So?

You'd think that Dick would be banned from talking to the media after his "greeted as liberators" prediction, but the administration still lets him wander into a microphone and drop these gems:

Raddatz: "Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives."

Cheney: "So?"

Raddatz: "So -- you don't care what the American people think?"

Cheney: "No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there."

Here's just something for the vice president to ponder. I'm sure at some point in his career he must have perused the Declaration of Independence:

... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So... Mr. Vice President.
So... it does matter what the American people think, since you derive your power from our consent and your resources from our paychecks.
So... it does matter if one of the 4,000 dead Americans is one of your family members. It's easy for you to be callous since you don't know the service members whole lives were lost because of your folly. But they are real people, and their families deserve more respect than a dismissive "so" and platitudes about their patriotism.
So... by every objective measurement, your policies have all failed. When you are in the dust bins of history, we will reserve our enending contempt for your incompetence.
So there!

Mission Impossible: Sell the 'misspoke' story

I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went.

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

— Sen. Hillary Clinton, March 17, 2008

"Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and I said well, I, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my memory of it.

"... Good grief, I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. you know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

— Sen. Hillary Clinton, March 25, 2008

Now I'm not saying she's lying, but...

The story was a bit too incredible to begin with. An American first lady would be asked to duck her head down and run under sniper fire? Why? Did the enemy not know how to lower their weapons? I know, the heroes on TV never get shot in those situations either.

Sinbad, who also went on the mission nailed it.

"What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"

However, faced with a differing recollection than Sinbad, the Clinton camp just chose to dismiss and belittle him.

Defending Clinton's characterization of her Bosnia mission, campaign spokesman Phil Singer kindly provided experts from news stories written about the trip at the time, including a Washington Post story from May 26, 1996, that said, "This trip to Bosnia marks the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to a potential combat zone."

Singer also cited a Kansas City Star article from September 2000 that quoted Sinbad as describing the situation in Bosnia as "so tense. It was Crips and Bloods." (And that's how Sinbad continued to characterize the situation in our interview Monday. He said, "At the time, we didn't realize how crazy it was between the Bosnians and the Serbs. I didn't realize how much hate was going on.")

Still, defending Clinton against Sinbad the refuter, Singer said, "The sad reality of what was going on in Bosnia at the time Senator Clinton traveled there as first lady has been well documented. It appears that Sinbad's experience in Bosnia goes back further than Senator Obama's does. In fact, has Senator Obama ever been to Bosnia?"

No. And he never tried to tell us he had been there either. By the way, none of those news reports cited by Singer said anything about the first lady running in under sniper fire. I'm not sure what exactly they were supposed to prove.

The word is out now about the war story that wasn't. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to convince us that repeating this story three times, two of which were in prepared remarks, was an absent minded mistake.

The way I see it, you make a mistake when you forget details. To create an entire scene that didn't exist is not the kind of thing that happens naturally. The mind forgets details, it doesn't create them.

Hillary Clinton sorta reminds me of the old Commander McBragg cartoons I watched as a lad.




I'm not saying Commander McBragg is lying either, but I'm sure even the good commander wouldn't accept a mission to convince me that he misspoke.

Random thoughts on the last week's news

So I haven't had a chance to post for awhile. It's not that I haven't had anything to say. I've been itching to write as I watched all the craziness go by.

Take last week for instance. Sen. Obama invited the country to a conversation on race and then desperately wished they would shut up about it already (in his mind). Obama is everybody's favorite mutt after all. Being a part of every race means he should offend nobody, right? Not quite. Just ask the Clinton campaign and the far right, who almost seem to have formed an alliance of convenience to smear and destroy the boy wonder. Hillary doesn't mind sticking her hand into the toilet bowl to get crap to throw at Barack, and the reliable Right will always be there to cheer her on. Last week some of the crap stuck. Barack took his bobbing and weaving back to the stage where he gave speech on race that was praised or poohed, depending on which side of the aisle you perched.

If that wasn't enough, we learned that New York governor Elliot Spitzer has sexual fantasies he's willing to spend $4,300 to live out. He pays this to a high class courtesan (i.e. expensive prostitute) who, as it turns out, is just another brunette who has been giving it away for free to Girls Gone Wild and anybody else who asked, except Splitzer. His wifey stood by. I'm sure she has a good lawyer on speed dial, though. Spitzer was replaced by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who, as it turns out, was a more frugal stud muffin. He's been getting it for free from willing women on the state payroll, taking them to the $108 Holiday Inn, and stiffing the NY tax payers with the bill. Priceless.

Kwame "the Playa Maya" Kilpatrick accused Michigan press and prosecutors of staging a witch hunt into his shenanigans. It turns out that you can't swear under oath that you weren't getting "benefits" from the staff and then send text messages confirming it. Who knew? It's a sign of the new millennium when the latest sex scandal is actually a text message. Naturally, Kwame will be fully exonerated, especially since his FWB got on the stand and rolled her eyes and gave up much attitude. This was obviously a play to elicit sympathy for sleeping with a married man, while using public funds. It's not like the court has any impact over her life, right. She was down with the Playa Maya. They must not know. Turns out they did. Now they're both indicted. LOL. Oops! Wifey OTS.

Hillary launched a red phone commercial designed to scare the parents of little blonde girls. "Who do you want answering the phone?" the announcer gravely intoned, while we all tried not to giggle about the fact that she'd have to make another call to try and find Bill, wherever he was at 3 a.m.

Of course, Hillary's ever morphing yardstick has been a constant delight. The true measurement of the winner will be delegates. No, it will be primaries won. No, it will be big states that I won...I mean...that matter to Democrats. No, it will be the popular vote. No, it will be a computer simulation of the electoral college...that I just happened to have on my laptop. That silly thing about delegates is just a guide. We have the flexibility to ply those rules to ensure true justice is served, and we elect the right candidate to her rightful position. Somebody please smack her with that yardstick.

We moved from Obama's Audacity of Hope, to Clinton's sheer audacity in offering the VP to Obama while she was still running significantly behind him. David Brooks offers in today's New York Times that things look so bleak that she is officially living the Audacity of Hopelessness.

And to this madness, I resume my blog.