in scope, considering how many of his imitators are free to carry on as they always have. This holds true regardless of whether he ends up winning or not.

In fact, I had hoped to link to a particular/typical clump of Democratic faithful denial that I stepped in barefoot last Sunday morning. Serves me right for knowing it wasn't the proper neighborhood for The Crank to be touring in the first place. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate it again today. All this stuff blurs together over time. You'll have to forgive me on grounds that I have never aspired to be a big-name red-toothed blogger/journalist. Or because you know me to have all the computer savvy of a freshly-canned snail.

Along with the obligatory sneer at He Who Must (Or Need) Not Be Named Again, came a sentimental bleat that revealed more than its writer meant it to. Her/his claim was that as long as the DP remains the party of Waters, Kucinich, and the other legions [sic] of compassionate proggies, it would be churlish and cruel for "us" to leave the DP. When they head out, said Sentimental Lady/Gentleman, it will be time for us to head out.+ Well, I've never been one to avoid kicking one leg out from under an argument that was built missing the other three anyway. Spare me, Ms/Mr. Sentimental.

( Just This Once, Spare Me. )


+I'll put five-to-one odds on this clown having an "If The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow" bumper sticker on his/her car, too.
*With humble thanks to Delbert McClinton, and also to Deborah Coleman. It was her last CD which introduced me to the song.

Inspired by Howard Dean, his good pals at the 700 Club, and way too many other teeth-grinding moments to recount here, The Crank would like to announce the formation of a new political party. The Shut The Fuck Up Party. The Crank believes firmly in the best po-po-mo tradition of keeping things simple for busy people in a hurry to switch over to some reality show about whose pet can learn to disco rollerblade with Beethoven or Triumph while losing ten pounds. Hence, the STFU platform is succinct and lends itself readily to soundbites. It is as follows:

Cut the payroll tax for everyone who makes less than 100K per.

Raise the minimum wage and tie it to inflation.

Single-payer. Right now. Enough goddamn noodling and pissing and moaning already.

Also in a fine upstanding tradition of making everyone march in lockstep to save freedom, all potential candidates should spend hours in front of a full length mirror practicing gut sucking, hair laminating, and of course, the proper delivery of the rallying cry:

SHUT THE FUCK UP !! As in, I don't give a fuck if you don't want queers to marry. (Public funding for abortions, IRV, etc.) Buy a damn clue already. Even if I follow the highly debatable notion that somehow keeping Jerri and Joan from marrying will get you in good with Jesus, the fact remains that it will do nothing to enhance your standard of living. As a good American, your duty is to concentrate on the wads of cash you will save from my tax cuts, wage raises and guaranteed lifetime health coverage. Buy a boat. Send your kid to college. Hell, hire a pastry chef for the church suppers if that's your thing. Queers are taxpayers and they get the exact same rights you do. Now SHUT THE FUCK UP !!

Admit it. Howard could learn a lot from me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go grocery shopping and then practice sucking in my gut.

... the Oregon House moved boldly to protect us from the nefarious influence of...

Car Title Loans ? GMO's ? The Portland Business Alliance ? Queer bashers ? Don't be silly. The supreme enemy of freedom in our fair state is clearly-- Independent and 3rd Party candidates for public office.

Oregon House passes HB 2614.

On June 29, the Oregon Senate passed HB 2614 by 17-12, and on June 30 the Oregon House passed it 39-7. It makes it illegal for primary voters to sign for an independent candidate. Attempts are being made to persuade Governor Kulongoski to veto it, for these 4 reasons: (1) 7 federal courts, and one state supreme court, have said that it is unconstitutional for a state to make independent candidate ballot access harder than minor party ballot access; (2) the bill imposes extra work on county elections officials, since it’s more work to check independent candidate petitions if the signer’s registration status and the signer’s history of voting in primaries must both be checked; (3) the bill is inconsistent in saying that its purpose is to prevent voters from participating in two nominating events, since it continues to be legal for voters to sign two different primary petitions for the same office, or two independent candidate petitions for the same office; (4) the bill is not clear about how to handle a voter who signs the petition and then votes in the primary.

( Feelings. Whoa whoa whoa feeeelingsss... )

There's one great thing about being a crank in this country.

Well, there's three great things about it. This is especially true in Election Years. More frequently than in off-years, Shrub or one of his torpedos are bumping their gums and all the red/blue courtiers carry on as if roses are coming out of the space between instead of turds. If you're a crank, you can revel in your skill at having seen the calamity du jour coming from miles away long before your more stable and trusting friends managed to. You have learned from experience. That's Joy No. 1.

Joy No. 2: You can look over your shoulder and tell them what you've seen. You can warn them, in a friendly fashion, to refresh their pommanders like never before in preparation for another huge and particularly sticky/stinky barage of turds. You feel that burst of bracing, if bittersweet, hope that they'll listen. You can help them, at least in a small way. This time will be different than all the others.

( Go Forward ! Move ahead ! )