"I know that some people don't have to worry when they go to the supermarket," she said, staring accusingly at the [GAS TAX HOLIDAY IS BLATANT PANDERING] placard bearers, but "there are people who count their pennies as they walk down the aisle," trying to figure out what they can afford. "Don't they deserve a break every once in a while? They haven't done anything wrong ... The oil companies have had it their way for too long," she said. "I'm tired of being a patsy." (Via)Fuck you, Hillary. Fuck you and your $100 million dollar fortune, your privileged upbringing, your off-the-rack populist posturing, and the toxic sense of entitlement displayed by you and your loathsome little crowd.
How dare you fucking condescend to even pretend you know what life is like for folks in my income bracket? I certainly can't loan myself $6 million dollars to continue a campaign whose sole purpose at this point is to gratify a increasingly pathetic manifestation of megalomania. Nor can my spouse garner six figure lecture fees. (I can't help think what those millions of dollars could have done if used in benefit of local food banks rather than to perpetuate a vanity-fueled lost cause.)
We're hard-pressed as it is trying to deal with the fallout from the economic disaster that your shitheel husband (and you, if your boasts are to be believed) set the stage for in the first place. The Bush Cabal let it turn gangrenous, but the original wounds were caused "New Democrat" economic policies that encouraged the bubble economy to run rampant with no forethought towards its inevitable bursting.
You are not one of us, you have no idea what it's like to be one of us, and anyone who thinks that you actually give a shit about our problems is a bigger fool than you are, Ms. Clinton.
I was raised in a working class household. Though my job could technically be labelled "white collar," my tastes and the reach of my income remain well within typical plebeian parameters. I resent the assumptions made by both your campaign and the media's overpaid talking heads about what "working class" means. Don't paint us all with the same brush. At least have the fucking courage to come out and say "I'm pandering to narrow-minded bigots" instead of euphemizing and generalizing the concerns, hopes and desires of a broad and diverse cross-section of people.
Pulp - Common People (from Different Class, 1995) - Absolutely Goddamn spot-on. "She came from
(And lest anyone feels obligated to ask, yes, I am familiar with the Bill Shatner/Joe Jackson cover of the song, okay?)
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28 comments:
The Motiv-8 mix of common people is pretty tasty too.
And almost anything by Crass could fit the bill for this posting - 'Do They Owe Us A Living' springs straight to mind
I suppose that since there was no one left on the right who didn't despise the word "Clinton" it was time for them to start up on the left. Good show, Andrew. The idea that Bill and Hillary are calling anyone "elitist" is just appalling.
Indeed, PM!
Hey, BillyWitchDoctor: If you want to bring something substantive to counter my arguments, fine.
Calling me "retarded" (pure class, that) is just going to get you filed as a troll whose comments will be summarily deleted.
Good on you, Andrew. I agree with you 100%.
I pounded my fist on the desk here at work after reading your post.
Truer words could not have been said.
You wrote exactly how I feel.
I'm not from Arkansas (I'm a New Yorker who recently "fled" to PA seeking lower cost living), but I recall watching and reading a TON of stuff prior to Bill's Presidential run, wherein the people of Arkansas were polled about how well they think the Clinton's had done for the state, and the preponderance of people (those who were quoted, anyway) said that things were far worse due to the Clinton's having governed there, and that they warn ANYONE from voting them into any further positions of power.
Yet, in both the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, Arkansas voted for him.
(Now, perhaps it was the Electoral "College" who voted him in, but still..).
The Clinton Presidency having fried itself out (like a college dorm party after 4am with the keg tapped out and the cops knocking on the door) left the duo with a tarnished name and history, but Hillary was able to parlay "abused wife" into a career in and of itself, and use it to garner the pity/women's/liberal self-loathing man-hater vote in her NY seat.
And even though I can't tell you thing one that she has done positively for NY (there might be some things), she is using that momentum to carry her forth to the White House.
Personally I think that she is a blight, an opportunist and a plotting schemer who makes Machiavelli look like a monkey who keeps touching the electrified food plate.
My point?
I don't like her. Don't TRUST her.
And when I see that look behind her eyes (that makes me squirm like someone has let loose freon-secreting bloodworms in my brain)... I FEAR her.
But, due to the short term memory (and general stupidity) of the average voter, she is still a viable threat.
Heck. These are the people that not only thought voting for "W", (a man who failed at every single career, objective and profession in his life,) not just once, but TWICE, was a good idea.
But, then again... many people think professional wrestling is real too.
(although, as athletes and gymnasts, those 'roided-out dudes are amazing)
Sorry man.
You got me going on this one.
~P~
P-TOR
Don't. Don't. Get. Me. Started. I am so close to blowing my stack over multimillionaries who claim they appeal to the working class.
