Hillbuzz Suffering Halfsphynxiation

American Artemis In CleoPalin Finery, With Sacred Dujbeetle

Harvey Bilk is prognosticating again: SHE'S RUNNING!  How does he know, when the American Artemis, or as I like to think of her, the Wassilla Sphynx, won't even tell her lamestream buddy Greta?

Because she's looking Presidential in Pink! Fashion maven Kevin doesn't remember seeing her in pink before!

Because she didn't mention the actual candidates' names! She just ran them down pointedly enough to make clear whom she was talking about. Clever!

Except for Newt! She gaves props to the man who's just running to pay some bills, as we all know, wink wink! No harm fluffing him. So presidential!

Because she praised the Tea Party and "We the People" and the Pioneering Spirit! Nobody does that who isn't running for president!

And she slammed President Obama! That settles it!

TA-DAH!

Brought to you by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the Undead Blog, who is ready to send a postcard to Sarah herself: RUN SARAH RUN!!!! Make this snark blog the happiest blog in the world. ;o}

An American Artemis For Hillbuzz

Half-Artemissed

O Great Grisly Mama of the Frozen North, Our American Artemis, your followers cry out to you for nourishment, yet none will you give them save the words "my plan," on which they suck even down to the last crumb, for from within to draw the nugatory virtue.

 We venerate thee, Fecund One, who appeareth now here, now there, wherever the light shineth on someone else, for though the voices of our tribe now raise up against thee, we will never falter in our devotion, no matter how embarrassing. 

Just ask Hillary.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the Undead Blog, with apologies to her conservative pals~~hey look, guys, you knew I couldn't keep pulling my punches forever!

Only@Tea: Palin Rally Speaker Eric Golub's HighLARious Jokes About Special Needs Children Get Crickets From Hillbuzz

So, Teahadists, you may have carry permits, but what if the proper weapon is a rotten tomato? In Indianola, at yesterday's Greatest Announcement Rally Ever To Never Feature An Announcement, painfully unfunny stockbroker/"comedian" Eric Golub joked about the youngest Palin being "defective:"

Palin “has such a value for human life, that she would even bring a child into this world she knew that modern medical technology would show that would be defective ideologically like Nancy Pelosi.”


What a wretch.  You'd think he'd have had to leave the stage under the assault of whatever overripe produce was to hand, but from the devoted Palinista crowd, crickets.

When They Listen To Kevin Dujan, They Are! More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About the Cook County "Sex Scandal," Because Someone Asked

Chicago Deep Dish

"Anonymous" has written in to ask, regarding the "Prophet Making" Post,

"Then Huffpo is crazy?" (Immediate, visceral response: always!)

Anonymous then links to Will Guzzardi's (of the Huffpo Chicago "Bureau!") piece of July 28th, about the resignation of the young (23) executive director of the Cook County GOP, aka, in the overheated rhetorical stylings of Kevin Dujan, "The Prophet."

Bearing in mind that Snarkopolitan is run by a New York liberal with as much interest in the slimy underside of Illinois Republican politics as she has in the lineup of the Chicago Bears (less!), and no journalistic experience whatsoever, anything I write should be taken accordingly (that is, well-salted). With that proviso, let's wade into the goo:

There are two camps at each other's throats, as Anonymous surely knows better than I: the Lee Roupas camp and the Eloise Gerson camp. The "Prophet," aka Jeremy Rose, is a Roupassard, and Stephen Boulton, General Counsel for the Chicago GOP, is a Gersonian.

The Huffpo article, by Will Guzzardi (of the Huffpo Chicago "bureau!") clearly favors the Gersonians. Writing about how a complaint against Rose that was a year old, and had been settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, got brought up again, Guzzardi says,

"And when a whistleblower came forward about the complaint, Roupas organized a concerted effort to remove that person from her elected position within the party."

Well, that's how Eloise Gerson, the "whistleblower," would characterize it. But if you read this article by Michael Volpe, it looks like a giant, messy power struggle, with Gersonians accusing Roupassards of secret Democratism, and Roupassards accusing Gerson of being a just plain crummy Chairwoman whose fundraising promises were unmet. Gerson's counsel Boulton has a special dislike for Rose for "insulting him" in unspecified ways, and everybody was pretty much angling to oust everybody else, and treating any moves by the other faction as outrageous, ought to be illegal, never in my 32 years as a Republican have I seen, etc. There are meetings without Ms. Gerson (condolences on her cat. And on the in-laws coming to town), and meetings with Ms. Gerson, and Rashomonic accounts from the opposing camps of all of them, which I am not going to try to untangle.

But according to T. Mannis, a conservative blogger who operates Chicago News Bench, this power struggle was at least 18 months old, and so predates the Cubby Bear Unhappy Hour, subsequent unpleasant encounter, complaint, and resolution of the complaint to the satisfaction of the complainant.

So Gerson has an axe to grind, which the Huffpo writer should have discovered and noted, and didn't.(BTW, a bio of Mr. Guzzardi shows him to be the founder of a pretty great-looking online magazine called Wag's Revue. I've nothing against Mr. Guzzardi at all, except that he seems to have taken a few too many people at face value.

