Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Smart Money, Stupid Money, and Flatulence

Let's cut to the cheese, I mean the chase. This presidential contest, at which we the plebeians are reduced to mere spectators, has officially devolved into a battle between elitism and vulgarity.

The headlines in the mainstream media blast out the story that the Clintonites desperately want you to hear. This is a battle between piles of cash. There's good, plentiful cash and then there's bad skimpy cash. None of it will ever actually be yours, or even used to improve your lives, but they do want you to root for it anyway.


And at this point, the smart liberal money (elite Clinton) is beating the stupid reactionary money (vulgar Trump.)

Trump is getting crushed, not by the allegedly superior and more humanitarian policies of Hillary Clinton, but by her big fat mean Money Machine. It really is a Dollarocracy, people!

Trump Starts Summer Push With Crippling Money Deficit  jeers the headline in today's New York Times:  
Mr. Trump began June with just $1.3 million in cash on hand, a figure more typical for a campaign for the House of Representatives than the White House. He trailed Hillary Clinton, who raised more than $28 million in May, by more than $41 million, according to reports filed late Monday night with the Federal Election Commission.He has a staff of around 70 people — compared with nearly 700 for Mrs. Clinton — suggesting only the barest effort toward preparing to contest swing states this fall. And he fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday, after concerns among allies and donors about his abili a competitive race.
Nothing insults and weakens a narcissistic tycoon more than accusing him of being flat broke. Not accusations of bigotry, or misogyny, or xenophobia, or con artistry, or sprayed-on tan, or fake hair. In Trump World, honest and direct personal groveling before members of one's own class is tantamount to panhandling and an admission of failure. It's a slap in the face to the Art of the Deal. It's a blow to Trump's super-ego, or more accurately, to his super-id. His self-worth is based entirely upon his net worth. And his net worth is looking more and more like a Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme by the minute.
Fund-raising efforts for Mr. Trump have been hampered by the candidate’s own erratic public comments. He has repeatedly said he will pay for his own campaign even as his volunteers fan out around the country to solicit six-figure checks, confusing allies and potential donors alike.
“Two days ago, he said, ‘I may fund it myself,’” Mr. (GOP Operative Ed) Rollins said. “Donors are all being cautious about what’s going to happen here.”
And if Hillary Clinton is labeled a rich elitist candidate in the process, solely defined by her bank account, that suits her just fine. It deflects attention away from the essential vulgarity of her own rise to power, her subsequent self-enrichment from her family foundation, political influence-peddling, paid speeches, and various venal SuperPacs.

She has no Trumpian qualms. After all, she heartily admitted that she and Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House, just barely scraping by with a new estate in Westchester County and multimillions in book advances, not to mention a Senate seat representing Wall Street for Hill and the lucrative speaking circuit for Bill.

Her virtue, they want all of you poor slobs out there to know, lies in her superior ability to handle her money and get an endless supply it by expertly stroking and grooming an endless supply of eager donors. Trump's vice is not only his mishandling of his own possibly fraudulent fortune, it's also his inability to hire the right people to handle, and get, the billions in campaign cash that he so desperately needs to win. Schmoozing well with others doesn't come naturally to a media bully whose main claim to fame is firing people when he's not kicking them out of his Nuremberg-style campaign rallies.

Hillary knows how to take advantage of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. As leaked DNC documents show, her bundlers are even furnished with a delicate script to help coax the mega-rich from their money. Donald hasn't  figured how to flatter too many people besides himself yet, and time's running out. Therefore, as the media narrative has it this week, he should be disqualified on the basis of his puny finances as well as on the basis of his policies (whatever they really are; he hasn't figured that out either.) The handful of wealthy donors who select the candidates, win the elections and buy the government policies and tax breaks they want, certainly don't want to invest in an incompetent or lying gasbag with attention deficit disorder.

 The self-dealing benignity of the educated wealthy has been an integral part of the mythology of American liberalism since the founding of the Republic - just as dissing greater-evil barbarians like Trump has always been part of their public relations campaign to hold on to power. They claim to abhor his boorish divide-and-conquer rhetoric, even as they themselves are just fine with the status quo of Planned Political Gridlock for Plutocratic Gain. Similarly, the smart Founders justified owning other human beings by simply pointing across the pond at those vulgar Brits, who had the poor inhumane taste to banish people to workhouses and debtors' prisons.

Not that everything is calm and cool in Clintoncashland, of course. Otherwise it wouldn't be Clintonian. Even with her premature "clinching" of the nomination, Hillary is strangely still paranoid about Bernie Sanders.

On Monday, for example, the New Jersey Democratic Committee unceremoniously purged its own former chairman just because he is a Bernie Sanders delegate. The booted official, State Assemblyman John Wisniewski, wryly called the move ironic, given that right before he was dumped, the committee had been discussing ways to unify Clinton and Sanders supporters.

