CLOB

Slightly reworked from Oct of 07. Enjoy! You don't get to enjoy elegant prose like this very often. In honor of the day, which is historic for some reason other than race.

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It is beyond her control. Slowly, slowly she feels herself pulled to him, her stylish yet sensible shoes inching forward until she could reach out and touch him, if she dared. She hears voices all around her, but the only sound she understands is the beating of her heart.

He sits, preoccupied, lost in his thoughts, thinking who knows what. Then some subtle sense, perhaps the half-noticed scent of some perfume, makes him lift his eyes. There she is. He stares at her, his stern face impassive, like a fine leather sack filled with slate.

Electricity is in the air.

She does not dare meet his eyes, his dark, brooding, sultry eyes. Oh, she thinks, he can see right through me. I've never, never felt this way before. Oh god don't let him guess how I feel. Look -- look nonchalant. Yes, there it is.


"So," he says. "It's you." The three short baritone syllables sound curt, clipped as they are through his sensitive lips. Who could guess at the stirring in his loins.

"Yes. Hello, President-elect Obama."

"I think we're passed being so formal, don't you? Hillary?" His expressionless eyes hold hers as the wolf holds the lamb. Some unnameable emotion curls the corner of his mouth like the memory of salt and honey.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Barack."

And they are alone, full though the room is of countless movers and shakers, king makers, players and powers that be. Only the two of them, she, entering the winter of her years but still filled with the juices of spring -- he, so tall, so broad, so laden with strength and history.

And because they are young in their hearts and beautiful as only the privileged and powerful can be, they have found each other and will soon fall into each other’s embrace the way rain slides down glass. Music will course through their limbs like heartbeats, one pulse between them, shared like breath between kisses. Their passion will make them blind and they will sculpt each other with their lips.

Until now they had not found themselves. Her breath would grow sharp sometimes and she knew he was near, but when she turned, sharply, she found no one, or someone who isn’t him. He would catch the sound of distant singing carried on the wind, but reflected off too many walls to find the source. His pace would quicken and he might move as if dancing, some rhythm sifting through his genes, but only alone. No matter. Their desire has outlasted the wait.

And now they have found each other, and know the moment for what it is.

Afterward, when passion is finally sated, and they lay, she supine, he recumbent, they come again to themselves. A moment of reflection, and she reclaims once more her poise, assumes her familiar mask of nonplussed equipoise.

But he is changed, forever changed, and his smile returns time and again. He will remember always her caressing thighs and desperate sighs, the taste of her breath mixed with tears, hers and his.

Is such passion as this preordained to fail if not to fade? Will she serve under him later, in her Office, has she has served now?

Inauguration Day, 2009. What wonders will the future hold?


J

When Tears Just Weren't Enough

Jack H grows weary of it all, this tawdry display of submediocrity. He finds it so tiresome, the shallow kabuki sans style or even symbolic meaning that is the political milieu. Where, he wonders, could significance be found? For no stone has remained unturned, and always to reveal something moist, blind and utterly loathsome. Most currently, Hillary, with her phagocitic appetite for power, attention, control, power, money and power. Well, who doesn't want these things. But she's so crass about it. Jack H understands that power, like wealth, should be inherited.

Do you deceive yourself, little one? Had you thought she elected herself to the Senate that she might make laws? Jack H smiles benignantly and stoops to pat your head. No, silly one. It was part of a larger plan. A line of stepping stones, the path of which is excruciatingly obvious to Jack H, but may seem obscure to more workaday minds. All along, you must see, Hillary clinton has plotted her Borgia-like course to the White House, redux. Wellesley and Little Rock, then White House and Senate, riding on and mounted by the bloated corpse-like flesh of her paramour -- enduring his attentions until she could find other less significant females to throw under the thundering hooves of his lust -- all that she might rule in her own name, outright. Yes. It's so clear. Painfully.

Satan cast down cannot have known greater rage than Hillary, in her fall. What betrayal did she or would she not have committed, to attain her ends? And now for what? That she may stretch a grimace across her teeth and pronounce platitudes toward the camp of that black man?

She'd have been better off, it now seems clear, to have stayed in Chicago, where politics is such a certain thing. How otherwise, given the facts? Witness, Obama's kindergarten slogan that moves the generations. Yes We Can!!!

When mean old Mr. Cant comes by
to put us down again,
we stomp our foot and slap our thigh
and say oh yes we can!!!

Who can argue with that? It would be insane. Insane and futile. Not in itself. Insane to argue with corruption. It is the way of all flesh, as a clinton must know.

This is not the last of her, of course. Some fresh infusion of blood will reanimate her, and she will rise from her grave, plucking with the resolve of yet another self-creation the stake from her breast, to soullessly wander the shadowed corridors through which greatness flits. Accompanied by her slavering wolven companion.

clintons. There will always be clintons, as there must be the night.


J

Observation

I've never been hostile about Hillary. Even back in the horror of the caligula era, when she was portrayed as Lady Macbeth to her swollen paramour's Falstaff, it was her polices, as in Nationalized Health Care, that evoked passion from me. Well, not passion. Opposition. She herself just didn't do much for me. Maybe it's that I do, I really do, like strong women. Sensible, but strong too. So she's halfway there.

That nonsense about a vast rightwing conspiracy. Well, she's a bit paranoid. So am I. She's reputed to have a shrill temperament, abusive to underlings, which would be everybody, and dishonest, as with those FBI files found on some tabletop by some secretary ... just some old scandal. So she's shady. And the Vince Foster calumny. Maybe it's true, maybe not. Hard to believe, though, isn't it? And that long long list of clinton associates who ended up dead. Maybe that's all just an artifact of a conspiracy? -- vast? -- rightwing? Suspicions should not control us. That would be paranoid.

She is certainly dishonest. Sniper fire. Is she fit to be president? The point is moot, barring some bizarre unforeseeable calamity that might somehow overtake young Sen. Obama. What are the odds of that happening? Astronomical. If the impossible should happen, then there's Hillary, still campaigning, the only viable option. But, heh heh, it's a ridiculous idea. Just absurd. But is she fit to be president? Consider her onetime bedfellow, and your conclusion will follow accordingly. If bill clinton was fit, she certainly must be. She after all has no criminal record.

And she certainly is bright. Consider her notorious thesis on that vile hippy radical community organizer, Saul Alinsky. She made it unavailable to scholars, during her presi ... her spouse's presidency. It was a stupid move, since the paper is unemotional, academic, and well-written. It was a good paper. What, you think it's still banned? But no, it is available. Say, here. Stupid move, I say, but she's still bright. We all have our blind spots. Take me for instance. I'm a certifiable genius. Wonderful. Just wonderful. Aaaaah. So tall, so handsome and powerful -- practically perfect. Yes. Yes. And, uh, and ... well, I seem to have lost my train of thought.

As for Hillary, we must strive to be objective. Take for example that interview last week. The Stephanopoulos one. I am way behind in my political reading -- about a month. No worries. You don't come here for topicality. But that thing with Hillary and George is pretty current. Only a week old.

Here. Starting at second 6:10. Something occurs that is utterly fascinating to me. Specifically, what Hillary does at about 7:15. She stands up during the seated interview to address an audience question. She says she's standing so she can see the woman who asks the question. It is plausible -- we can see from the camera angles that the woman's head would be visible but her body might be obscured by the audience. But really. Is that why Hillary stands? We get our answer, not only from the discomfort that Stephanopolous will certainly be feeling. He's not a tall man, and having his guest, his former boss's wife, loom over him can't be comfortable for him. We get our answer by what Stephanopolous finally does. 9:35. He stands. Very awkwardly, because he must be tethered by a mike cable.

It was a power ploy by Hillary. It worked, other than its stagedness, its obviousness. It puts George in his place. But how rude. And they remain standing for the entire remainder of the segment, over nine minutes, and another five and a half, almost. They start a new segment at 5:50, sitting, and guess what?! She stands again, second 20. And so does George, at some unseen moment, revealed at 2:10. My guess is that they stayed standing again for the whole segment. I just couldn't bear to watch for it.

Comments will be obvious. Focus groups like her standing better than sitting. She seems authoritative and confident. It makes her look less squat. It shows off her pants suits. And so on. Look. It's not a bad thing that she's trying to improve her presentation. If it comes off as a sort of Al Gore stalking up to George Bush (second 52) during that 2000 campaign debate -- staged ... connived -- well, so be it. Sarah Bernhardt she ain't.

But it was rude.