He didn't have the advantage I did in being tipped to Kevin Dujan's propensity for concocting lunatic, baroque scenarios, not having been the innocent target of one. Even so, when he links to Hillbuzz repeatedly, he doesn't question certain things that really ought to stand out to a humor writer, like the similarity in tone (ridiculous/ridiculous) between "Roxy Vanilla" and Hillbuzz.

He writes,

"HillBuzz had in fact received a copy of the complaint against Rose more than a year ago; due to a HillBuzz blogger's personal connections to the story, it was not published. But when the Roxy Vanilla email implicated Roupas in covering up the allegations, HillBuzz spoke out--and has been closely following the story since.

"The root of the scandal is something that should have warranted jail time for [Rose]...but he has been protected and helped, apparently, by the likes of Roupas ... all this time," the blogger wroteon July 12."

How brave of Hillbuzz to "speak out!" And how less than objective a way to phrase it. But if"Hillbuzz" (whom we now know is just plain old Kevin) believes that what Rose did "is something that should have warranted jail time," then why did Hillbuzz also suppress this complaint, for an entire year? Instead, because of "personal connections," Hillbuzz sat on a story that could have spared young women the ordeal of being pursued by the Prophet,

"swimming the YR waters like a shark, hunting for seals in this ample rookery. "

And the "personal connections?

For over a year now, we’ve been aware of an explosive scandal that’s been rocking the Chicago Young Republicans, but because we know all parties involved in this personally, we have not spoken of it. One of the people involved has a romantic link to one of us here, so the whole thing is messy on so many levels.

A romantic link---to the shark, in fact! That is messy. If Mr. Guzzardi had just googled "Dujan," he would have discovered what best buds Rose and Dujan used to be. Since there has been so much messiness since the Huffpo article was written, the Timeout Chicago feature doesn't come up unless you Google their names together. But a year ago, it would have popped up on the first or second page, as it did for me and other people writing about Dujan in the time of our own travails.

Nobody can blame Mr. Guzzardi for not wading through all the bubbling pits of adjectives and bile that constitute the Hillbuzz Scandal-birthing Swamp to find the aformentioned description of "the Prophet" on July 16, a week before the Huffpo piece appeared:

Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive,

Projection much, Kevin? But "bisexually attractive," combined with "a romantic link," ought to have set off an alarm bell somewhere. Well, that and the fact that in the comments of that same piece, the Shark turns into "Mr. Blondy Sleepy Needs His Coffee Bear."

T. Mannis had the advantage of getting one of the Roxy Vanilla emails from the wrong email address. "theswordandtherose," another dubious adventure in rococo nomenclature. Mannis recognised that the email shared the same distinctive voice as Roxy Vanilla, but was signed differently: "Concerned CYRs," But over on Hillbuzz, the selfsame text was touted as THE LATEST EMAIL! coming straight from Roxy Vanilla. Whoops!

Mannis's reaction:

"If Hillbuzz would forward the email he claims to be from Roxy Vanilla to me, I'll be satisfied. I don't know if Hillbuzz even reads this blog, but if he reads this post he'll probably laugh this off and shout "F--- you, Mannis, you bug!" at his computer screen. Of course, he won't be able to hear you or me shouting "Prove it, Hillbuzz!" at our keyboards."

I would never want to minimize the seriousness of sexual harassment. But Hillbuzz turns the "sexual harassment" charge, which was settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, into "attempted date-rape," which actually does minimize the seriousness of date-rape:

• A young woman met a young man at a social function held in a bar.
• Walked, in the company of other people, to his apartment, despite being unsettled by his putting his hands on, according to her complaint, her neck, and her waist (outside the apartment) and her thigh (inside the apartment). They were still in the company of other people.
• Where, when she wanted to go, he sat on her lap and took her cell phone, which she found threatening.
• The other woman who was there didn't like this at all, grabbed her, and got her out of there.
• The young woman complained to Rose's higher-ups.
• Rose issued an apology.
• The young woman accepted, and considered the matter closed, according to the Huffpo article: This issue was dealt with in the manner that I requested it to be dealt with and I consider it to be done and over with," she said in a recent email.

No mention is made of any clothes coming off, or private parts being touched, or a struggle of any sort. A larger, stronger guy sat in a smaller, weaker, woman's lap, after a boozy evening, in the presence of other people. This makes him a creep, undoubtedly, but is this the "explosive sexual scandal?"

The rest of the allegations are squishy, vague, anonymous of course, and treat young women (and men, Kevin reminds us) as if they were entirely helpless naifs, or seal pups, or something similarly uncomprehending and without volition. But if any other complaints of even slightly coercive behavior were made, nobody, not Hillbuzz or Roxy Vanilla or Eloise Gerson, mentions it. All we get is that the "Prophet" trolls CYR for bed partners, and finds them. Which Gerson (billed inHillbuzz's snappy graphics as " TRUTHTELLER") finds "shocking."

