Part I


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.

— Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, describing a visit to Bosnia; part of her responsibilities as First Lady during her husband's administration

What really happened is that her aircraft landed, she walked calmly onto the tarmac accompanied by daughter Chelsea, met with a group of seventh-grade students and proceeded to walk and talk with local dignitaries prior to her leaving via armored vehicle. Clinton accompanied African-American comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow who were entertaining U.S. troops in Bosnia. Tuesday's New York Times revealed the fact that a photographer who now works for them was accompanying the Presidential hopeful and her entourage years ago and he doesn't remember there being shots fired at all. Nor does a Clinton aide who asked for anonymity.

Oh, my goodness! The New York Times caught their little darling lying. Okay, let's use the term "embellishing." Senator Clinton said on Monday that she "misspoke" but did not apologize for the difference between reality and her own version thereof. It gets better than that.

Hillary claims that indeed, she's felt the bitter sting of racism. This I got from Sean Hannity today. She claimed, quite recently, that she was on the intramural soccer team at her Middle School, and a member of an un-named minority, whom she merely describes as being "not born in this country," said to her "I've always wanted to beat a spoiled white American's ass." This is a paraphrase and though I have yet to locate the direct source, I found it on the internet as well, in a blog not connected to Hannity.

And then there was the stupidity of claiming she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary even though she was born long before he earned a modicum of fame.

It Takes A Village, But She Does Worry About Her Daughter

She had the unmitigated gall to claim at one time that her daughter Chelsea was running laps around the World Trade Center complex shortly before the attack on the buildings on September 11, 2001 began. At the time, Senator Clinton was making an attempt to compete for the medal for "My Kid Almost Died On 9/11" with Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer D-NY. Schumer's daughter was attending a New York City public school perilously close to the towers when disaster struck.  Chelsea Clinton was indeed in the vicinity of the attack, but far out of harm's way, at the apartment of a friend.

The woman who told us that she's got better things to do than "stay home and bake cookies" was quoted as saying that after the Clintons allowed Chelsea to go out on her own, she'd worry about her daughter and the concern would keep her up at nights. I guess she forgot that when Chelsea was in College she was afforded the (necessary) privilege of Secret Service protection around the clock.
 

It's Really Not All About Hillary With Me

The lady is a liar, that's all.

Sure, Presidents lie. But so blatantly before the fact?

For those who haven't read these daylogs, the reason I'm not voting Republican unless Hillary wins the Democrat nomination is because I want to try something new. The "difference" that Senator Barack Obama is offering this nation. His charisma is unmatched by recent Presidential candidates from both the Democrat and Republican parties. His campaign is refreshing, it has the "grass roots" look and feel to it, (but it's really kinda a multi-million dollar "grass roots" theme park).

Now that Senator Obama is the apparent nominee (even though the Times offers up its desperate hope that Senator Clinton might just win with the aid of political voodoo regarding the popular vote) he's been lobbing a few unpleasant yet effective criticisms in the direction of Senator McCain. I thought better of Senator Obama. However, neither Senators McCain nor Obama have been caught telling such fanciful falsehoods. Nor has either one been investigated for personal fiscal wrongdoings.

I don't care for Senator McCain all that much either. Should he be elected President, he has promised that he's going to "win" the war in Iraq. How? By "staying the course" and continuing to pound his head against a brick wall. Some great mind said "Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results." They're fighting amongst themselves over there, and have been for a long, long time. I admire the Senator's candor, but I think he just doesn't wanna "lose" the war the way President Nixon "lost" the war in Southeast Asia.

Worse, Senator McCain is a Democrat wolf in Republican sheep's clothing. He's a moderate. Bill Clinton had a great deal of success being a moderate. He was aided and abetted, however, by fate and luck. Fate being that he did not have to endure a crisis of the significance of 9/11. Luck being that the economic pendulum swung way over in his favor and the nation enjoyed prosperity. Senator McCain will keep us in the war. Senator McCain will raise taxes. Senator McCain will depend on bureaucracy to administer some of the proposals he's offering. Senator McCain will bankrupt us.

