Buenas palabras como siempre aquí, Nezua.

Personally, I can't stand either of the two "frontrunners" in either party and am just begging for something resembling an actual Third Party to emerge (unless maybe Obama makes it in though I'm not counting on it). Hillary Clinton makes me want to vomit more than even most of the Republicans do.

So Hillary's chief campaign staffer is a shill for Blackwater, *and* she gets uncountable millions of dollars in contributions from weapons manufacturers, *and* she wants to attack Iran after having already whooped it up to push us into Iraq in 2003, *and* she gets all in a fascist huff about people daring to "mistreat" the American flag in ways not prescribed in the Manual of Accepted Thought, *and* on top of all this mierda, Hillary votes in favor of that fascist "border fence" in the Senate?

Honestly, the only thing making Hillary a "Democrat" as far as a I can tell is the "D" by her name, in other ways she's worse than the Rethuglicans. Frankly if she were elected, I could see her dragging the USA simultaneously into war against Iran, Syria, Serbia and whoever else makes a convenient ad-hoc "terrorist state." Nobody among my friends or family would ever cast a vote for her. Uh, Tercero Partido, por favor!

On a related note, and wondering about your own thoughts on this, Nezua-- which poor unfortunate Latin American country do you think will be chosen to take on the "Grenada" role when the US and British militaries in Iraq are finally defeated and forced to withdraw in humiliation? (It's basically the only possible outcome at this point.) Still makes my cynical side crack up (before smoldering in anger) to think of Ronnie Reagan, smarting from that humiliation in Lebanon in 1983, turning around and going all "Monroe Doctrine" on Grenada like that to take some of the sting off. Hey, if the Anglos are getting waxed in the Eastern Hemisphere, always nice to go and crack some skulls in the Western Hemisphere to make the Anglos feel better about themselves, I guess.

My first thought would be Venezuela-- a dream target, a country reviled by neoliberal economists as well as by the wingnut crowd for daring to use Venezuela's oil revenues to help the poor, with a flamboyant ruler easy to propagandize against in Chavez, plus of course the oil itself. With the added bonus of being a proxy for the disaster at the Bay of Pigs over 4 decades ago.

Viva los invasores-- er, "los libertadores"-- norteamericanos! Los Venezolanos would fight back like mad, they're not gonna be patsies for the Anglos to walk over, it's just that I could see these same neocon jerks and Wilsonian internationalists who deluded us into Iraq, trying to pull off the same thing in Caracas and claiming it'd be a cakewalk, with some cooked-up pseudo-moral pretext to ice it. Or maybe we'll even have a "Salvadoran intervention" or a Honduran or Nicaraguan intervention. That's the thing about the Anglos-- they always like to pick easy targets who they think won't fight back, true losers at heart. Even then, they still wind up being surprised and having their asses kicked.

Y a proposito, quisiera exprimir mi apoyo a todos que ahora sufren en los incendios que estan devastando el Sur de California. Tenga fuerza, sus amigos estan consigo, todo la gente esta unido conjunto con Ustedes!

My prediction is that Rudy and Hillary face off. Of course I would vote for neither.

I'm worried about Venezuela, too. We know they are under the US's sights for a few reasons.

Thank you for those last words, el azote (quite a name you have there). My thoughts go out to those gente sufren en los incendio en califas, también. I'm thinking of Califas a lot lately. This is really terrible. I've never seen anything like it in my own life. What is it now about half a million displaced???

Why do people gotta use a picture of Rudy in drag every time they bring him up?

Who is that hurting? Rudy? Or the millions of people who have to deal with the fact that putting up a picture of Rudy in drag automatically discredits him and/or makes him a laughing stock?

I really hope you'll take the time to examine your thinking with the use of those images.

There are ten thousand better ways to discredit Rudy that don't harm innocent people.

I could see it if the article were about the specific hypocrisy of being a person who dresses in drag and has been supportive of queer communities (or at least the monied ones who helped to keep him in power in New York, and their hypocrisy of accepting that by dressing in drag he was somehow an okay person, despite the vicious damage he's done to other marginalized groups in NYC), but that's not the case and I don't think people bring that up when they slap pictures of Rudy in drag on every article about him.