This move came right on the heels of the Congressional Black Caucus vowing to fight Sanders's proposal to abolish the super-delegate system, in which both elected officials and unelected donors and lobbyists get weighted votes to put establishment candidates over the top in intra-party contests. The CBC is also vehemently against holding open primaries in states that currently bar Republican and independent voters from casting ballots in Democratic primary contests. "We wouldn't want to have to run against our own constituents," protested Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), somewhat feebly and undemocratically.

Apparently, Hillary's campaign slogan of "breaking down barriers" doesn't quite extend to opening doors to more marginalized voters. 

Meanwhile, the cash-strapped marginalia plan to fight the political hot air with some potent gas of their own. Vulgarity is as vulgarity does, as my mama used to say. So former Green Party vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala has announced an epic Fart-In to counteract Hillary's acceptance speech next month in Philly.

Honkala, a single mom who has personally dealt with poverty and homelessness, told Truthdig
“We will be holding a massive bean supper for Bernie Sanders delegates on American Street in my Kensington neighborhood on the afternoon of July 28,” she said. “We are setting up a Clintonville there, modeled on the Hoovervilles of the 1930s where the poor and unemployed built shanty towns. The Sanders delegates, their bellies full of beans, will be able to return to the Wells Fargo Center and greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing.”

Honkala said she would issue an invitation to Sanders to join the bean supper, which she is calling Beans for Hillary. She has asked donors to send cans of beans to 1301-W Porter Street, Philadelphia, Pa., 19148.
“Any remaining beans will be served to the homeless, although we will, of course, be urging Sanders delegates to eat as much as possible,” Honkala said.
This kind of flips the noxious advice to hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil right on its butt.

How about making the Evils hold their own noses for a change?  





 Jonathan Swift, writing under the pseudonym Don Fartando, may have been the first to warn the proles of the severe health hazards of bottling up your gas. He  wrote a satiric pamphlet, called "The Benefit of Farting" way back in 1722, to counter a scolding sadistic screed published by the austerians of the wealthy ruling class, advising the poor on "The Benefit of Fasting."

Confronting the bombastic Clintonian winds of war with a mass outbreak of popular bumbast might be just the therapy that everybody needs.



The Fart of the Deal

7 comments:

Meredith NYC said...


Karen....Now I’ll vent......With all your superb powers of expression—really the best of the thousands of Times commenters—your anger, bitterness and disgust is making you offer this post of adolescent vulgarity. There are some teen web sites that would love it.

And see this:
"The Return of Lesser Evilism
With Trump on the other side, Democrats can be lazier than ever this election"
BY MATT TAIBBI June 20.
He gets to the heart of the matter. Apply to Krugman, also.


And now the Dem party is suddenly getting ‘diverse’ in platform committees, with some interesting progressives like Cornell West, Keith Ellison, and Bill McKibben, and others.
Any comment?
I only saw this on cspan, but not mentioned on msnbc or cnn unless i missed a brief mention. Should be widely discussed for contrast with the main party line.



Andy Taylor said...

@Meredith:

I totally agree that this was a bitter, angry and immature post. It grossed me out as well. With a name like Sardonicky, I came to this site fully expectng the very highest levels of sober discourse. I am so bitterly, bitterly disappointed and disgusted.

I also agree that Matt Taibbi is a much better and more serious writer.

He totally nailed Ted Cruz when he described one of his speeches as a "cat fart."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/r-i-p-gop-how-trump-is-killing-the-republican-party-20160518

And who can ever forget the seminal article where he had Bush spilling the Bush Beans about how Condi Rice used to fart up a storm in the Oval Office?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bush-apologizes-the-farewell-interview-we-wish-hed-give-20100405

Meredith, how about you and me leaving this teenage gossip rag of a place and go spend some of our valuable time on "Maturity Today"? I hear they have tons of helpful articles on how to live with the embarrassment of chronic constipation.







Frau Fuerze said...

I was in second grade when I learned that word. I still remember the name of the neighbor girl who uttered it. My dad hated it. We had to say "toot" when my sisters and I were growing up.

I saw that Truthdig article and had a hard time believing it wasn't from The Onion (onions give me gas!).

I'm in my 50s now. Four kids. Somehow, none of us are grossed out by the word or the act.

I think this article (f)artfully expresses the utter disgust with the candidates and the election process in our faux democracy. And it makes me laugh.

Farts are funny.

Jay–Ottawa said...

I totally agree with Miss Manners that the bean-induced phart-in in Filadelfia is a gross-out––not only the event itself but talk about the event. The people who will suffer the most are the participants themselves. Call them suicide bombers. Don't applaud them The enormous methane release will be anti-environmental, hastening us to the dread tipping point into feedback loops ending with the Sixth Extinction. You really want to go there?

The authorities, being amply informed by the perpetrators, will protect more refined people by letting loose with tear gas as soon as the phlatulents can be kettled a few blocks away from the Wells Phargo Center. Scatological violence never works. Recall the spankings when you and your siblings tried to gross out your parents? Establishment blowback is always more potent.

