Di-nasty

New York Senator and 2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Committee's winter meetings late last week. She began her address by heralding the recently-won Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Then she alluded to the practical 50/50 split in the Senate, saying that there will have to be some bipartisan agreement (back room deals) in order to get anything done. (She said this without actually using the term "back room deals," of course... nor, for that matter, "bipartisan agreement.")

Then she said: "This is what I pledge to you for the next two years: That I will work with my colleagues in the Senate to do everything we can to change the direction of this country."

Uh-huh. Translation: "This is what I pledge to you between now and Election Day 2008, after which you can all go suck an egg for all I will care: That I will stick my saliva-wetted finger up into the air and judge as best I can which direction the political wind is blowing that day; then I will say absolutely anything I feel I have to say in order to convince the voting public that any legislation they like was my idea, and any legislation they don't like is something that I was against from the very beginning... even if I wasn't."

Later, the Senator provided an example of just such leadership: "I want to be very clear about this... If I had been president in October of two thousand and two, I would not have started this war."

Translation: "Please forget that I voted in favor of invading Iraq. Please forget that I have been hawkish on the war until just last week. Please ignore that I am moving one small, slow step --no sudden movements; that would call attention to it-- one small, slow step to the left with each passing day. Don't look over there to the right; look over here to the left. I'm not over there anymore. In fact --ha-ha!-- I never was (except, of course, when I was)...

"And oh, by the way, when I said 'two thousand and two', I actually meant '2002', not '2000.2'.

She quickly followed that up with this little nugget of male bovine manure: "If we in Congress don't end this war before January two thousand and nine, as president I will."

"Read my lips: No new taxes." --George H.W. Bush, 1988.

The Senator then addressed the class divisions in America today, sounding not unlike CNN's Lou "This Country is Waging a War on its Middle Class" Dobbs. In particular, Clinton took aim at Big Oil: "I wanna take those profits and I wanna put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to find alternative, smart energy..."

"I wanna take those profits..." Translation: Socialism.

Now let's all sing along to the tune of "Sodomy" from the musical Hair...

"Socialism; fasc-illio; commu-nism... would be classy.
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?
Manipulation... can be fu-u-u-un.
Join the Hill'ry Clinton Campaign Orgy... and get fuuucked."

She went on to "reject" criticisms of some of the ever-shifting planks in her watery platform. You know: 'They say that if you do this, then something bad will happen. Well, I reject that. They say that if you do that, then something bad will happen. Well, I reject that.'

It's a debate tactic borrowed from George W. Bush: Don't discuss, consider, or argue reasonably and logically against someone else's idea or opinion-- just deny outright that it could possibly have any merit.

Much of the rest of Senator Clinton's speech bore a striking resemblance to her presidential campaign announcement. For those of you who missed that, oh, well, allow me to summarize...

Picture if you will Hillary Clinton in a carefully choreographed Relaxed Pose on a Neutral-toned couch, in a room painstakingly staged to look Slightly Upscale Warm and Cozy. Picture the Senator making Very Deep Like to the camera, and saying...

"Hi. I'm Hillary Clinton. Notice that I did not say 'Rodham'. That's because my advisers have finally convinced me that including 'Rodham' in my name makes me seem just a little too austere for many of the voters that I plan on bull-shitting over the course of the next 21 months. While I have cultivated that very austerity in the past, I now want to project an image of such transparently insincere warmth and openness that even the most casual observer can plainly see just how full of shit I really am...

(*deep breath*)

"Bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit and, of course, health care bull-shit...

"I think you'll agree that after six years of George W. Bush, the time has come for a new kind of bull-shit. Bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit and any bull-shit that will make you forget that I voted in favor of all that bull-shit in Iraq...

"Now, I was born the son of a sharecropper, and I learned early on the values of bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit and more bull-shit...

"But I'm not just starting a campaign. I want to start a conversation. Let's chat. Let's bull-shit. Bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bull-shit, bullshit, bull-shit and, of course, health care bull-shit...

"Now, before I go, I'd like to address my rather excessive use of the word 'bull-shit'. I could have instead used the word 'snow-job', but I chose not to for a couple of reasons. First, I didn't want you to confuse anything I said today with one of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's daily press briefings. Second, 'snow-job' sounds a lot like 'blo'-- well, you know what it sounds like. You're not really going to make me say it, are you?"

(Paid-for-by-the-committee-to-re-elect-President-Hillary-Clinton.)

------------------------------
Also in Washington on Friday, when everyone else in America was thinking about the weekend, the National Intelligence Council declassified a small portion of its latest National Intelligence Estimate. A couple of things regarding Iraq were of particular note.

One of the semantic debates that has been raging for a year or more is whether or not the conflict in Iraq should be called a "civil war." Oh, how This Blinkin' Administration and other Republicans hated the liberalmediabias' use of that term! "It's inaccurate," they cried. "The situation in Iraq is not that bad."

Turns out they were half-right: It is inaccurate. I now quote directly from the recently released National Intelligence Estimate: "The Intelligence Community judges that the term 'civil war' does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq."

Translation: It's worse than a civil war... it's an Alistair MacLean novel.

The report went on to say that a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops would have devastating consequences. The Iraqi Security Forces "would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution" (assuming that that's what they are now, which is also "unlikely") and neighboring countries such as Iran, Syria, Turkey and perhaps even Saudi Arabia "might intervene openly in the conflict; massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable." Not to mention Al-Qaeda would have free reign in Al-Anbar Province.

Translation: We are stuck between Iraq and a hard place.

------------------------------
Notes...

Hair was written by Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni and James Rado.

In the time it will take you to read this sentence, Exxon will have made nearly $7,000... in profits.

In the time it takes for that to sink in, they will have made about $5,000 more.

You have to wonder --don't you?-- if Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig ever envisioned his independent investigator, former Senator George Mitchell, being quite so independent...