Unity.

i hope you'll take the time to read my post next time. that IS what my post is about. it is about how his dressing up is mocked and how i dont think its something he should be ashamed of. did you even read it? please.

Read.

Well I think its the hypocrasy within the Republican party. Mind you I think he looks ridiculous, and not very funny, kind of stupid actually. After years of seeing the Republicans as the "manly man" party, here is Rudy. OF course, in a sinister way, it hides what Rudy did to NY during the 90s, with pistol and baton. And that is both ugly and nothing to laugh at.

i think he looks more ridiculous with the hateful sneer. i guess my point was mainly what the commenter above said (tho pointed at me, misunderstanding the thrust of my post): when we make fun of him for wearing a dress, those of us on the left, what are we saying about our own value judgments? because i dont think its just about the hypocrisy, i think people use the pictures because they find it emasculating of him. while he is trying, as you say, to be the big scary Daddy Republican.

i guess when someone is trying to be scary, to show them preening in a dress, a male, it sort of takes the scare out of him. but i think too, we step into an area where others can suffer, like reinforcing derision against gays and trans people and cross dressers. and costume freaks like me!!!

And also, the idea that feminizing someone as a way to make them 'weak' and 'silly' is also just a tad bit sexist.

Anyway, I hope that Anglos like me and many, many others can join in common cause with others to prevent any such horrific thing like el azote describes above from ever happening. Just because we haven't been successful with Iraq and we're behind the 8-ball wrt to Iran...::sigh:: it feels hopeless but fighting for right is worth it.

I call myself a Valkyrie (I have the stature and the ancestry) and so I am reminded that the Vikings believed that at Ragnarok, evil in the form of chaos would win yet the fight for good must be fought anyway.

christina, hi. i totally agree with you in general theory, about feminizing a man as a means of making him look weak/silly. being honest, tho, i have to add that Rudy G in these pictures does look silly to me. (not "weak," tho...just silly. i can see him putting down that bottle of scent and ordering a bombing run pretty easily) and i'm sure it helps knowing it is Rudy. but i guess i can understand the urge to remind everyone of that vibe when he begins talking bout bombing martians and such. (his actual words really are sillier than anything else, but dont make as arresting a visual) but your point is an important one to add along with that, i think.

it's funny how i don't even know what that original picture was for.

i feel honored to be in the company of Valkyries! and i love the tragedy and poignancy in that myth. i'm feelin it.

Nezua.

Things haven't been going very well for me lately (way worse than even usual).

As much as my therapist tells me not to apologize for my illness, I feel that I have to anyway. Since what happened is not entirely the fault of my illness, there are choices I can make (like not clicking the post button, which I most often choose not to do after I've written something really rotten and need to do so more often), and I will work on making those positive choices in my life. I apologize for posting in a state where I wasn't really wasn't under my own control and exposing my disgusting innate inability to listen to people of color, or really anyone at all other than my own rage and internalized issues.

I'm very sorry for bringing that into your space. It doesn't belong here. I was wrong.

I need to stop commenting, here and elsewhere, because I can't control myself. I'm going to work on this with my therapist. I hope you will understand that it is important to me to avoid situations like what happened the other day, but that it is a long road for me.

I also apologize to everyone else here for my outburst. You all deserve better.

ah, hell. i forgive you. i don't think you were that out of line. you saw what looked like the typical smear of rudy, you jumped because you have personal reason to feel hurt by that use of that pic. you and i are both crazy, eh? it's a crazy world. and it bends us out of shape sometimes. we're cool. water under the bridge.

Damn DI...I sure hope you stick around, and do contribute again. Your points, Raf's, Christina's, and Nez's were, to me, all valid and it doesn't matter to me how they evolved or from where they came. I was hung up on the picture for other reasons, (not being as sensitive or as aware of the possbile impact it might have on others.)
Being the insensitive and often unaware person that I am, and can be, (also reads as "idiota")I was seeing the picture as "pro-Guliani" because of its association with "Saturday Night Live" and the image it gave of someone who is willing to laugh at himself. But, for making this kind of leap, your words truly point out to me the "why" and does put me into the idiot category. Thanks for that little glimmer of light.