Guzzardi did interview Roupas, and says he was "frequently evasive in an interview," but gives no details of when, where, or how. Roupas claimed "not to know enough of the allegations to believe them," according to the Huffpo writer. Gerson's counsel, Steve Boulton, helpfully signed a statement saying that he'd told Roupas about the allegations in a phone call, but did not email him. The complainant had expressed her wish that the entire issue be handled internally, so as not to hurt the image of the Chicago Young Republicans, so Boulton seems here to be going against her wishes himself in taking the matter up with Cook County Republicans.

Since Snarkopolitan has no position or care in the world about who wins the title of Least Mud-Encrusted in the Illinois GOP Scuzz-Ball Invitational, I'm not going to join the fray on whether or not Lee Roupas should have hired Jeremy Rose, covered up his knowledge of the complaint or didn't think it serious enough to warrant attention, or which people should be forced out of where. If you want to see somebody who really enjoys a good mire-wallowing, with sides of muck-throwing, sliming, cheap moralizing, and double-dealing, you know where to find him.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, who reminds you, she didn't pick this subject, this subject picked her!

Dujan-Vue: Hillbuzz Boiz AWOL, All One Of Them.

Lord of the Flies Harvey Bilk conferring with a few of his imaginary friends.

First, for passers-by, why isn't the author of this little blog out admiring the heliotrope instead of devoting so much space to repeatedly slamming a larger, obviously crazy blog? Context here. Now then.

For pity's sake, clueless Hillbuzzers: there are no other "Boiz." New co-blogger/scullery wench "Chrissy the Hyphenated" (Nitwit-American?), when she was given the drudge work exquisite privilege of writing full posts for Harvey Bilk, didn't expect that she would suddenly become a solo act. But Harvey has gone missing, for days, without a word to his people. And none of the other "boiz" who make up the Hillbuzz brand have the cojones to come forward and fill in! But Chrissy isn't worried; she has "mommy instincts":

chrissythehyphenated Says:

August 5, 2010 at 10:35 am
I have gotten a few email from Kevin this week about two things — designing a new site for Hillbuzz and a humongous annual gay festival in Chi-town this weekend.

He wanted me to do something graphic for the festival, but hasn’t sent me the base graphic, which would only require him to snap and email one photo.

Based on these tiny clues, my well-honed mommy instincts suggest he’s physically fine, just busier than a one armed paper hanger.

As for the rest of the Boyz … I have no clue! The only one who emails with me is Kevin.
(emphasis mine, you betcha.)

Chrissy has rather hilariously siezed the opportunity to turn Hillbuzz into an excuse to post pictures of her hapless grandbaby, whose helpless adorableness is a welcome change from Nana's usual relentless anti-Michelle Obama hatchet-jobs (Conveniently collected on the top menu bar of Hillbuzz for all your hating needs). The story of how he became "Baby Buzz," featured mascot on Grammy's Hate Site, will no doubt be a great ice-breaker when he's a little older.


Meanwhile, where on earth are the Boiz, with their seamlessly acrid, tonally identical, yards-long passive-agressive rants? Last year, regular Hillbuzz readers may remember, they vanished for most of July, leaving the blog dark and the loyal Hillbuzzers baffled, worried, and forlorn.

Harvey has wiped all of the evidence from the blog, but the few remaining Hillbuzzers from last year surely remember his inflounce, which was such a perfect specimen of petulant rationalization that it attracted a certain amount of mockery, and was subsequently pulled. There are two remaining testaments to the whole episode: 1. The Hillbuzz archives: July 2009 is simply missing. And, 2. a single comment in the Time-Out Chicago article about Kevin Dujan and his then-buddy, disgraced (by Dujan himself!) former Chicago Young Republican, Jeremy Rose:

Posted by Girlpower on Tue, Jul 07, 09, at 7:45pm
Hey, Kevin, Your buzz fans miss you! When are you coming home?

There is a great, great deal more about Harvey and his buddy/paramour/whathaveyou, Mr. Rose, which shall come in later posts which were begun earlier and have to be updated as a single person with a regular job tries to keep up with the underemployed and hyperactive multiple personalities over there. But here's something to think on, while we gather our collective, yet singular, breaths: what could be easier than inventing a group and claiming that one is heroically shielding their identities?

brought to you, as always, by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, mostly, with apologies for the irregularity, but unlike certain "consultants" running marathons of begging, Mrs. Polly works!

Meet Mike Doogan, another of Alaska's proud Public Servants. He used to be a journalist. Perhaps that is why Alaska's premier political blogger, AK Muckraker of Mudflats, infuriated him so much that he outed her.

After the Democratic representative was taken to task by Mudflats for sending rude emails to his constituents, he spent some state time digging, before using state resources to publish an article in his newsletter:

"Anonymous Blogger Anonymous No More
The identity of the person who writes the liberal Democratic Mudflats blog has been secret since the blog began, protected by the Anchorage Daily News, among others. My own theory about the public process is you can say what you want, as long as you are willing to stand behind it using your real name. So I was interested to learn that the woman who writes the blog is Anchorage resident ______.
Best wishes,
[signed]

I'm not linking to the newsletter, because it contains the blogger's name, and though almost all the toothpaste is out of the tube, there might still be enough in there for a couple of bicuspids.