What I would recommend, if I were a former vice-president of something, would be the use of the other end of the gastro-intestinal tract to make a point. Participants will not harm themselves or others if they resort to the good old Bronx Cheer. If teachers in gym class could never catch us doing it when their backs were turned, neither will the authorities. Mockery is powerful.

Imagine if, during the middle of a congressional hearing about Hillary's Libya involvement or her email lapses, someone in the gallery kept blowing the raspberry whenever she spoke. The Bronx Cheer is nonviolent, odor free, environmentally friendly and virtually untraceable.

Suggestion: Let the non-word go phorth that the unvoiced linguolabial trill of the Bronx Cheer will hereafter be let loose every time the name Hillary Clinton is mentioned. Bill, too.

Karen Garcia said...

Meredith,

Duh... the whole subject of the post was the vulgarity you assume I am wallowing in as a result of my own arrested development. I suppose you'd also call Ben Franklin and Mark Twain similarly immature for occasionally engaging in scatology to make their political points, huh? Andy, the previous poster, already pointed out that Matt Taibbi, to his great credit, is not exactly a model of p.c. linguistic restraint himself. He commonly refers to slimy politicians as assholes and dicks, for example. Of course, the whole point of Rolling Stone is gonzo journalism. It ain't exactly the Times, nor does it aspire to be.

If you were simply being humorous or ironic, I apologize to you - but your comment comes across as pure sniping, in the vein of the Clinton trolls scolding the Bernie Bros for their alleged immaturity and sore loser-dom. I really doubt if Tiger Beat would accept my post for publication, since it fails to mention Taylor Swift. So with all due respect, I believe that I will cling as relentlessly to my "bitterness" as Obama once accused poor white trash of clinging to their guns and religion. At least I always try to maintain my sense of humor to offset my unbecoming rage.

And as far as my NYT comments go, I admit that although I self-censor at times, my missives have been summarily erased on more than one occasion, on grounds of bad taste.

Re the Dems, if you skim thru my recent blog entries, you might find the one where I already wrote about the inclusion of Cornel West and others on the platform committee, as a sop to Bernie Sanders. Due to my immature bitterness, I can't be bothered to supply a link at this time.

Meredith NYC said...

From the 'pure sniper' here.....
Wow, hats off to the brilliant sarcasm of these posts today. And you’re right, Taibbi is hardly a model of good taste in some of his posts!

Neil said...

Adam Johnson of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, writes

"In Nine Democratic Debates, Not a Single Question About Poverty"

http://fair.org/home/in-nine-democratic-debates-not-a-single-question-about-poverty/

"A FAIR analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months shows that not one question was asked about poverty."

Politics is a very dirty business, and I commend Karen for her writing and tireless efforts in opposition to the American political shitstorm, including any artistic license involved.

This is a good opportunity to weigh the merits of blog posts characterized as "adolescent vulgarity" vs. "the very highest levels of sober discourse" and the First Amendment, that states,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Our system generally allows freedom of speech, including highbrow or lowbrow political speech, because neither form of discourse as generally expressed is a threat to the establishment, which is ensconced in, and protected by, a legal system complete with its own language, words that may sound like the English language spoken by Americans, but is not the language of nonlawyers.

Take for example this part of Karen’s post,

"This move came right on the heels of the Congressional Black Caucus vowing to fight Sanders's proposal to abolish the super-delegate system, in which both elected officials and unelected donors and lobbyists get weighted votes to put establishment candidates over the top in intra-party contests. The CBC is also vehemently against holding open primaries in states that currently bar Republican and independent voters from casting ballots in Democratic primary contests. "We wouldn't want to have to run against our own constituents," protested Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), somewhat feebly and undemocratically."

Some of you refer to the super-delegate system as evidence that our election process is "rigged". This is correct in a nonlawyer way, but "rigged" is a word with little significance in the legal system. If you look around, there has been significant pushback by the media toward those who call our election process "rigged".

In my view the super-delegate system, inter alia, makes our election process "unconstitutional". Our legal system recognizes the word "unconstitutional" and has rules for challenging "unconstitutional" statutes, for example. See Rule 5.1. Constitutional Challenge to a Statute, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_5.1

States may have their own rules for challenging "unconstitutional" statutes, for example in Florida, Fla. Civ. R. Pro. 1.071 Constitutional Challenge To State Statute or County or Municipal Charter, Ordinance, or Franchise; Notice by Party"

I am not a lawyer, I did not attend law school, and this is not legal advice. But I know enough to see that complaining about a "rigged" election process is futile.

Therefore, Fart Proudly, and challenge our unconstitutional election process.

Ben Franklin - Fart Proudly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_Proudly

In the Archives: Fart Proudly by Benjamin Franklin (1781)
https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/fart-proudly/