Hillary's the one

By Infidel753 

Hillary Clinton is now officially in the 2016 Presidential race, and will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. And we're lucky to have her. She can do the job, she can do the job right -- and, critically, she can get the job. She can beat the Republicans.

[I mean no disrespect by adopting the common habit of referring to Hillary Clinton by her first name. Given that Bill Clinton remains a prominent figure, just calling her "Clinton" would be ambiguous, and her own campaign is called "Hillary for America".]

Here's Charles Pierce (found via Progressive Eruptions) explaining what's at stake: 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will accept the science of anthropogenic climate change and treat it as a crisis. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will support marriage equality, and oppose discrimination against our fellow citizens based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she will not destroy the Affordable Care Act, an article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, and despite her closeness to certain Wall Street interests, she will not destroy the Dodd-Frank reforms, another article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential.

[...] 

To get elected, she does not have to wink at state's rights, up to and including incidents of armed resistance. 

To get elected, she does not have to equivocate on the science behind the theory of evolution as does any Republican candidate who seeks the votes of Republicans in Iowa. 

To get elected, she does not have to peddle the snake oil of supply-side economics, nor does she have to peddle scare stories about the oncoming caliphate, nor does she have to create bogeymen about jackboots coming to steal your guns.

That is to say, Hillary thinks and functions in the real world as opposed to being committed to dangerously-delusional policies. I'd add that she won't put any more theocratic nutcases like Scalia on the Supreme Court. And she will build on the progress Obama and Rouhani have made on bringing Iran out of isolation to the point where it has a stake in the international system, and will continue working with amenable Middle Eastern groups and governments to fight violent extremism, as opposed to the Republican strategy of "when in doubt, bomb and invade and hope for the best."

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David Brooks vomits up "Thought Leader" nonsense, gets ripped by Charles Pierce

By Michael J.W. Stickings

David Brooks's utterly ridiculous New York Times column from yesterday, "The Thought Leader," has justifiably been ridiculed by commentators far and wide. Consider just the opening paragraph, which sets the table for the sheer nonsense to come:

Little boys and girls in ancient Athens grew up wanting to be philosophers. In Renaissance Florence they dreamed of becoming Humanists. But now a new phrase and a new intellectual paragon has emerged to command our admiration: The Thought Leader. 

The first two sentences contain nothing in the way of truth, while the third is the sort of manufactured "straw man" sociology we've come to expect from Brooks. Like Patio Man before him, "The Thought Leader" is entirely a creation of Brooks's deformed imagination, and in fleshing out this non-existent creature who serves only as a punching bag for Brooks's supposedly brilliant observations, as he does with the rest of the column, all Brooks exposes is his ignorance and lack of self-awareness. Because, really, do American boys and girls really dream of becoming "thought leaders"? And what the fuck is a thought leader anyway? Certainly not the caricature on the receiving end of Brooks's criticism.

(By the way, the whole Patio Man thing at least was funny. There's nothing funny here. Nothing.)

Brooks fashions himself a perceptive observer of the American socio-economic landscape, which is also nonsense, and for the ultimate takedown of this atrocious piece, a work of sheer brilliance, you should turn to Charlie Pierce, who, as they say, nailed it.

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Aaron Hernandez and the American Way: A tale of murder, media, guns, race, class, and the NFL

By Michael J.W. Stickings

My apologies for being away from blogging most of the past few weeks, and, once more, a huge thanks to Richard and my great co-bloggers for filling in. For a variety of reasons, including kids, work, and a busted computer, I've been doing my writing, such as it is, almost exclusively at that wonderful and dysfunctional place called Twitter (you can find me here).

But I'm back, refreshed and, while still intending to tweet a lot, eager to get back to more serious writing.

I'll take it slowly today, though, with a post on the current crime sensation involving a certain tight end for the New England Patriots...

**********

By now, you've surely heard about the ongoing police investigation of the murder of Odin Lloyd, if only because it involves a sports celebrity, football player Aaron Hernandez. (Whether you have or haven't, Time has a helpful guide here.)

With the police searching for evidence, there's been a ton of speculation in the media, with reports that charges were going to be filed turning out, so far, to be untrue -- and, predictably, Hernandez's lawyer has attacked the media for what he called "false reports." Basically, we don't know anything, or at least not nearly enough to have much of a clue. Maybe Hernandez did something, maybe not, but it's not even clear what that something might be -- obstruction of justice? more and worse? It's just too early to say.

Follow the story if you like, and however you like. The sensation-obsessed media are all over it -- you know how much they like (feed off of) the intersection of crime and celebrity.

But step back a moment. There's more going on here than you might think. Because it's not just about the crime and the celebrity, it's what this whole episode tells us about... well, pretty much everything. And for that, there's no better person to turn to than Charles Pierce, who in a piece at Grantland yesterday was as brilliant as ever, shining his flashlight on the sordid underbelly of the whole damn thing -- the bloodthirsty media, the bloodthirsty gun culture, the bloodthirsty pro sports industry, and pretty much the degradation of American civilization as we know it.

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