Yes, actually, Mr. Doogan, a private citizen should be able to publish anything but actionable libel about a politician. You took on the burden of being a public figure when you ran for office. The woman who incurred your wrath has a right to her privacy, especially on the Internet, which can be a dangerous place. Moreover, she took you to the woodshed for your own stupidity and rudeness, but it's hardly reason to stalk and expose her.

Why are you even spending time on this narcissistic self-indulgence when your state is such a mess? You have remote villages with no sanitary facilities and makeshift schools, you have a volcano whoopsing on your oil tanks, and you waste your time on this?


That was part of an email I sent to this third-rate Jimmy Breslin, along with a promise that the minute he was primaried, I'd be sending a check to his opponent.

Should anybody wish to support Mudflats' creator, here you go:
Ph: (907) 465-4998 Or (800) 689-4998 Fax: (907) 465-4419
AK State Capitol Rm #112 Juneau, AK 99801
doogan@akdemocrats.org

Fainting Goats for Freedom

Supporting Dr. Orly, One Camelid At A Time

In these tough times, it's difficult scraping up the funds to support Dentist/Lawyer Dr. Orly Taitz's heroic struggle to bring down the nauseatingly popular usurper, British-Indokenyan Muslibertheosocialazi Barry Dunsoeterror. Dr. Orly understands. But having no money shouldn't stop you from making sure her coffers are filled:

Defend Our Freedoms Foundation

Want to help out but don't have money to donate? Defend Our Freedoms has partnered with Breederville.com. By registering at "this link", you can set up a business store, hold an auction, sell your products and sell livestock while supporting Defend Our Freedoms.

No Ebay cookie jars here. These auctions are for a Redder State crowd. Breederville's categories run more to Ratites (Emu, Ostrich, Rhea), Camelids, Waterfowl, and all the more usual animals and farm implements. Other than exotic fish, urbanites would have trouble participating in Orly's auctions.

There is a Studding, Semen, or Embryo category. A vial of Semen is small enough to go right in even a dorm-size refrigerator, but sadly, nobody is auctioning off any Freedom sperm. Nor are most of the really enticing sections of the livestock universe represented: no Fallow Deer, no Alligators, no Byelorussian Harness Horses, and, especially disappointing, no Tennessee Fainting Goats. I happen to know of at least one sure customer for a Tennessee Fainting Goat.

But you can bid for rabbit meat. ""High Quality Rabbit Meat"" at that. You can also bid for three different kinds of worms, including live colored wax worms. They come in seven frighteningly neon shades, and they are live, not wax. You can also get a compartmented plastic WaxiTaxi, so you can take them wherever you go, segregated.

I looked into the waxworm world, and I learned how to raise them, how to color them, how they differ from mealworms, how long they will keep their color underwater (up to one hour, but if your worm is still there after an hour, you have more problems than impermanent worm dye). What I didn't learn is why. Why dye them seven colors in the first place? But this might be one of those instances of ""If you have to ask why, you'll never understand.""

Dr. Orly's followers are also raising crickets and crayfish for her, and you can bid on bison bratwurst for the cause. So if you can't find a place in your life for a pound of neon wax worms, there's no reason to despair. You can still participate in Dr. Orly's Auctions. They're the only satisfaction she's ever likely to find from a gavel.

Update: Yes To Democracy is a site that has followed every twist of the many Obama birth certificate lawsuits and moronic fantasies to issue from the tangled brains of legal lights such as Orly, Phil Berg, et. al. Strange Appar8us, a regular commenter there and at Rumproast, has written the ultimate tag-team steel-cage scenario involving the lot of them. Not to read it is to lead a life ultimately unfulfilled.

(Cross-posted at Rumproast, America's Meatiest Blog)

Mrs. Polly On the Air: KPFT's the Inner Side

Scooter, Host of the Innerside on KPFT, the Houston Pacifica station, said, "I've been thinking of having a Ladies' Night for the women of Rumproast. What do y'all think?" The women of Rumproast (America's Meatiest Blog) looked at each other, gulped, and said, "Yer on, Scooter!"

"This ain't no BS Blogtalk radio either, this is a 100,000 watt antenna, we go out all over Texas and the Gulf Coast," Scooter reminded us. "It'll be fun, we'll crunch some bones."

Rumproast first met Scooter through the mewls and hisses of diehard Hillary Clintoniacs known as PUMAs. One of them had bid on an hour of airtime at KPFT. The PUMAs used their hour to alternately scream at and dump startled KPFT callers who disagreed with them. Since they had "proudly voted a straight Republican ticket", and KPFT is a Pacifica station, that meant everybody.

To Scooter, host of his own weekly satirical program scheduled immediately after, this was a gorgeous, gift-wrapped box of crazy, delivered right to his doorstep.

He immediately put together a montage of PUMA screeches which he called "Five Minutes of Hate from the Daughters of the Democratic Confederacy." That, plus a surreal pitched battle between forces of PUMA and Rumproast on the KPFT program director's blog, led to Scooter's and the Meaty Blog's alliance.