BA, ~p~, let me add an "Amen." And again, amen! When Hillary ran for senate, I thought to myself this is not a public servant. This is someone who thinks she is owed the oval office. Every minute since then has been like watching a coiled snake posed to strike.
Today, I heard a clip of Hillary analyzing the polling data. And if she had just spoken plain (so many % white, so many % middle class, etc), I would have understood she was just being a policy wonk with numbers. Not trying to split people into camps on race, or sex, or income, or age. Just discussing numbers.
But she had to "correct" herself. She had stump. And the words turned to worms in my ears, and I tasted ashes in my mouth. She said an Associated Press poll "found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again."
See that? She backed backed up to make "working" into "hard working". You know, hard working, hard drinking Amuricans? Just like her. Not like that elitist Obama. She's a man of the people.
Well, fuck you, Hillary. Fuck you, and fuck your condescending attitude. You're as phony as your phony southern accent, junior fucking senator from New York. You never even owned a house until you needed to establish a residence to run for Senate. What do you know about working whites who pay a mortage?
And while we're at it, fuck John McCain's multimillionaire wife, who leases her jet to the McCain campaign. I guarentee if McCain has to go through airport security like the rest of us, DHS would be the tightest ship in the shipping business. But its not the Straight Talk Express now is? And when you said you would landed Air Force One and have done things different after Katrina in NOLA, just how stupid do you think we are? Bush was cutting your goddamn birthday cake in Arizona the day after the hurricane hit, on August 29. You couldn't lean over to him and tell him to get his ass to city God smote?
Oh, PS: stfu about being a POW. Don't you have a legistative record you can run on? You remind me of another senator with a multimillionaire wife who wouldn't shut up about Vietnam: John Kerry.
Half the voters in NC said that they felt Hillary was a liar. And that's Democratic voters. She cannot win a National election. At this point, if she managed to even get the nomination, the party would split in half as most Americans would feel completely disenfranchised.
She will have to drop out of the race shortly, it's the only chance she has to save any type of legacy (and to get Obama to pay off her loans). A scorched earth policy will not help the Democrats at all and she is far too cunning to allow that to be placed at her feet, especially when 2012 looms (if McCain wins). And there's talk that she could end up on the Supreme Court if Obama wins. And that would actually be a great place for her...
GREAT choice of Common People... you need to hear William Shatner's version... it rules!
ahh- i didn't see your shatner note at the foot of yer post.
This rant is kind of ridiculous.
You seem to think that rich people can't imagine or understand what it would be like to count pennies for groceries? What do you think that takes like some kind of giant leap of mental prowess?
You think being rich means you don't experience suffering? Don't have a real human life full of pain and sorrow that can be used to understand other people's pain and sorrow??
You suggest she should donate money to food banks. I presume because you have empathy for the plight of hungry people. And yet you yourself are well fed... compared to a starving farmer in kenya one could even say you have Clinton-esque wealth... and yet somehow you seem to be able to empathize with the hungry.
Just because she's rich doesn't make her evil.
To speak on people that suffer is NOT to condescend... or to front... or to pretend... it is to empathize.
If you think the Clintons are generating an empathetic vibe, you need to recalibrate your perceptions. Noblesse oblige that bares its fangs when not given its expected due isn't empathy; it's paternalism.
This has jack shit to do with starving folks in Kenya. It has to do with how someone is claiming class solidarity on halfassed race-baiting generalizations at the same time she is accusing others of having a privileged or elitist position.
Given the current state of events, either rich folks don't understand the plight of the less fortunate or they do understand but simply don't give a fuck. "I feel your pain, vote for me" doesn't count.
Right on, brotherman! You took my half-evolved/ half-assed ideas and put them smack-dab on the screen much better than I'd ever be able to.
Once again you've hit the nail on the head. Elegantly put. How about posting the English Beat's 'Stand Down Hilary'... er...I mean...'Margaret'?
You think being rich means you don't experience suffering? Don't have a real human life full of pain and sorrow that can be used to understand other people's pain and sorrow??
Yes. I do. Now ask me a hard one.
If you think the kind of vitriol you are spewing makes you seem like you have "highly calibrated perceptions" then you need to... uh... calibrate your calibrations.
And it isn't about race-baiting generalizations.
It's about you saying "How dare you fucking condescend to even pretend you know what life is like for folks in my income bracket?"
You're not talking about race-baiting there -- you're rich-bashing for sport.
I have counted pennies for groceries. I've done it. But I have never gone two days without food. I CAN imagine what it would be like to go two days without food. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. I can empathize with that suffering. And Hilary can know what it's like to count pennies.
Bottom line: statements like "rich people don't understand the plight of the less fortunate" coming from a blogger with a white-color job who grew up working-class in America (read: upper-upper-upper class in the world) are at best ignorant rhetoric and at worst pure hypocrisy.