There is a natural authority that some people have. I think a huge part of it is just being comfortable in your skin. Of the four people referenced here, only Bush has it. Only he seems not to need to strike poses. He looked fantastic underneath that Mission Accomplished banner. If it was a ploy, it wasn't his. Some two thirds of Americans, alas, may think that however comfortable George is, he shouldn't be. Whatever. My point is that what really doesn't work is trying to fake it. Actually faking it might work, but trying to, as Hillary did with her robotic gestures, and Stephanopolous did with his desperate rise, and Gore did with his effortful confrontation -- it's a little sad. The sort of thing we might observe, that makes us feel a little pity, a little compassion, for people who really don't need it.

You have been laboring under the misapprehension that I am completely self-absorbed. But that's not it. I'm people-absorbed. It's just that I'm alone so much.


J

The Latest

I feel a little guilty about that last post. What I said about Spitzer's wife. It was ingracious. She's not old. I do that once in a very great while -- say something unfair because there's a joke in it. No harm meant.

Same with Geraldine Ferraro. She said something about Obama, and had to resign from Hillary's finance committee. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Is she right? Irrelevant. She can be wrong. Point is, she had a sincere and actually harmless opinion, and expressed it.

Have you noticed how many people have to resign because they've said something, expressed some mere opinion, mind you, that certain others claim to have found "offensive"? Samantha Power, a former Obama campaign adviser, resigned from Obama's staff after calling Hillary a "monster" -- off the record. It's the word police, the Opinion Stasi. We're not allowed to have disapproved-of opinions. Ms. Ferraro, and Ms. Power, and so many lefties, are hoisted on their own peecee petards. (A petard is a bomb, which hoists via an explosion.)

This is why fairness and a certain expansiveness of spirit is required. We all make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes aren't even actually mistakes. They're just opinions. Someone has to resign for it? Pathetic.

Spitzer had to resign because he broke laws. You may think prostitution should be legal. But it's not, and he wasn't engaging in civil disobedience, heroically laying his life on the line that others may have a fuller expression of their civil rights. He just wanted some number of orgasms, with a strange woman. I saw her picture by the way. She looks like a female George Hamilton. I've never considered going to a prostitute. But I know I wouldn't pay 5000 dollars to be with one, let alone this weasel.

Speaking of weasels, Obama's preacher is in the news. Wright. He was going on in some speech -- it couldn't have been a sermon, what with all its politics and campaign rhetoric (there are tax laws after all, and I'm just so very sure that Rev. Wright would never dream of breaking the law) -- about how Hillary hadn't ever been called a nigger -- "nigger". Oh, and by the way, he says, from the pulpit, in his ecclesiastical vestments, "God damn America." And so on. Yes, there is a historic and on-going opprobrium attached to blacks. History is what it is. We'll have to have God explain to us why it is this way. I can only make guesses. And there seems to be no word that cuts as deeply as that one. Perhaps that's why we hear it so often on the basketball court and from the pulpit. A way of desensitizing, disempowering the word. A tactic that could backfire, since if it's okay for one group, what consistent argument can forbid it from another? Only courtesy. But as I say, I don't really get it. I heard a black man on the radio say that when it comes time to get really insulting, there that word is, and "it cuts to the bone." I can't argue with it.

But don't tell me I don't understand. I don't understand that specific. Do you imagine there aren't things in my own past that don't lacerate me? Is it the same? No, it's different. But what monster of egotism would say that the pain of one group is unapproachably different than that of some other, or of some individual? I have pain that might cause me to commit murder, on sight. Sometimes I cannot breathe, for rage. It's not about a word, with me. But of course it's never about a word.

We want respect. We want to be taken on our own merit, rather than stereotyped because of some appearance or assumed characteristic. You see my point. Ferraro has a right to her opinion. She thinks Obama would not even be a contender, were it not for the fact that he is black. I sincerely disagree with her. I think Obama is exceptional. He is an amazing speaker, at his best, and his charisma is palpable. Nothing to do with black. Anyone with his talent would be where he is, regardless of gender or race. How could Ferraro miss that? For whatever reason she has. So what.

I would love for one of these mannequins to stand up and defend their fallen friends. Hillary should have said, 'I disagree with the opinion of my good friend, Geraldine. She has offered me her resignation from my campaign. But I will not be accepting her resignation. She is valuable to me, as a person and as an adviser. In my campaign, as in my administration, honorable service will be met with loyalty.

'My staff is allowed to be human, which means they will make mistakes. I, as president, will make mistakes. Every executive, even the most successful, makes mistakes. Anyone who doesn't understand this has never been a leader. Far more horrible than some human failing, is to demand perfection. The most we can strive for is excellence. This is my goal, and one of the signposts along that path is recognizing mistakes. When we find such error, we do not knock down the signpost -- we correct our course. How will we arrive where we want to go, if we cannot turn back once in a while from false paths?

'The world, like history, is what it is. We must be strong, and gentle. For these reasons, I for one forgive my dear friend for any mistake she has made in this. I would pray that anyone who has been offended by her opinion will open their hearts to a similar forgiveness. When we yearn for a great and good America, this must be what we mean. A land filled with people whose demand for upright character starts with themselves, and whose souls are strong enough to bear the weight of offense, and with forgiveness make that burden insubstantial.'

I like writing fantasy speeches. Might we expect such a thing from Ms. Clinton? Or from Mr. Obama, for his friend and mentor the Reverend Wright? Or from Sen. McCain, who apologized for a man who dared utter Obama's middle H-name? Time will tell. Let's not be cynical.

As for Geraldine, man, that bitch is old.


J

Crunch

Hillary picked up 193 delegates on March 4th, and with 5 from Wyoming, has a pledged total of 1234; she seems to have 242 SuperDelegates!, making her SuperDooper total 1476 (coincidentally, the year she was born). Obama picked up 178 delegates on the 4th, and with Wyoming's 7 now has 1377 popular delegates; with his 210 SuperDelegates! he has about 1587. I say about because there is some conflict in the reporting, and also because one of my staff might possibly have made an adding mistake. To clinch the nomination, somebody needs 2025.

The Dems still have events in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico. These total up to 612 delegates. Let's round. Obama needs about 440 more. Hillary needs about 550. If current trends hold, no one wins. (But we knew that.) You realize what that means.

A brokered convention.

Here's why Hillary wins. The clintons know where the bodies are buried. They didn't spend 8 years in Washington for nothing. And everyone knows they have the hardest hardballs around. Even those SuperDelegates! who are already pledged for Obama can switch over. What bribe, what threat, what seduction would the clintons not use to achieve their ends? They are the very definition of backroom operatives. Suddenly John Edwards with his delegates seems important.

Add that fact to the clinton's genius for dirty tricks -- which hasn't been working so far because the MSM was Obama's waterboy -- and we can expect a Change indeed. Hillary knew about the Rezko connection long ago, and brought it up ineptly. Now it's gaining traction. Who could possibly be so naive as to think that in the vast sewer of Illinois politics, Obama hasn't gotten some stink on his shoes? No, it's not really fair, and it's not even really substantive. Perhaps. But we've seen how stupid and petty this process is.

Obama's minister, Jeremiah Wright, is just a howling black racist preacherman, from what I can tell, who loves Farrakhan and hates America. So what. Obama has the right to listen to whomever he wants and go to whatever place of worship he chooses. Private lawful and ethical behavior is private. It's matters of public policy that count from a politician.

That's the sort of thing I mean. Purity tests. We are after all talking about politics. Compromise and purity don't really go together. And to imagine that Obama is pure in the first place is just silly. No one is pure. No one famous. The trick about growing up is to learn this sort of fact, without letting it ruin us. That's what hope is.


J

Whoops

George Will gets it right. Hillary “said she is constantly being urged to unleash her inner Pericles: ‘People say to me all the time, “You're so specific. Why don't you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up?”’”

Hillary’s eloquence is not to be questioned, but she really ought to exercise more thought as to whom she quotes. Those many people whom she references are all apparently reciting a talking point meme penned by some DNC apparatchik whose talents list more to the bureaucratic than the inspirational. I am forced to believe this, rather than the idea that Hillary herself composed this quasi bon mot, the polish of which is conspicuous by its low gloss.

How is Hillary to compete in the war of words with Obama? -- who gives us such bracing heroin as: "We are the ones we've been waiting for. [thundering audience whoop] We are the change that we seek." The message is the messiah. Y’see? Obama is so selfless. He never uses the world “I”, crafty devil. We we we, all the way home, to the White House. He says “our campaign” and “Yes. We. Can.” What monster of cynicism could argue with that?