Scooter invited two Rumproast personages to guest on his show: proprietor Kevin K, and RR's foremost practitioner of both gravity and waggery, billed intriguingly as "in the dark robes, the mysterious Dr. Strange." The show went well, and no KPFT callers were harmed during the broadcast.


Rumproast has, besides Kevin, three active posters, all women, including me, Mrs. Polly. It has an audience of mixed genders and sexual orientations. The PUMAs, incredulous that anyone with female body parts would not follow in their wandering pawprints, tastefully branded the women of Rumproast as "little female house slaves."

So I found it immensely satisfying to be invited on the radio instead of, as Scooter called her," Icepick Voice," PUMA's "Five Minutes of Hate" headliner (who artlessly expected to be asked back for more of her squeaky wisdom).

What was not so satisfying was the powerful case of nerves I developed. "It's a conversation, not an interview," Scooter said, but I worked myself up to a fever pitch nevertheless. It was the sort of neurotic mania that I could cure when I was ten by lying on the cool patch of rug under the piano. Now lying under the piano wouldn't have the same effect unless I added a bottle of Scotch. So I scoured the papers, made notes, and ate chocolate instead.

I also studied Kevin's and Strange's program. Jesus. They talked knowledeably about cabinet nominations. They had a world-view. They quipped. (Strange, on Obama's speechwriter, who had been photographed groping a cut-out of Hillary: "Kevin, you shouldn't publicize that--there are people who have cardboard family members.")

The show was how long? I listened again, and was slightly cheered on the second hearing. That was a bunch of time spent on Jennifer Aniston posing in nothing but a necktie! And Tina Fey. Yes, yes, brains, beauty, total package, what man wouldn't admire her, yes. I smiled, reserved to myself the right to think of George Clooney, and felt like a much calmer little female house slave. I stopped cramming for the test, and relaxed a bit. Aren't men wonderful, though.

On Thursday, 11:30 P.M. East coast time, our phone rang, I picked it up, and said, "Hello Scooter!" Instantly, my thoughts flipped over like beetles on their backs, their little legs wiggling helplessly. Scooter tried leading the witness, asking me about subjects I'd said I could discourse on. I shamelessly let my fellow guest, Denise Williams, take the first few questions.

About ten minutes into the show, my brain stopped flat-lining and began to function in a halting kind of way. I'm not entirely sure what I said, but I seem to remember "Arabic naughty lingerie parties." And telling a story about snarfing communion wafers as if they were potato chips.


If KPFT thought it had gotten angry calls from the PUMA invasion, I'm pretty sure they paled in comparison to the inadvertant combo crusade and fatwa that have probably been declared on that station. A crufatwasade.

Always happy to bring people together.

Here it is, the half-hour Innerside production of what we're calling Prime Rib Radio.

Next Thursday will be the second half of the Prime Rib Radio series, 10:30 PM Houston Time, 11:30 PM Eastern Time, with Scooter, marindenver and Betty Cracker, the other little female house slaves of Rumproast.

Scooter's Website is AcksisofEvil.org, where he has all his shows archived, and pictures of his family, his atheist friends, and his ferrets.

After the show was over, I hung up, and entered a state of absolute liquifaction. I sank into bed like syrup into a waffle, and allowed Mr. Polly to overindulge me terribly. In other words, life returned to normal.Mrs. Polly recuperates

On The Heels of Greatness

Since Barack Obama failed to save the country, let's go back to a sunnier time, when Bill and Hillary rang in their new administration with a word their followers don't usually associate with them: Hope. Yes, the Bells of Hope.The Clintons' TV producer pals came up with the idea of ringing in, ahem, Change, with every bell, gong and gamelan they could assemble, from the Liberty Bell to bells in space (the astronauts of the Endeavor, who would be asleep during the inaugural festivities, had to prerecord their bell solos) and the People would ring all their bells too. It would be magnificent, overblown, and deeply hopey, except that Clinton did not win with a majority. So that put something of a damper on the chimes.

Another damper was the trouble Clinton had run into even before the inaugural: his own campaign promises. The most immediately serious was his promise not to repatriate Haitian boat people without a hearing; while Cubans who set foot on U.S. soil could stay, Haitians were forcibly repatriated to the brutal regime that had ousted Jean-Bertrande Aristide.Desperate Haitians put together improbable collections of tires, boards, netting, piled onto them and pushed off into the open sea, only to drown or be picked up by the Coast Guard, who brought them to detention in, among other places, Guantanamo. They were not, however, put in stress positions, besides the basic one of being held while waiting to be forcibly repatriated.

After he was told that over 150,000 Haitians were ripping down every tree in sight to make rafts for their 600 mile journey, Clinton went back on his campaign promise, saying that forced repatriation would continue. The following paragraph from the NY Times is so upsetting I will let it pass without comment:

Indeed, in the last two weeks, members of Mr. Clinton's foreign-policy team have expressed concern that celebrations surrounding Mr. Clinton's inauguration, which will be widely televised, will be marred by news footage of Haitian boat people drowning in stormy waters while trying to make the 600-mile journey to the Florida coast. Mr. Clinton cited a report in recent days, still unconfirmed by the Coast Guard, that nearly 400 Haitian boat people drowned when their boat sank in the Bahamas.