"I CAN imagine what it would be like to go two days without food."
You might be able imagine, or even empathize, what it's like, but trust me when I speak from experience and say it doesn't come anywhere near the reality of the situtation, and I am talking from first-hand personal experience here...and the fact that someone else in the world might have had it worse at time was hardly any comfort.
You can claim to know, but you really don't have a clue, no more than I can truly understand what my brother-in-law went through in Iraq. It's that paternalistic sense of empathy, with no basis in personal experience, that is hallmark of the armchair liberal.
Bottom line: So fuck off, already.
Won't someone please think of the rich people?
"Rich-bashing" has to be one of the most disingenuous phrases ever employed in a political argument, especially considering the vast majority of wealth is inherited, not earned.
Remember: It's only class war when the poor complain about the rich.
So my whole thing about the situation is this:
McCain suggests the gas tax holiday, right? And it's the perfect Republican plan: People save money because they don't have to pay the evil taxes, but the oil companies still get to make their maximum profit, thereby keeping Big Business Happy.
So Hillary sees it, and realizing that gas prices are a major concern for the voters, seizes on it to appeal to people by countermanding the "spendocrat" image and cutting their energy costs.
Then Obama comes in and says that it's not really that big a deal, since it amounts to about thirty bucks over the course of three months, and it's not a long-term solution.
Now, I'm pretty solidly middle-class. I have a high-speed internet conncetion and an XBox 360 and while I don't have much of a disposable income, I've got enough that I can buy comics and go see a movie every now and then and not worry about where my next meal is coming from (unless I get sick or something, which would ruin me), and even I wouldn't turn down 30 bucks if somebody wanted to give it to me. That's (almost) a full tank of gas or three days worth of lunch or a small piece of my car insurance that I don't have to worry about, and so I know that there are people to whom thirty bucks would mean even more. But spread out over three months, when things are going to go right back to where they were afterwards? That's not a solution, and it's blatant pandering to suggest it is when all it is is a stopgap measure that will ensure that oil companies still get to charge whatever the fuck they want.
But instead of saying all that, Hillary decides to backpedal by suggesting that Obama just doesn't understand the poor as well as she does.
That's got to be one of the most insulting things I've ever heard.
McCain economics="finding a lottery ticket in the street."
Hillary economics="finding a lottery ticket in the street. It's not a winning ticket, though."
And that gag is about as political as i get. I'm voting for Lex Luthor again. I'm bullish on his urban renewal policy, not so much on his killing-Superman policy.
Politics is a career much the same as any other. When you go for a job interview, you don't sit there and say what you really think now do you? Politics is the same - a politican will say whatever they think you want to hear, they will do whatever it takes to get your vote. The bottom line is that they are furthering their careers and lining their pockets, usually at your expense.
To paraphrase sanctumsanctorumcomix - they are all a blight, they are all plotting schemers and they are most definitely all opportunists.
Highlander, you're not suggesting that it's okay to be a patronizing opportunist because everyone is, are you? Because that's all kinds of fucked up.
Nah, Ragnell, he's in favor of abolishing the entire rotten system in favor of local self-governing anarcho-soviets. (I think that's about right, though the man himself would certainly explain it better.)
I agree with the concept, but my pragmatic short-term view tends to override my idealism.
I guess it really is true. Politics bring out the posters on blogs.
"off-the-rack populist posturing"
very nicely put!
Sorry to hop in here again (and I'll try to keep it brief), but "anonymous'" comment about Hillary's NY residence brought back something that was told to me the other day.*
Aside from the lifetime salary that Bill Clinton will receive as an ex-President, he also has a full cadre of Secret Service Agents that are his for life.
Hillary, I believe, has agents as well (especially, if she WINS the darn election).
Her Agents are in addition to Bill's (and seeing as how if she wins, she'll cut Bill loose with a "Thanks for your stumping. As agreed, that pays off your 'debt' for the affair. Now, get lost until we need each other again.").
Those Agents have to live SOMEWHERE, right?
Well, Bill & Hillary's multi-million dollar home has a mortgage of "X" (I was told it was in the hundreds of thousands per month, but without proper research, I can't say how accurate that is).
There's a guest house on the premises (that either CAME with the house, OR the Gov't (read: US) paid to have built) that the Agents live in.
The Clinton's charge the Fed' Gov't (read: US) the same "X" dollar amount per month as the mortgage costs.
So... (yup) the Fed Gov't (read: US) are paying for the Clinton's multi-million dollar home in Uber-Richville, N.Y.
They don't pay a dime.
* Again, this was information that was TOLD to me and I haven't researched it as of yet.
However, I don't doubt that this has EVERY possibility of being the case.
~P~
P-TOR
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