With all his qualifications, silver-tongued Obama surely does belong in the White House. No doubt about it. He’d make a great White House press secretary. Bush could have used him. As it is, Obama is using Carter, or at least his old staff. Zbignew Brazinski and some surreal other unpronounceables from the Carter Error have been disinterred and had tanis leaf tincture infused into their crepe-like flesh that they might advise our Obama campaign. Even Chris Mathews, Carter’s old speech writer, gets tingles in his lower extremities when Obama’s tongue gets to work. Mmm.

It is, then, all about words. If Hillary could choose the right words, her clinton machine wouldn’t have to hoist her from the quagmire. If Obama requotes in just the right way some New Testament verse first breathed into Saint Paul, despots will repent and pennies will hail like a shower of golden light from the heavenlies. Cuz that’s where the pennies will have to come from.

Obama revealed his economic plan in Wisconsin. Big mistake, these specifics. They’re so, so analyzable, so refutable. He wants $150 billion for a green-energy plan; regulated profits for energy firms, drug companies and health insurers; expanded health insurance, by some $65 billion; an “infrastructure investment bank” of $60 billion; raised barriers to free trade; a mortgage-interest tax credit; double the workers getting the earned-income tax credit, and triple that benefit for minimum-wage workers. It sums to around $800 billion, which will be paid for by, uh, well … tax hikes on the rich won’t come close. Unless we redefine rich as middle class.

Steve Moore in The Wall Street Journal calculates that Obama will need a 39.6% personal income tax, a 52.2% combined income and payroll tax, a 28% capital-gains tax, a 39.6% dividends tax, and a 55 % estate tax. Why should Obama's collective we care about all these rich-dude taxes? It's just that it stifles the economy.

But we don’t have to worry about that. Obama has a speech just on the tip of his tongue, that will whoop us out of any such oratorical quagmire.


J

The First Black President

Indeed, the clintons are the greatest friends blacks ever had. Adoring, subservient blacks, that is. Blacks who know their place on the entitlement plantation. bill just loves to see the Negroes dance, so long as he calls the tune.

Offensive? Of course I'm offensive. Deliberately. I am sufficiently aware of the imagery I evoke to appreciate its effect. The issue is not whether I'm offensive. It's whether I'm correct. The left is now apprehending what the right as always known. The clintons are without principle. Not ad hominem. The evidence is clear. The "race card". For shame.

There's something fundamentally racist about the right. We like things the way they are, the way they were. Not terribly fair, is it, to the disadvantaged, who tend to be minorities. But the same can be said of the left. Fundamentally racist. Those poor, incapable minorities -- we must take care of them. How infantalizing.

Action is the tool of belief, just as mind is the fool of the heart. Does any mystery remain as to the clinton character? We know its mind and its heart, because we see its actions. If wisdom is the ability to draw accurate conclusions from insufficient evidence, we should be holy sages by now, regarding, or compared to, the clintons. There is hardly any need for intense emotion, though. There are worse things than unethical ambition. Incompetence would be an example.

Hillary hasn't shown herself to be terribly effective, but her incompetence has yet to be demonstrated. Same with Obama. He's just a cypher. He's a better dancer than Hillary though.


J

Zombies and Fairy Tales

Someone asked me the other day who would I vote for if it came down to that -- Hillary or Obama. I didn’t even pause in answering. Hillary. Hm. How odd. Hillary, who is so disliked, over Obama, who is so charming and pleasant. How can such a thing be explained?

Isn’t it strange, though, such a karmic conflation, these clintons with Nixon. Hillary, who worked so industriously in the Nixon impeachment, and bill, who was actually impeached. bill, who had such a sleazy, such a shoddy character, counterpart to Nixon’s demon-haunted psyche. Hillary, who in her famously vindictive nature is such a complement to Nixon with his storied enemies list. How, in what way, could we possibly want even the possibility of a reprise of all that? clinton alone was precisely half the man Nixon was. If Hillary gets in, the resurrection would be complete -- if more zombie than holy.

How could such a thing be better than Obama? Because for all his appeal, Obama would be a disaster. America has never had a leftist president. Not left is we understand the term. We’ve had liberals in a moderate sense -- FDR, Johnson, Carter. But they weren’t ideologues. The real liberals, like McGovern and Mondale and Dukakis and Gore and Kerry -- never got elected. There’s a reason for that. Yes, providence -- but also because America is not the place for such leftists. Europe, of course, loves massive government. Russia. China. Leftist paradises. But the USA? Not yet. That’s Obama. The most liberal politician in the Senate.

Well, I'm wrong about Carter. Worst president ever. He must have been a liberal in the immoderate sense.

But we survived. As we will survive. Checks and balances. The Democrat-controlled Congress has not yet ruined the country. We can survive a few years in the wilderness. The problem with Obama is his inexperience. His naiveté. Can you imagine him sitting down at a negotiation table with Hugo Chavez? Good lord. Obama was a civil rights attorney. Yes, we do need civil rights attorneys. A few of them, because civil rights do need to be protected. Um, I shouldn’t have said “civil rights attorneys.” I should have said constitutional law attorneys. You know, based in reality, rather than leftist propaganda.

How liberal is Obama? While he was in the Illinois legislature, a bill came up to provide medical aid to babies who survived abortion. You know, actual babies, just maybe sort of cut up. Obama voted against the bill. Let them die, I guess. Very, very, very liberal. I don’t hold it against him. It’s just emblematic. And as Hillary so shrilly pointed out, Obama holds the record for Senate votes of abstain, or merely present. Not real strong on taking a clear position, huh? This may make him a nice guy, but not much of a leader.

As for his oratory, if you analyze it, he says exactly nothing. No real plans, no concrete propositions -- just high-flown rhetoric. Universal health care and mortgage-crisis relief. Doesn’t that sound nice? But how will it be paid for, with this oh-so-out-of-control budget already causing so many problems? He’s not wrong to be so vague -- his plans would be used against him in the general election. It’s a tactic, his vagueness. But it also seems to be a character trait. Is it a sort of middle-child thing? -- the mediator and conciliator? Manifesting in him through his genetic middle ground between two races? Nonsense, of course. Because he isn’t moderate in his positions. He’s an extreme liberal.

Government is not the answer. It isn’t the problem, either, pace Reagan. It is a tool, to be used or misused according to who wields it. As James Barber says in his The Presidential Character, “government is no church. Democracy is a system, a set of conditions, a down-to-earth skeleton put together to host and foster baseline virtues such as justice, freedom, equality, community, and participation, rather than topline virtues such as faith, hope and charity. So who ought to be picked for the Presidency is a concern we ought to think about not in the context of moral perfection but in the context of basic political leadership in the reality of democracy.”

Conservatives should know this, having, as so many of them do, an actual church, that they need not look to government for salvation. Government is a necessary evil, designed to inhibit unnecessary evils such as crime, and to undo inevitable evils, such as floods. Of these two, Hillary or Obama, which would be the less ineffective in dealing with such issues? I’d chose Nixonian vindictiveness over Carteresque fecklessness every time.

Hopefully it won’t come to that. McCain can beat Hillary because Hillary will get out the hate vote against her. He can beat Obama because Hispanics and Asians, historically, do not vote for a black man. Don’t ask me. Blacks will show up in record numbers, but moderates and independents will go for McCain, and when conservatives find out the specifics of how very very left Obama actually is, they’ll hold their noses and vote for McCain.

So? It’s a good thing. We win. We win by not losing.


J

Spade Work

Hillary used the term, Monday. "Spadework". In some context. And this rightwing talk radio guy now is trying to say the subtext is racist. Somehow Hillary is trying to bring race into her fight with Obama -- it's what clinton-insider (ugh, what a thought) Dick Morris predicts she'll do. She's not that stupid. Alas, this rightwing talkshow guy is, well, not a fool, not an idiot -- just someone who shouldn't have a nationally syndicated show. But it's the middle of the night, here, and he's all that's on. I don't have anything against rightwingers. I prefer conservatives, but somebody has to fix the plumbing.

Spadework means "doing research" or "making preparations". Uncovering necessary information. It's used in detective stories, like, go dig up some facts. Yes, spade is also a racist term. Whence does that derive? It's first ethnic occurrence is noted in 1928, from the playing card -- black as the ace of spades. Who's that black? Might as well say white as snowball, and then call whites balls. I don't think it's all that common anymore, spade. Sort of like coon. Aren't these terms almost jokes, now? Hard to see them as anything else.