The fledgling presidency was darkened by plenty of ironic foreshadowing: Bush I left a deficit that scuttled Clinton's middle-class tax cut. On the very day that Bush sent missiles into Iraq, Clinton remarked that as he was a Baptist, he believed in death-bed conversions, and so he was open to restablishing normal relations with Iraq. On the very day that Bush sent missiles into Iraq, Clinton remarked that as he was a Baptist, he believed in death-bed conversions, and so he was open to restablishing normal relations with Iraq, causing. He then snappishly denied being asked about normalization of relations, a question that appeared twice on the transcript. He also tried to finesse the Haitian problem:

He tried the same on Haiti. There was no joy in reversing a policy that was proving untenable, nor was there dishonor in a forthright acknowledgment of change. Yet Clinton insisted that he was not reversing anything. His earlier statements offering asylum, he maintained, had hinged on a distinction between political refugees, who were entitled to stay in the United States, and economic refugees, who were not. "Sometimes people hear only half the message," he complained. (from "the Survivor", by John F. Harris)

The hedging and nice sidestepping aggrieved reporters, and gave them warning to examine every Clintonian statement with a jeweler's loupe.

Meanwhile, Bill had named Hillary head of the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform, and she embarked on a series of secret meetings, much to the dismay of friends and enemies alike. The Clintons' sunnily optimistic plan called for both a budget bill and a health care bill to be pushed through the Senate, but Senatorial etiquettician Robert Byrd blocked it:

(he was)convinced the strategy amounts to a "prostitution of the process" by
pushing through "a very complex, very expensive, very little understood piece of
legislation."

The process retained its virtue, and the very expensive, little understood piece of legislation died, only to be mocked in memorium.

President Clinton's other travails included his nominees being torpedoed by nannies and tax troubles, and his ultimate AG selection, Janet Reno, running afoul of the Branch Davidians at Waco. Each of these created a furor. But Clinton's compromise over his promise to lift the ban on gays in the military, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, has resulted in well over 11,000 service members being expelled from the Armed Forces.

The Clinton Administration's first hundred days are a hard act to follow.

Cross-posted at Rumproast.com, Brooklyn's Meatiest Blog.

