Rupert Has Hillary

Bill had Monica, Rupert has Hillary.

Have you heard? Hillary’s whoring for Rupert Murdoch, wingnut media mogul, owner of the no-fact-zone Fox News Network. He’s putting on a gala fundraising event for her. This is putrid from many directions.

          We know what he wants from her: bad legislation. Legislation harmful to all the principles we progressives hold dear. I can’t think of a single instance in which Rupert and I would be on the same side of an issue. He’s about as nasty and malicious as they come in a panoply of conservative bad guys.

           I imagine she thinks, aside from raking in a lot of campaign money, that he’ll direct his powerful media voice more in her direction. Maybe she thinks that she’ll pick up some Jerry Falwell votes; that wacko Christians will flock to her side. That paragon of mavarickness, John McCain, evidently thinks Falwell will get him some votes, he spoke recently at Jerry’s faux university.

          Jerry may have a difficult time picking between the two; but I wouldn’t. They can both kiss my ass. I gave up on gutless, sleazezoid, groveling Democrats with John Kerry; he was the last straw.

          When Bill triangulated; that is, took up the Republican-lite banner to curry favors, the right wing was riding high, and his strategy had a semblance of practical utility – though still wrong in my eyes. But to kowtow to the conservatives at a time when they are tanking on all levels, reaching previously unimaginable levels of malfeasance and incompetence, is positively incomprehensible to me.

          Then again, I gave up long ago on the Democratic Party. While it does contain a few black sheep willing to actually stand for something, as a whole it’s about as useful as a freezer in Antarctica.

          Getting back to Hillary, her big legislative thrust is a flag burning amendment to the US Constitution. Her stance on Iraq is indistinguishable from the Bushman’s. Her embrace of Rupert can only indicate a steep downward slide for thinking that anything good could come from her election. It’s really too bad because she’s bright and personable and could easily fill the bill. She could be the first female president.    

          OK. I don’t want to indulge in my own extremism. She’d be better than any Republican on the scene today. The right wing has gotten so off-the-wall that anybody possessing a smidgen of commonsense would be better for the country and for our goals. However, I won’t vote for her. You can. I won’t put you down for it, I won’t try to discourage you, but not me, no way.

          For two presidential elections in a row the Democrats thought they could win by standing back and letting the opposition deconstruct, that it wasn’t necessary or good to actually say anything or stand for anything. Ironically, in both cases, Gore and Kerry actually began to speak to the issues late in the game – because their idiotic campaigns were going nowhere – and in both cases standing up made them victorious.

Unfortunately, their margins were close enough to be overweighed by fraud, intimidation and outright theft. Then, instead of fighting for themselves and the good of the country, they reacted to Republican malfeasance by capitulating; by laying down and asking to be trampled on.

Therefore, the most important factor in the next election is the Democrat’s margin of victory. It has to be so great that it can’t be overwhelmed by conservative fraud and theft. And great enough to preclude their giving up without a fight. Otherwise, they’re a lost cause again. Given the opportunity, they’ll once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  

The voting machine problem hasn’t been fixed, except in a few states. Because the Democrats refused to put up a fight in Ohio in 2004 – they left it to the Greens and Libertarians to ask for and pay for a recount – the full extent of the theft has not been brought to light and broadcast for all to see. In fact, the recount was as dishonest as the actual count. Nothing has changed in Ohio – except that the Republican legislature has made it more difficult and expensive to ask for a recount – to preclude the exact same fraud happening again. And nothing has changed in the Democratic Party to expect that they will demand a fair election next time.

In other words, the Democrats don’t need my vote. It belongs to the Greens. If they need the votes of a million Greens then they’ve lost again. If they need my vote to eke out a victory, then they might as well give up now.  

I came across a fabulous factoid today that’s the perfect cap to this election-fraud-Rupert-Hillary commentary. In a recent poll, 40% of Americans said they thought the 2004 election was stolen. Ah, but when it was broken down further by which network they got their news from, the results were astounding. A majority of people who watched CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS – nearly 70% in the case of CNN – were sold on the theft scenario. For those who watched FOX, it was .05%! Less than one percent were aware of a stolen presidential election. That’s why no significant changes have been made to prevent future malfeasance – FOX has made sure the majority is uniformed. 

 Rupert’s customers are uniformly clueless about the great issues of the day. They still think WMD’s were found in Iraq, that Saddam and Osama were buddies, that Saddam had something to do with 911.

They say politics makes strange bedfellows, and I accept that politics is the art of compromise, but selling out to Rupert Murdoch is beyond the pale for my vote. There’s no way this can be anything less than cretin. Better to lose than go to bed with Murdoch. And most mystifying, it’s totally unnecessary when the opposition is at a nadir of influence and public approval. But not out of character for the Democratic Party. They are the dregs.