Somebody on the radio is saying spadework comes from the work of slaves, the blacks who hoed the cotton. Supposed to be an insult used by the house slaves against the field slaves. Well, I suppose it's possible. But it doesn't fit the meaning of the term as it's used now. So, if it has a different definition, how is it the same word? Seems highly unlikely. Spade has been around for longer than English. Old English, spadu; Old Frisian, spada; Old Saxon, spado; goes back to Greek, spathe, "wooden blade, paddle." To call a spade a spade is a direct translation of an ancient Greek (and Roman) proverb -- although Erasmus mistranslated it: originally it was To call a bowl a bowl.

As for Hillary, there's enough problems with her, that her enemies don't need to manufacture them. To be credible, you have to be credible. It's like the morons in New York, who demanded some bureaucrat's resignation, and got it, because he used the word niggardly. We must not bow to stupidity. Phonemes are not meaningful. Syllables aren't, either. Only words are. Like Norfolk. Pronounced NOR-fuck. I will not mispronounce it. Deal with it. And grow up. I can just hear you tittering. Not another peep.

Hillary may well be getting desperate. She has seen her inevitability evaporate like dry ice (although, ah, ahem, I must point out that, technically, dry ice does not evaporate per se, which is, uh, ahem, properly speaking to move from a liquid to a gaseous state. No. Indeed, uh, rather, ahem, dry ice would undergo ablation). Not even much wetness is left. Just maybe a few tears. But even crocodiles can cry. They can smile, and they can cry. I'm not going to find meaning in this fact, though. We've seen too much of that, haven't we. Peep.


J

No Tears

[First, for those who are following the soap opera, I have Chapter 3 posted. Almost all of the formatting, including endnote citations and notations (of which there are about 1500), and it seems all but one of the charts/ tables/ graphs, have been lost. Ah well. It's either up as these bare bones, or not at all. This chapter is of narrow application, but for anyone who has an interest in ethnology and national origins, it should be fascinating. To everyone else it should be almost incomprehensible. You have been warned.]

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Hillary cried last night. Why aren't we moved? Because we think it was a tactic. It seems like a manipulation. Psst, Senator -- you're down in the polls. The idiots think you're too hard. Fem it up -- say, maybe, we'll plant a question that you can cry about. Cuz, in all the speeches she made on the stump and in the Senate, about children and Iraq and lost puppies and whatever, she never did cry. Then she gets this softball question about how she feels about her defeat, and she weepily answers another question, about her passion for children and the country and how important "it" is. Sorry, butch -- too little too late, this Tammy Wynette thing. With a 33% trustworthiness rating from her own voting pool, she needs to be consistent. It was an obvious and clumsy move. Some boneheads are suggesting she'll drop out of the race if she loses two in a row. Good lord. This is her life's ambition. Of course she's weepy. But there's no way that these two first but minor primaries mean anything at all, compared to her ambition and machine.

As for her tears, if they were genuine, it was poor judgment. What is it, after all, that seems to be her strong point? If anything, it has to be her perceived toughness. And there she goes, turning on the waterworks, a few days after she loses in the first primary, and a couple of days before she's going to lose in the second. Good lord. Who is running her campaign, the Stooges? Honey, play to your strengths. You'll never be President Mommy. At least pretend to be somebody, instead of just anybody. It's called acting -- sort of like your marriage. And of course there's the warning of Muskie -- who derailed his '72 bid for the presidency, in New Hampshire of all places, by publicly crying ... or was it merely seeming to cry? No matter. It's not allowed. Don't these fools know that? I was barely in puberty at the time, and I remember it. Crying? I have nothing against it. I'm the guy who can't have a serious conversation without tearing up. But I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. What's their excuse?

And then there's Obama. I was wrong before when I said he couldn't be president. It could happen. But it would be so much more of the same. He's talking about giving people, "farmers and scientists," a chance. Hmm. Now how is he going to do that? By being a liberal politician? What "chances" does the government "give"? What law -- which by nature limits options -- is going to enhance freedom? It's meaningless. He talks about health care. Huh. How is he going to get that to happen? He's way way to the left -- how will he bridge the distance to come to some compromise with the right, to get universal health care? It's meaningless. We are not electing a dictator. Don't they understand this?

No, they don't. Neither do we. Every four years we hop on the merry-go-round, and we're surprised when it takes us nowhere. Reagan really was different, because things did change a little bit. The rest of them? You have eyes. That's why I'm moving more and more away from ideologies, toward pragmatics. I have clear goals, well defined positions. But I understand that it's not about talking pretty talk, it's about getting results. We're not electing Jesus. These are politicians, almost all of whom have egos larger than I pretend to have -- even larger than I really do have. They are flawed. I'm fine with that. Romney is another clinton -- slick. I don't care, if he can get results. Giuliani may be an adulterer, too -- you remember, like clinton. That really stinks. But he cleaned up the most crime-ridden place in the USA, and made it the safest large city. If I want a preacher, I'll go to church. I want the potholes filled and the borders secure. It would be nice if we could have both. Maybe next time.

For me there's one major issue. Borders. Here's why. A politician who gets it about the borders, gets it about Iraq. I mean mainstream pols, not isolationists. It should be painfully obvious that pols can get it about Iraq, and miss it entirely about borders. It's a security thing. Why are we busy saving foreigners, when we aren't bothering to save ourselves? The first time, they came here legally, the islamoterrorists. The next time it will be illegally. You can figure it out for yourself. A nation is defined by its borders, the way your home is defined by its walls. And a government exists, by our way of thinking, for the specific purpose of increasing the safety and potential for prosperity of its citizens. The government is hired by us to do a job, the way we would hire an accountant or a security guard. There's nothing magical or inspiring in this fact. The beauty of our system is that they work for us. If they don't, the beauty becomes ugliness. You know, like most of the rest of the world.

We are a family. We are a private club. We are a corporation. We are a gang. We are whatever analogy you care to use, that defines a group of people who come together to look out for each other, first. If you don't recognize it, it's called a nation. After we take care of our own needs, we look to the rest of the world. As a group, we take care of job one, then we take care of all the other jobs. As individuals we have the right to sacrifice ourselves. We can give away all our possessions and live among the lepers that we might bring them comfort. This is a noble and fine thing -- of an individual. But as, say, parents, we don't have the right to sacrifice ourselves for strangers. We sacrifice ourselves for our children. And as citizens, we must be devoted to that comity that has blessed us with the security and prosperity that have allowed us to nurture a loving and self-sacrificing character.

That's what I'd like to see, in a candidate. Selfishness. Not the personal kind -- the national kind. Nationalism. Us first. Pols are elected to look out for our interests. Their job is not to be elected and stay in office. Their job is to serve. It's not about emotion. It's not about compassion. It's about competence and clarity of vision. What happens to vision, when a pol starts crying? Gets sorta blurry, eh? What should happen is that our vision becomes clearer. I hope it's still that way.


J

Clinixon

John Ellis makes some good points. Hillary is really, really unlikable. Who is she like? No, not Doubleyou. Doubleyou-haters became deranged only after the election. The election itself didn't help matters. You remember -- that whole hanging-florida thing? With those various Supreme Courts getting themselves involved? No, Hillary is hated old baggage -- did that come out right? Hated for her old baggage, the way Nixon was hated. Yep. It's Hillary Milhous Clinton.

Her chief strategy is that she's electable. Come again? It's an open field. There's no incumbent. They're all electable. I don't know much about him, yet, but I certainly don't dislike Obama. In a match between him and her, I'd take him every time. Go Obama! All he seems to have is appeal, but maybe he'd grow into the job. The only president who never did was the first clinton. His growing was of another sort. Zing. Git it? I'm talking about his penis. See?

Which brings me to Hillary's vagina, presuming she has one. It seems to be a factor in this election, the way her husband's penis never was, in his erections. Elections. (Git it?) She wants votes for being female, and wants no criticism at the same time, because she's female. Just another way the Woman is keeping the black man down. (Obama. Git it?) Although ... how is Obama black? Isn't he white? His mother doesn't count? It's all so confusing to me. But we were talkin' 'bout 'gina. No wonder I'm confused. Let's start over.