***************

~~~Thank you, Blossom Dearie~~~

A crisp little sugar cookie voice with a bite:

FLAMING SSEMPA

While Rick Warren, the divine inspiration-inflated Prop 8 pastor, mounted the national podium to spread his particular brand of limited goodwill over the land, his Ugandan colleague, Reverend Martin Ssempa, continued to spread his version of the will of God over Uganda. Though Reverend Ssempa's God embraces caring for the sick, He also apparently favors persecuting homosexuals and preventing Ugandans from obtaining condoms, thereby increasing the rate of HIV infection.

That at least seems to be the net effect of the erstwhile Bush administration's emphasis on abstinence-only HIV programs, and Ssempa's campaign to publish the names, pictures, and addresses of homosexual activists in the paper and on a now defunct Ugandan website. kobsrugby.com (the domaine is available for purchase for those who like combining sexual McCarthyism with fumbling around in a scrum of men in tight pants).

Ssempa, you may recall, is the evangelical preacher who marched into Makarere University and did battle with an AIDS prevention display which manifested itself as a scrap-metal dummy with a condom-covered drainpipe penis. Reverend Ssempa grabbed for and pulled the condom off that drainpipe penis, set the box of condoms next to it aflame, and burned them in the name of Jesus. Then he handed out bibles to the rubberneckers.

His antics may seem clownish, but Reverend Ssempa's cred as a Ugandan anti-HIV crusader is undeniable: he lost a brother, a sister and a niece to HIV. Another brother is ill now. It's a sad commonality he shares with many Ugandans, and gives him some emotional authority to speak about the effects of HIV on families. The history he tells of himself also makes it easy to identify with him: before becoming an evangelical Christian, he led a hedonistic, nightclubbing, existence (he was also a prize-winning breakdancer, he likes to note) that he now invokes when castigating sexual relations outside of marriage. Then he found the Lord, and settled into the kind of domesticity that he believes the Lord intended for everybody: heterosexual, and (to the best of anyone's knowledge) monogamous.

For Ugandans who do not fit into that model by dint of their sexual preference, Ssempa leads marches calling for their punishment; homosexuality is illegal in Uganda. Leaders of LGBT groups have been harassed and arrested; he also has demanded that homosexuals not be included in anti-AIDS programs. As someone who works closely with born-again Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni, Ssempa, as the special representative of the First Lady's task force, went to Washington in April of 2005 to testify on HIV in Uganda.

In his testimony, he put forth the theory that a billion dollar AIDS/condom industry was foisting itself on an unwilling Ugandan culture:

"SO, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? THE PROBLEM IS THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN USAID AND CDC DO NOT LIKE THE ABC MESSAGE. THEY LIKE THE CONDOM SOCIAL MARKETING MESSAGE.WHY? WHY?I BEILEVE IT'S BECAUSE THE UGANDA ABC PROGRAM WAS ESTABLISHED BY AFRICANS FOR AFRICANS. THIS ANGERS MANY SO CALLED ''PROFESSIONALS'' IN THE AIDS COMMUNITY WHO HAVE PROMOTED CONDOM SOCIAL MARKETING.AIDS PREVENTION IS NOW A BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY BASED UPON SUPPLYING HIV PREVENTION PROGRAMS THAT CENTERS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONDOMS" (hysterical all-caps his)

Representative Barbara McCollum of Minnesota questioned Ssempa, and the great condom conflagration of Makarere University made a reappearance:

"..... it is true. I burned condoms. But what critical piece of element is left out is the fact that those condoms had been banned by the government a few days earlier, that they would pose a significant risk to the population at large. So I was simply fulfilling what the government had ordered, a recall, a destruction of those condoms.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. The government requested you to go to that campus—I believe it was a campus—and the government personally asked you to burn the condoms?








Mr. SSEMPA. It issued a call to recall and destroy all condoms from public. And what happened, I work with college students. It was a season of freshmen. In fact, in that particular article, Helen Epstein says it is a fresh pack of condoms. It was not a fresh pack. It was a deteriorated, recalled pack of condoms that posed a significant, hazardous, life-threatening experience to anyone who would have used it, so that is what happened.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. I am glad you had time to look at the lot number and verify that, and that was not your property that you destroyed. And in your opinion, you thought you were doing something that was good."

The rubber firebug pastor did not mention to Ms. McCollum, and Congress, that the Ugandan government recall didn't happen until a month AFTER he cremated the condoms. *

Ssempa wasn't the only anti-condom, pro-abstinence-only witness to testify that day. Then-Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias testified as well. Of his testimony, and trajectory, this probably says it all :










"I think it is somewhat ironic and hypocritical that he would patronize an escort service while he was denying funding to organizations who want to help prostitutes, and supporting a policy that obviously forbids fraternizing with prostitutes" -Jodi Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Health and Gender Equity, Washington, D.C

After the massage-loving (there was no sex! he insisted as he left DC to explain himself to his wife) former AIDS czar departed, President Bush appointed as his replacement Mark Dybul, M.D., a respected physician who happened to be both gay and uncloseted.

Although Dr. Dybul's orientation displeased some members of the faith-based organizations receiving PEPFAR funds, he accepted invitations to address them, speaking at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church and meeting privately with the Executive Director of Christian Connections for International Health

PEPFAR OFFICIAL WELCOMES CCIH FEEDBACK ON GOVERNMENT’S AIDS PROGRAMS
At a private meeting between Dr. Mark Dybul, Deputy Coordinator and Medical Director of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in the State Department Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, and CCIH Executive Director Ray Martin, Dybul expressed appreciation for CCIH’s efforts to educate the public about the evidence-based rationale for an ABC approach to HIV prevention.

Though funding increased, the same problems with faith-based organizations receiving funds for promoting abstinence-only and discouraging condom use continued. Undoubtedly Dr. Dybul would have had problems walking this tightrope between ideology and science, but he appears to have thrown himself into polishing Pepfar's, and the President's, image. Here he is at a press conference in Geneva in 2007, and note the return of a certain massage-loving bad penny:









"So people should not be under the impression that all this President has done, and this administration has done, is on HIV/AIDS. There is a person responsible for all of these activities. My former boss, the first Global AIDS Coordinator, Ambassador Tobias, is now the Director of Foreign Assistance - the first such position - to ensure that we have integrated and full programs that deal across the areas of development. He is also the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development at the same time."
http://geneva.usmission.gov/Press2007/0209Dybul.html