Hillary is loathed by about half the electorate. There are a fair number of Democrats who say they'll never vote for her. Remember how she promised never to be no Tammy Wynette, standing by her man? It's sort of an unlikable thing to say. But that's who she is. Hillary, don't run from it. Embrace it. And overcome it by showing yourself to be competent. We don't mind tough. We hate slimy. It's just nuts to nominate her. But the same might have been said for nominating Nixon. They are deeply flawed characters. Both are riddled with motherload veins of dishonesty. Perhaps because of this, Nixon didn't use an inevitability argument. He didn't strive to be likable. Instead he showed himself to be competent. That's the winning strategy, to overcome the huge negative of dislikability.

Unfortunately for her, she isn't. Isn't competent. How did that myth get started? Her ahem executive experience in the White House, overseeing the Health Care Fiasco, demonstrates her managerial style. Not a winner. Probably not even tough. Mean is not the same as tough. The fact that she whines like a sissy-girl the first time her competitors criticize her demonstrates her incompetence and cowardice. Can you imagine? She can't handle the heat of the campaign, without complaining, publicly, about feeling attacked. She does not answer them, she complains about them. We do not need to elect a tattletale-in-chief. To whom would she tattle? Her Magic Mirror on the Wall?

Ellis demonstrates how uninevitable she is. She has a little loss of momentum, and it shifts to Obama. After that she has no strategy. He's not uninevitable, and she is unlikeable. All she has is money and name-recognition. No exceptional experience, no special talent, no broad base of appeal. What is the delusion going on here?

Ellis says she is smart like Nixon, and this is correct. Calculating. Nixon was determined, as is Hillary. Nixon seems to have been more of a patriot, but perhaps that's just how his self-serving nature showed itself. At least he resigned when the time came. clintons seem to hold on with a death grip. As for being tested, I don't see it. Nixon was tested throughout his career. Rejected politically. Existentially. All Hillary has had to deal with is family problems. That's what we all have to deal with.

Where they are most alike is in the paranoia. It's a very real thing in Hillary. Her aides in the White House, both male and female, called themselves the Stepford Wives. That "vast rightwing conspiracy" comment of hers was no fluke. She has an enemies list, and she could teach Nixon a few lessons about vindictiveness. Maybe she's studied him. In fact she certainly has -- she worked on his impeachment. Do we really need to go through this again? The worst of both impeachments? A paranoid character and that clinton kabuki theater of mediocrity?

Hillary can be elected. Only if the Republicans really really screw up. As they are wont to do. It doesn't need to happen, but it can. Nothing like it has ever happened before. A combination of Cleveland with his two non-contiguous terms, and the Adams and Harrison and Roosevelt and Bush family successions, and the long reign of FDR, but that isn't it. A woman, but that isn't it either. A non-elected president, in bill clinton again, but we had that, sort of, in Ford. As we had a co-president slash spouse, in Mrs. Wilson. What's different is that we've never had someone elected simply because they were a relative. It seems a step down.

And then there's that bothersome character issue again. Hers. She complains about being attacked. That's sort of a weak character, wouldn't you say? I suppose I really mean judgment. She thinks this is an attack? What would she do with a real attack? -- you know, the sort where thousands of people die.

This is not a time for a weak president. I like strong women. I know it's rude, but this one's just a bitch.


J

Our Vicarious Former President

That Tony Blankley is such a good writer. "Having spent much of my adult life in politics, it would be silly at this late date to be shocked by the discovery of insincerity and misleading statements coming from leading candidates for president. But if I have seen too much of the world to be shocked, at least I still can be appalled. And the gentle lady, the junior senator from the Empire State continues to appall." Just makes me laugh. What a great word. Appalled. Expect to see much of it from now on in these pages.

His point is an obvious one, which I've been considering pontificating upon. Hillary keeps talking about her experience. Um, what experience is that, exactly? Her one term as an elected official? Yes, that is definitely a form of experience. Not more than anyone else running. Significantly less than many, or all. Obama was after all a state senator starting in '97. Is there any other relevant experience she could possibly be referring to? Nothing springs to mind. Nothing rational, I mean. Nothing not-appalling.

What's that you say? Her husband was president? And prior to that he was governor? And this is her experience? Huh. Apparently having opinions is the same as being an expert. And in all the world, there's no such thing as an ignoramus. Thanks for that, Hillary. You have redeemed all us loudmouths. You are the messiah of wannabes, or the wannabe messiah, or something. Something good. You've told us so yourself.

"There is a difference between a candidate having a particular policy and having experience in managing such a policy." The same goes for Giuliani "when he claims experience in foreign policy. While I like his general attitude on foreign policy, he doesn't in fact have experience or expertise in the matter." Me too. "If Hillary claims she has the best ideas about our national economy, she is entitled to claim that. Socialists will agree; capitalists will disagree."

Ideas are not experience. Experience is not something we acquire vicariously. If that were the case, we'd all be Jedi Knights and dragon slayers. We'd all be heroes. That the media doesn't apprehend this most fundamental of lessons -- meant to be learned sometime around when we master the concept of object permanence -- well that's understandable. The media makes its living on illusion. But that those aspiring to the positions and privileges of leadership, if not the responsibilities, should fail to grasp this -- it is, well, it's appalling. Simply appalling.

There was a time in my youth when all my understanding about how the world worked came through books. My broadest reality came to me entirely filtered through the imagination of authors. Life itself, in contrast to its simulations, is very hard, very trying. It's the difference between standing at the finish line and watching the marathon runner finish the race, and being the runner, finishing. The only commonality is geographic. Any further comparison is shameful.

Hillary, for all her husband's infidelities, is not the one who went gray during the clinton years. They were the clinton years not because of Hillary, but because of her husband. I have no opinion about what sort of wife she was. I need no opinion about what kind of executive she was. She was no kind, and there's no need to have an opinion about nothing.

Experience requires decision-making, where there are real-world consequences. If Hillary "actually was managing the national economy from 1993-2000 from her perch as wife of the president, let her release White House documents showing her active participation in such management. ... If Hillary actually was doing what she implies she was doing, there will be a long paper trail of memos that she either wrote or commented upon." If there isn't such a trail, how can she prove herself not to be an appalling liar?

Clinton's honesty has always been an issue. Hillary's, I mean. Double-talk, deception, dissembling, flip-flop, murky ethics, intimidation, obfuscation, cover-up, scandal, slick and slippery -- these are terms that accrue, and rightly, to the female as much as to the male. A poll of likely Democrat Iowa voters favored Obama 2 to 1 over Hillary, regarding honesty. That's an absolute blowout. The Clinton slogan will be whatever it will be. Maybe It's the economy, very stupid -- as we'd have to be, to do it to ourselves again. But the Republican slogan will be the same old thing, and rightly. Character matters. I say this, in spite of my willingness to support Giuliani. A matter for another day.


J

Choices

Something my son emailed me. Let me tell you ahead of time, I got every answer correct. Somehow, I just knew the correct answers as soon as I started reading question 2. Some might say I'm psychic, and who am I to argue? But my theory is that I'm just really, really smart. Both can be true. I wonder why I keep having to point out how smart I am. It's about time you start telling it to, well, everyoneme.

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A little history lesson. If you don't know the answer make your best guess.

Who said it?

1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
A. Karl Marx
B. Adolph Hitler
C. Joseph Stalin
D. None of the above

2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few.... And to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity."
A. Lenin
B. Mussolini
C. Idi Amin
D. None of the Above

3) "(We) can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."
A. Nikita Khrushchev
B. Josef Goebbels
C. Boris Yeltsin
D. None of the above

4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground."
A. Mao Tse Dung
B. Hugo Chavez
C. Kim Jong Il
D. None of the above

5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
A. Karl Marx
B. Lenin
C. Molotov
D. None of the above

6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in [the] entire economy that they are being watched."
A. Pinochet
B. Milosevic
C. Saddam Hussein
D. None of the above

Comments has the answers, which I got right away and which you got, if at all, much later. Well, no need bothering to look. Hillary, of course. And not way back in the distant past of her primordial ooze haze-days at Berkley or Wellesley or where ever. Current. Just recently her chief economic advisor, Gene Sperling, stated during a National Press Club panel discussion, "The question is, should we be giving an extra $120 billion to people in the top 1 percent?" Talking about taxes, of course. Did you know that "we" "give" people "extra" money?

There it is. Citizens don't earn their money. They are given money by the government, in the form of not-being-taxed. It's actually not a very subtle point. Gross, even. Clear cut. One side thinks it's our money that we "give" to the government (under threat of coercive force), the other thinks it's the government's money some of which they let us keep, maybe.

Economics is not one of my themes. My understanding is basic. I don't know whether free trade or tariffs is better. I understand the arguments, insofar as I've heard them, but I don't know the evidence. Reality is what matters, and reality changes.

Government, American government isn't about making people be good. It's about keeping them from doing evil -- along with paving roads and securing borders. There is an agency in public life charged with the task of shepherding our souls. That would be religion. So rich people, by a conservative understanding, have the right to be pigs. Selfish, I mean, not rude. They have the right to be rude, too, but so do we all. As we all have the right to be selfish. When we come out from behind the benevolent authority of our parents and act as autonomous adults, we can stay up late and eat ice cream for dinner and not share what is ours with anyone else, if we so choose. No government has the right or the legitimate authority to require otherwise.

That's why Hillary is a problem. Just another leftist who wants to be our mommy.

Sure, I'd like to be rich. Money is power, and power is how things get done. I'd buy a classic car for myself, something from the early fifties or very late forties. I'd hire a maid. That's about it, for myself. I'd set up some trust funds for some extended family members. I'd invest in efficient and effective companies. I'd fund research into topics that interest me. I'd find admirable charities and smooth out the way for them. I'd play around in politics. If some other rich guy just wants to buy toys and date loose woman, that's his business. Hillary should keep her pug nose out of it.

Even rich fools spend money, which keeps the economy humming. It's not like it's all in a mattress somewhere. There aren't really a whole lot of people like me, idealists who value competence, but there are enough to keep the world from going straight to hell. We certainly don't need some bureaucratic theorist to define reality for us. Reality, in such cases, always seems to be a lot of farmers or pedestrians or Bible students lined up on the painful end of a bunch of guns. The government will always have guns, whether or not citizens do. How else would they collect their money?

I think there is an equal and opposite correspondence between the right and the left, in this: as fervently as most conservatives want to retain their right to bear arms, just that forcefully do liberals want to raise taxes. You heard it here first.


J

Clinton Unveils Three-Step Peace Plan

LOS ANGELES (FP-Reuters) -- Few will have heard of Democrat front-runner Hillary Clinton's recent secret trip to the Middle East. Campaign insiders suggest the junket was undertaken in an attempt to bolster Sen. Clinton's (D - NY) foreign policy credentials. It is rumored that she presented a peace plan to Palestinian leaders, of an astoundingly ambitious nature -- supposed to call for a cultural rapprochement of revolutionary scope.

Step One of her plan requires the complete adoption of Middle Eastern customs and religious practices, for all Americans and native English-speakers. All non-citizens will be exempted from this requirement, as will those whose first language is not English.

Ms. Clinton herself entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of her scheme, and is pictured below in traditional Palestinian headwear. Ever culturally-sensitive, Ms. Clinton also eschewed any possibility of offending the refined sensibilities of her Palestinian hosts by refraining from wearing any "slutty American whore paint," as one diplomat delightfully phrased it.

Sen. Clinton during recent Mid-East trip

Step Two calls for the Jews to throw themselves into the sea -- not just Israeli Jews, but all Jews. Internal Clinton war room memos supplied to FP-Reuters by confidential sources outline the theory that such an occurrence will be good for both the environment and the economy, "which it is, stupid" (scrawled in Ms. Clinton's hand in the margin of one memo). If a Jew is not near a large body of water, Ms. Clinton's advisers suggest that bicycles will be provided.

Step Three calls for the universal adoption of Esperanto as the mandatory global language. To facilitate this aspect of Ms. Clinton's plan, all children will be taken from their parents at one month of age and raised in Government Warehouses similar to those already in place on most public school campuses. Additional details may be gleaned from careful study of contemporaneous descriptions of the ancient Lacedaemon city-state, as well as of George Orwell's famed political handbook, 1984.

There are aspects of this last Step which many thoughtful people find pleasing, but anonymous critics suggest that it seems a tad high-handed. Some partisans hold that Ms. Clinton has fallen "once more into her old pattern of over-reaching," first nationally revealed in her attempt to reform the healthcare system. It is yet early in the campaign season, however, and objective viewers believe that, undoubtedly, the shrewed minds that advise her will suggest subtle fine-tunings that will make her final solution palatable to all but the obdurately reactionary.


J

Being Fair

Editorial

Washington, DC, Nov 10 (FP)

"I did not have sex with that woman."

You may be asking yourself whose quote that is.  While it is whispered that Ms. Hillary Clinton, prospective 2008 Democrat candidate for the presidency, might be in a position to have said it, this is in actuality a well-known public perjury of her nominal husband, former president bill clinton. 

In fact, there exists no verified information seriously suggesting that Hillary "the Clamp" Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were ever physically intimate.  Ms. Lewinsky is not known otherwise to have been the subject of gossip along these particular polymorphic lines. 

Susan Estridge and other FOCs have characterized as "scurrilous slanders" the many assertions that call into question Ms. Clinton's proclivities, and because the pages of Forgotten Prophets™ consistently maintain the very highest standard of objectivity and veracity, we can neither confirm nor deny such persistent and convincing rumors.

Likewise, "I hate America" -- sometimes using the adjectival expletive, "f*cking" -- commonly appears in internet and other non-MainStream platforms, attributed to Ms. Clinton and other prominent and/or vocal Democrats and Leftists. The YouTube video purporting to show Ms. Clinton mouthing this phrase is most likely a fake.

The person speaking is undoubtedly Ms. Clinton, but the fine details of the lip movements seem somehow unnatural, and it is the opinion of many that some CGI effect is at work here, similar to those that make pigs and infants appear to speak in television commercials. 

Corroboration of this theory lies in the fact that exactly the same clip is circulating, in which Ms. Clinton appears to be saying, "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky." In this version, a comically large and gnarled finger rises from the lower field and wags itself at the camera.

Finally, inside-the-Beltway buzz has long maintained that Ms. Clinton is not a genuine blond, but instead, a mere bleached-blond. While we here at FP hold no opinion as to the often-asserted superiority of blonds over non-blonds, and while we repudiate the elitist and discriminatory attitudes that promulgate such positions, however well-supported by countless objective measurements, we do feel it is appropriate to question the degree of self-loathing and the implicit repugnance felt about one's own genetics and ethnic/racial heritage inherent in the deliberate disguising of so salient a feature as the very colour of the hair on one's head. 

The consensus among psychologists is that it represents a self-loathing of the darker-hued races, and an envy of the beauty and grace so common among true or "real" blonds. We view it as a sort of racism.

The persistent reports that Ms. Clinton's maternal maternal grandmother was a mulatto, making Ms. Clinton a near-octoroon, or in her terminology, "twice-removed from a half-quadroon" -- used last week in a nationally televised speech before the NAACP and delivered in the rising cadences she selectively affects of a black Baptist preacher -- all this is an utter irrelevance. 

But that she should attempt to hide the African influence in the pigmentation of her hair reveals a disturbing, and indeed shameful hearkening back to the days of Jim Crow and minstrel shows. Is this what America should expect from those seeking its highest offices?

Much disrepute has fallen upon true blonds, because these dusky poseurs persist in their dissembling. As Dr. William Shoenfeld of MIT recently published in the Journal of Intelligence and Genetics, in "every single documented case of the phrase 'dumb blonde'" being used, it "always applies to a non-blonde in disguise..."

That Ms. Clinton should be so dishonest, so actively and deliberately deceptive as to attempt to deceive the world in so fundamental a thing as her very appearance -- such a calumny must call into question the very foundation of her character. 

For our part, we are reluctant to credit the idea. It is too monstrous. A person who would lay claim to a beauty clearly not her own would certainly hate America, and have sex with that woman. We cannot bring ourselves to believe it, even in such politically-charged times as these, where threats both foreign and domestic imperil our lives and our civilization. So disreputable a character is manifestly unfit for public office, let alone for the highest office in the land.


J

Spitup

Yes, I know. It's just cruel. Petty like feckless spite. But it's the sort of meaningless cruelty that's funny. And we should look so good, in our 60s -- in two days. Even so, it's food for thought. Chicken feed -- or maybe horse fodder. Hee haw.

Jeffrey Lord puts it in perspective. The kind of hostility this woman generates is greater than anything that our Bush ever had to start with. Imagine how bad it will be during her presidency, when things start going, um, south. Lord imagines a scenario of adamant payback by the Republicans, starting from day two. When she sits down at her Oval Desk and picks up her Oval Pen to commence the once-routine task of replacing all the US Attorneys, as the Constitution clearly allows, she is put on short notice by the Republicans in the Senate "that a single firing of any Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney anywhere in the land will be received with cries of scandal. Investigations will be demanded in the Senate Judiciary Committee." You know -- like what just happened when Bush did the same non-controversial thing, only with a mere six inadequate Attorneys. Payback. The Stupid Party finally gets mean.