With the faithful unfaithful Tobias in charge of USAID and directing a new office for distributing foreign aid, the dangerous ideologically driven policies (this is not even getting into the anti-needle exchange and anti-prostitution pledge controversies that kept organizations from using their funds to help addicts and prostitutes, many of whom are children) continued.

LOOKING FOR CHANGE

In July of 2008, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR, but HIV experts continued to be unhappy with how the money was spent. David Wendt of the Center for Global Development, asked,

"For every one million people put on treatment, 2.5 million are getting infected. So why has Congress ensured that the $48 billion PEPFAR reauthorization legislation, passed by the Senate of July 16, privileges treatment and care over prevention?"

When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the outcry over his selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation was swift, and when it was leaked that Obama was planning on asking Dr. Dybul to stay on as AIDS czar, at least temporarily, HIV and reproductive rights activists protested.

Dr. Dybul was given first the order to rescind his pro-forma resignation--he wrote a cheerful note to his staff telling them he'd see them after the weekend--and then, one day after Hillary Clinton was confirmed to be Secretary of State, told to un-rescind his resignation, which he did, amidst a swirl of rumors, cheers, recriminations, and rejoicings.

MOVING FORWARD?

There is nobody heading the Global Aids Coordinator office now, and no word on who is being vetted to replace Dr. Dybul. Obama has spoken of the importance of faith-based organizations, but as a community organizer he worked with them on non-ideological, non-controversial issues such as job banks. If his administration was willing to ask for Dr. Dybul's resignation, does it mean that a new emphasis will be placed on non-ideological programs for fighting HIV?

Homosexuals continue to suffer under harsher and harsher restrictions in many African countries: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda. They can be arrested and imprisoned for life. Religious leaders like Martin Ssempa continue to lead rallies calling for their prosecution
Keeping PEPFAR funds out of their hands will not be an easy task, if the Obama administration chooses to take on that task at all. But if they are committed to human rights, they have to.

"I once attended Sunday services at the church of Martin Ssempa, one of Warren's protégés in Uganda and a major force in that country's devastating move away from safe-sex campaigns. It is a heartbreaking thing to watch a tongue-speaking faith-healer promise a room full of sobbing people – many of them poor, many infected with HIV – that Jesus can cure them, if only they believe in him unconditionally (belief demonstrated, of course, in part by tithing generously)." --Michelle Goldberg, writing for the Guardian

Reverend Ssempa is "A PASSIONATE VOICE IN THE GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST AIDS/HIV". So says the blurb on the front page of his website . The Reverend gazes at you over his thoughtfully folded hands, his brow furrowed. This is just one of the many passionate moods of Reverend Ssempa: as you click through his site, you meet others, one glowy soft-focus expression per subject, each calibrated for the relative seriousness: open, smiling Ssempa holds his hands out for his biography, modest Ssempa laughs, his head back, his eyes closed, embarrassed by the plaudits on his "reviews" page; his fingertips interlaced, gazing thoughtfully into the future of a world without rubbers as he envisions a global response to AIDS/HIV ; one eyebrow arched as he strokes his chin and considers awakening the warriors in the faith-based community.


It's all just a little bit--forgive me, but just a wee little bit--

queeny.

*Human Rights Watch letter to US Global Aids Coordinator 10/11/07

An Overflowing Cup of Joe

Unlicensed plumbing contractor and McCain Foreign Policy Advisor Joe the Plumber was opining again on the danger of Obama: would an Obama presidency be the death of Israel? "I'll have to go along with that," said Joe, who did, to be fair, caution people to make up their own minds and not just base their decisions on his seconds and seconds of intensive reflection.
He was okay with himself even after Shepherd Smith of Fox (!) gave him every chance to back away from his cheerful, unmalicious, unthinking, devastating slander of a major public figure.

He has happily embraced the same media that McCain and Palin have been demonizing, finding the "media filter" suits him fine. He always has a word or two for whatever microphone sticks its tempting self under his nose. He was a familiar caller to right-wing talk shows in the area.

Joe used Barack Obama for his chance at the Big Time, and it worked. He saw Obama in his neighborhood, made his way through the crowd and asked a set-up question, since the answer was supposed to make Obama look bad and didn't actually apply to Joe. Now, McCain is using Joe and Joe is using McCain. Joe's PUBLICIST is angling for a book deal and a RECORD CONTRACT.

Everybody was using everybody except Obama, who simply tried to answer the guy's question seriously, and ironically will end up cutting Joe's taxes. Obama was nice to Joe, who is too full of himself and his own opinions to absorb any outside information.The glory of this incredible year: just when you think they've hit a new low, they dig down and come up with a lower low. From Sarah the winking Serial Liar to Joe the Singing Unlicensed Plumber.

ALERT! JUST IN-A FEW FUN FICTS FROM THE MAVERICK

Fun, because they are fictional facts, so lets jump in on the neologism-coining craze and call them FICTS. These are courtesy of intrepid newshound Larry King at CNN, the Network that Said NO to Obama's paid infomercial, and replaced it with a free infomercial for McCain: John Sidney McCain III is from humble beginnings. Although he is the son and grandson of admirals, flew and crashed one airplane after another, fortunately not onto the airfield that bears his own name, and was admitted to elite schools and programs on the strength of his last name, intrepid newshound Larry King managed to worm out of him that he came from humble beginnings. There's a scoop for you.

Another scoop is his plan for the economy: he's going to grow it. And there you have it, my friends, the detail you 've been craving that Obama's afraid to give: John McCain will GROW the economy right out of this mess.

Thank You, and Good Night.

Oh, you want more? Okay.

He will give tax cuts just like Reagan did, and that will grow the economy. Intrepid newshound Larry King did not point out that Reagan left the economy wobbling around carrying the biggest honking deficit it ever had to heft, or that Reagan didn't come in looking at a deficit there aren't enough zeroes in cyberspace to express.

The third and final scoop of the evening: he's delighted with Sarah Palin's maverickiness, and whenever she's around, he finds her presence uplifting. Oh, there are a lot of comedians who are grateful to him just for that last sentence. She's going to drag him up to ANWAR and show him how she dresses those meese.

That's more than enough scoops from McCain for one night. Apologies to Stephen Colbert, whose concept "truthiness" has had every damn body on the Internet trying to come up with a better neologism. There is no better neologism, but "Ficts" fills a needed gap, I think; while truthy things seem like they ought to be true, Ficts are obviously truth-challenged, if not truth-deprived, and depend on the kindness of strangers (like intrepid newshound Larry King) not to challenge their existence.