When one of the geriatric Distaff Justices of the Supreme Court finally feels free to step down, now that it's politically safe to do so, Hillary finds an instantly hostile GOP. "Unlike the docile and respectful treatment the GOP accorded her husband's two liberal Supreme Court nominees, Judges Ginsburg and Breyer, confirming both with not only respectful treatment but overwhelming support, that respect and support was not reciprocated for Bush nominees Roberts and Alito. Both superbly qualified men were subjected to a bitter and controversial confirmation process. Memories of Bork and Thomas, easily stirred, come to life." So? Payback. Mr NiceGuy is no more, when he meets Ms Iron Panties. It's formerly-ladies-first with former First Ladies. If a serious president had been elected for these serious times, things would be different. But this most reactionary of revolutionaries has been enthroned, and sometimes politics uses knives. Here's the list of acceptable candidates, Madam President. Obey us.

Same thing with the appeals courts. Remember Miguel Estrada -- brilliant, but conservative. He was rejected by the left because his "Latino heritage made him 'dangerous'". Imagine having to think like that. The Racist Left, by which is meant the Left -- well, I need not characterize it. It defines itself. I'd say something about Hitler, but ... Godwin's Law.

As for the war, what new commander would Ms. Clinton install? And what willing suspension of disbelief could credit his desire to conclude any conflict in the best long-term interest of the US? And why didn't Ms. Clinton serve, during the hot war of the '60s, when she was eminently qualified? A feminist like her could make only the objection that she wanted the rout that eventually came. And this is the Commander in Chief? As Lord says, hail to the Chick Lady.

Aside from the countless real clinton scandals that will be dredged up -- thought forgotten, but just fermenting -- endless new ones, real and spurious, will be brought forward. It will set a new record for scuzziness. The name clinton will surpass Nixon as a byword for everything fetid in politics.

My own contribution to the vitriol will be to start an impeachment campaign. I'll set up a website selling Impeach Her bumper stickers, from which will evolve a line of ImPeachMint Pies. The logical next step will be to make her symbol a big pink peach, with lapel pins and ceramic lawn ornaments and mass mailings to the newly-labeled "Pink House", also "Peach Preserve", of crates of peaches. Rubber mats of false peach vomit will be all the rage. Oh, it will be rich.

Will it happen? No, of course not. It isn't in our makeup. We aren't the ones who riot. A conservative riot? Never been such a thing. Maybe it's age, but it's certainly maturity. What will we do? Carry on. Wait it out. These things go in cycles, and the most we can hope for is that the arc is not a descending one, not a downward spiral.

What, did you think I was going to end on some wacky note? I would, but I've depressed myself. The future seems such a grim thing sometimes. If only there were some way to comfort myself. Maybe I'll go eat some pie.


J

Spitball

Hillary has been quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: "Women are like tea bags -- you never know how strong they are until they get in hot water." Peggy Noonan says Hillary brings her own hot water with her. Well, I'm like that too. It's hard even for the people who like me to like me. Indeed, it's hard to say why we dislike someone. I disliked a guy once because he reminded me of my brother. Who does Hillary remind us of? For half the nation, someone unpleasant. But we can't be ruled by our emotions. Something more objective, like evidence, should decide the matter.

I'm not a policy wonk, and not really all that interested in the fine details of politics. Get the principles right, and the details will fall in line. That's the value of a philosophy. It's why I sent my son Atlas Shrugged. I want him to have a philosophy he can grow out of. Who we used to be makes us who we are. With that in mind, let's look at Hillary, and who she used to be.

Forget about the ancient past. Goldwater girl turned campus lefty. If I were judged by the follies of my youth, I'd be locked away in an attic right now. It's what she does with power that's important. We have to look for patterns. One-off incidents prove we're human. Patterns illustrate our character. In this instance, we really can't separate bill from Hill. They're a team, really they are. When we say he, or she, we do mean they. Fair or not, that's my position.

Given this, what did they do when they were governor? They attempted to rehaul, revolutionize the education system of Arkansas, after which it still ranked last among the states. They attempted to revolutionize the health care system of the US, along mikael moore lines -- thankfully stopped by a once-focused GOP. Just as they took illegal contributions in the '80s, from the Chinese slash Indonesian billionaire Riady family, they took such Chinese monies in the White House, and most recently (that we know of) from Mr. Hsu. They pilfered furniture when they left Little Rock. Same thing as when they left the White House -- actually stole sofas. White trash is such a harsh term.

bill has made in excess of 43 million dollars in speaker fees since his impeachment I mean since leaving office. Fees collected from the ChiComs and the UAE -- a country with "Arab" in its name. Nothing wrong with being Arab, but as Emmett Tyrrell points out, there does seem to be something rather unseemly in the crassness of commercializing the presidency, from selling bed-and-breakfast weekends in the Lincoln Bedroom, to the selling of prestige for astronomical speaker's fees.

They are renowned, really they are, for hardball tactics of intimidation. From Little Rock onward they would hire investigators, Terry Lenzner and Jack Palladino and Anthony Pellicano, to dig up dirt on opponents -- say, those women whom bill molested. Yeah, they needed even more crap, the sluts. How dare they talk about being molested. Recently the clintons quashed a GQ story by Josh Green (here, here). Intimidation pervades Hillary's personal relationships. Her foul language to bill is understandable. Even her physical strikes upon him. He's a cheater. But she throws books at the backs of Secret Service men's heads -- maybe because they won't carry her bags. It is of a piece with a paranoid view of the world -- almost as if she believed there was some sort of vast rightwing conspiracy against her.

It's not like even the left hasn't been ashamed of them. Emmett Tyrrell:

Very little of this has escaped the notice of journalists and of Democratic leaders. [...] After the Clintons and their siblings were caught in the 42nd president's last-minute pardon scandal, Jimmy Carter called them "disgraceful." Robert Reich opined that "Clinton is utterly disgraced." Al Hunt called Clinton the "albatross" of his party who should "drop dead." Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile, wrote in The New York Times, "It's time to let Bill Clinton go -- go on and live the rest of his life and allow a new generation of Democratic leaders to renew their fight on behalf of working families in America." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert affirmed that "Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing. … It's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose. … Some of Mr. Clinton's closest associates and supporters are acknowledging what his enemies have argued for years -- the man is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening."

Editorially in February 2001, The New York Times asserted that "the former president … seemed to make a redoubled effort in the last moments of his presidency to plunge further and further beneath the already low expectations of his most cynical critics and most of his world-weary friends." And the newspaper lamented that it might "never understand the process by which a departing president and his wife come to put sofas and flatware ahead of the acute sense of propriety that ought to go with high office." The New York Observer assessed Hillary's election to the Senate "a terrible mistake," adding that "Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office."

These, mind you, are FOBs. Not relevant for Hillary? How would we know? A wife has never followed her husband as president. Good lord -- is there no qualified, respectable Democrat they could select? It isn't only cream that floats -- and we are, after all, talking about the cesspool of politics.

All that is the past. Unfortunately that's not good news. A large chunk of the electorate wants to return to the clintonian past. That would be the 9/10 crowd, nostalgic for the days when we saw no enemies, save for all those sharks eating swimmers off our shores. You remember the Summer of the Shark, don't you? The good ol' days, when only nature was our enemy. Like it is now, what with Global Warming -- although we know the real enemy, the real cause of GW (not George W, in this instance) and 9/11 (in this instance, yes, GW Bush) is us, specifically us white males. Don't ask me, I'm only reporting the phenomenon. And here we are again, full circle, in hot water. Sharks thrashing about after bimbos.

We had a problem with clinton because of his low character and self-seeking -- but mostly because of the disgrace he brought to the office. He did not transcend his limitations, as the office requires. The only growing he did was in his pants. But that's old news. Hillary is shrill and mean and ingenuine. I don't have a problem with this. The problem I have is that I don't believe she loves this country, and doesn't put its interests first. I don't care about her religion or her personal beliefs on abortion or Islam. I care about what she would do and be as president. She'd be another bill, only not driven by her gonads. Driven by what? Alas. Alas. Driven by her love of power.


J

Polaris

Your enemy can't murder when he has a bullet in his brain. Pretty harsh, but think how different history would be if a certain politico had brought that philosophy to the White House. bill clinton, of course. And his political philosophy was surprisingly close to that. The actual quote is, "Your opponent can't talk when he has your fist in his mouth."

Y'see, thing of it is, the first iteration should have expressed his constitutional duty -- to protect and defend America -- whereas the second, the real one is simply more reason for disrespect. Being able to talk is something a president should protect -- free speech and all that. You know, that Constitution thing again. The problem was that he got serious only with things that didn’t really matter. What could we expect from a funhouse president but a funhouse philosophy? Something just a bit twisted, just a bit off. It's almost not ridiculous. bill clinton always got it wrong. He was the North Star of perverted values.

In 1996 Nebraska DemSen Bob Kerrey said, "Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?" Earlier this year, lefty bigwig Hollywood mogul David Geffen called the clintons an Ivy League Bonnie and Clyde. Reckless and Relentless, respectively. "God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary?" he wondered. "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling." Well, no -- it's called "acting." And the best lies are the ones that stick closest to the truth, pace Goebbels. Just a few words off, like switching political opponent for blood enemy.

But bill clinton is old news, so fifteen-years-ago, capable now of doing only the harm that, say, a carter can do. We have more pressing issues than raging about impeached former presidents. This weak and ambitious Macbeth, alas, does have his Lady, and one unconcerned about such mere housekeeping drudgery as getting out damned spots of body fluids. There's another House that she would keep, or reclaim. Lady Hillary, of course.

Charles Krauthammer is almost always right, and when he’s not, he’s always edifying -- reasonable and plausible. So what he has to say about HRc is worth considering. He says she’s not the worst thing that could happen. How could we disagree with that? Much worse things could happen. The 12th Imam could come back -- that would be embarrassing. A planetoid could strike the earth. Zombies could eat our brains. Why, the list of worse things might be dozens of items long.

Prezizle Hillizzle wouldn’t be a complete seppuku evisceration of America, thinks Krauthammer, because she is not principled. She is pragmatic. Anything will do, to get her what she wants. This is a good thing, he supposes, because according to the laws of chance she might sometimes get it right, whereas a principled lefty will always get it wrong. He must be an Evolutionist.

It is true that if a pilot looks to the heavens and charts a course by picking any star at random, some destination will be reached. Everywhere is a sort of destination. Whatever happens it what destiny is. Chance might even bring us to a place that’s worth getting to. Isn’t that how penicillin was discovered?

Well, Hill is not bill. In this Halloween season, we might think of him as the Blob -- slick, voracious and all-encompassing, while she would be not so much a witch -- the cackle is inconsequential -- as a vampire. How appropriate, for bill. A vampire, in her ruthless, her relentless thirst for blood and her ability to transform herself into whatever the night requires. They are certainly a team, and they certainly complement each other.

There are worse things than a marriage that is sustained merely as a cynical alliance. And we know that they do, both of them, have a bushel of mean packed into, pressed down and overflowing from their souls. This need not be a bad thing. It could be a good thing. It’s just a question of who they think their enemies are.

One realizes that tests are not egalitarian, at least in their results. But let's risk the insensitivity. Life is filled with risks. Which of the following images best represents the "enemy"?

A:

(enlarged image of an American Flag lapel pin)

B:

(reduced image of a moslem Ramadan ritual)

Putting the foolishness aside for just a brief moment, I pose a final simple question. Who would you trust to deal with the characters who dance on rooftops at the sight of image B?

It would have to be someone who can distinguish between opponent and enemy. This is why Krauthammer is wrong. Pilots can't follow just any star. There is only one true north, and the seas are filled with icebergs.

J

The Art of the Possible

I avoid the details of politics. Not a policy wonk. Big picture guy. I process the details without bothering to remember them. I'm looking for patterns and principles. Other fields are all about details, and I have to master them. A thing is proven by facts, and facts are details. What do you prove with politics? My opinion is better than yours? I know what will happen in the future? Could be -- some folks make money in the stock market. But the only guide we have to the future is what has worked in the past. That's called history, not politics. Politics is gossip. Interesting, but not edifying.

That being said, we have to vote for someone. The race has started up, and the dogs are running. Democrats and Republicans. Demoncraps and Retardicacas. The Big Tent is full of clowns, and the Rainbow Coalition is shades of pink and yellow through and through -- these colors do run. But you have to choose someone. If you don't vote, you don't have a right to complain.

Democrats are the abortion party. That's the end of it, for me. They were the slavery party. You'd think that would have been enough to finish them. It's the frickun Dracula Party -- it will not die. The blood of babies, and blacks, must be very nourishing. But perhaps that's not a thoroughly valid argument. Perhaps there are some, or many, good things about the Democrat party. I think Social Security is good. A good idea, anyhow. If it lasts. Um. I'm sure there's something else in the past seventy-two years that they did that's also good. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- although that was passed with a higher percentage of Republican than Democrat Congressional votes. Hm. Uh, let's see -- Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, clinton. Well, Truman dropped the bomb. That was good. Uh, Kennedy made some good speeches. Um.

Anyway. The Republicans. The Stupid Party. The Shoot Yourself In The Foot Party. The Now That We're In Power We Can Spend Like Drunken Democrats Party. Well, they're just politicians. We can't actually feel any hope over them. Hope is what religion is for. Politics is about potholes and borders. Well, potholes.

Hillary's it for the dems. Obama as VP. A balanced ticket, which is what it's about. She has the experience, of sorts, and the balls, of sorts -- he has likability. So they'd better not call each other too many names during the primary campaign. I still remember Bush One's "voodoo economics" crack against Reagan. It always tainted things in my mind after that.

I think it'll be Giulliani for the republicans. He's tough on terrorism, which is the defining issue of the times, and he's moderate socially, which strikes a reasonable-seeming compromise. He's playing Solomon quite well, on social issues -- dividing the baby with the sword of Federalism. Smart, and really in tune with the founding principle of this nation. The horror of Roe v Wade isn't that it's about abortion -- it's that it imposed abortionist values on all of us, rather than on only abortionists. Federalism will solve that abomination. There will always be abortionist states. Not all states should be abortionist. We did fight a Civil War over this very issue, you may recall. The Roe v Wade of exactly 150 years ago was the Dred Scott Decision. All states must be slave states. Well ... no. We expect that there will always be evil. Federalism allows for that evil to not be made universal. There's a place to run to.

Giulliani has proven his competence beyond any doubt. You're too young to remember NY in the bad old days when the streets flowed with urine, but he's the one who mopped it up. That's what the President must do -- take care of business. We can go to church for preachers. This may seem a surprising position, from me. You don't know me. Gay marriage? There can be no such thing. Civil unions? That's just a contract, that some states may enforce and other's may nullify. The question hinges on whether or not some employment or state benefits are fungible. Must health benefits apply only to a spouse, or to any designated partner. Genitals seem rather ancillary to that question. The point is, it sounds like a moral issue, but it isn't a matter for the federal government.

The Republican VP? Fred Thompson. Again, balances the ticket. Thompson is universally described as folksy, avuncular, southern-fried. That is as it may be. Charm goes a long way. But he's too conservative for the times. Not for me, but for the times. It's about getting elected. Rudy gets the moderates, Fred brings in the conservatives. It's a winning ticket. Hillary currently has a 52% unlikability factor -- people who say they would never vote for her. That's crippling. Rudy is likable, Hillary is not. Obama and Fred cancel each other out in terms of charm, but Fred brings in the right, whereas Hillary already carries the left without Obama.

No, I don't know. Just guessing. Things change. But never Edwards. Howdy Doody had his chance in Quayle. Never the old-man senators. Can't even remember their names. Not Romney -- I think the Mormon thing does matter, but the real issue is name recognition. Only the Republicans know who he is, and not all of them. Everyone knows Hillary and Giulliani. Fred is a movie star. If I had the power I think I should have, I'd have JC Watts as VP.

It was Bismarck who said that politics is the art of the possible. It's not about how things should be. Things should be perfect. Not possible. But in a flawed world, how can we do the least harm? As a father, I was a Taoist. Do as little as possible, but do everything necessary. My son N had one of those annoying bowl haircuts in the mid nineties. I absolutely hated it. But it wasn't my business. He wanted it, and it did no harm, and it was his right. I kept my mouth shut. What politician is likely to follow such a philosophy? We know what social engineering does. It causes famines in the Ukraine and Killing Fields where rice should grow. It's a simplistic analogy, but which of our two parties is less likely to try to redefine human nature?

We should do only things that are possible. We can leave the impossible things to religion.


J