Way back in August of 2006, SciPhi wrote an eerily dead-on few paragraphs about Senator McCain and his chances in this piece. It's a must-read and I submit it as a great prologue to what this writeup will become.

Need I say this any louder:
the Republican ideal
is a free market,
compact government,
and low taxes.

Abraham Lincoln said "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." Tacked on to Lincoln's Republican ideal is another which has become associated with Conservatism (that neighborhoods, towns, cities take care of their own) which President Reagan attempted to embrace. Reagan was a Lincolnian Republican; had his unfettering of commerce been placed in the hands of honest men, what prosperity we could have seen. Sadly, the Republican ideal must be tempered by a bit of oversight. Right now, those who should be doing the overseeing are lowering interest rates and doing more long-term harm than good.

The quote from Lincoln above is right in line with one of Senator Obama's platform planks: that America will not become a welfare state but a workfare state. Hard work and sacrifice is the only way to pull us up out of the perilous fiscal and social troubles caused by the government of the last eight years, painted to look like Republican leadership. The Bush advisors can best be described as a room full of doctors surrounding a patient who is bleeding to death, and treating that patient only with band-aids and a drip of saline solution. The sad reality is that the President (I like to call him the "nucular" President, 'cause his eyes glow in the dark, kinda like those of a deer's in the headlights).

My accountant told me that I'd be receiving a check sometime in May for about eight hundred dollars. This is an "economic stimulus" device, says President Bush. Bullshit! It's sheer insanity! Some day, a newsman will interview the then-former President George W. Bush and ask him to justify why, in the history books, his name should not be inscribed underneath the title "WORST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES." The President will respond with an attractive power-point slide that looks like this:

  • THOSE TERRORISTS SNUCK UP ON US WHEN WE WEREN'T LOOKING  

  • I WAS DEPENDING ON INFORMATION WE FOUND OUT LATER WAS FLAWED, SO IT'S NOT MY FAULT  

  • ER, I GAVE EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY A GOING-AWAY PRESENT

Rumor has it that, instead of the checks, Bush wanted to give everyone in the country a nifty Cross pen with the Presidential insignia on it. Then one of the neoconservatives hanging around the White House heard the name "cross" and, thinking it was the "word," gasped, "Mr. President, the public may get the wrong idea!" At the time, he was reading robwicks's piece about who conservatives are, and I quote, "Some fear that conservatives would force religion on them and their children, and there may be some merit in that view, at least as it pertains to some conservatives."

Bette Davis was said to have uttered these words upon learning of the death of Joan Crawford: "My mother told me only to speak good of the dead. She's dead. That's good." I hereby invoke that saying with regard to the late Reverend Jerry Falwell. Some would look at today's Supreme Court and say the damage to our liberties has already been done. I disagree. The likes of Falwell weren't nearly as powerful nor influential when my hero President Reagan was in office. Yes, I said my hero. And now I'm not trying to be funny. I'm doggone serious. There's never been a Conservative like him.
 

So Why On Earth Do You Endorse Obama?

I gamble. I don't have a gambling problem, but I gamble nonetheless. My party has nothing to offer but someone who'll gladly step into the cement shoes Congress will fashion for him. Dammit, when I wanted a war hero, when our country needed a war hero, Bob Dole didn't make it. CAUTION: I'M ABOUT TO PLAY THE RACE CARD. Barack Obama is a different sort of hero, one who will unify this nation and help Americans re-define themselves by looking at themselves and each other. I sha'n't go any further because I've discussed this in other pieces.

The gamble is this: right now, manufacturing jobs are oozing out of this country like toxic waste from the 55-gallon drums at Love Canal. The housing "bubble" has burst. Economic anxiety is causing people to slow down spending which only hurts other people (like me, a small business owner). And our situation with regard to foreign policy; well, we're slowly but surely becoming the world's version of the kid from school whom always had the paper with "kick me" taped to the back of his jacket.1

Many of you who'll read this are too young to remember the fear mongering going on when Japan was prospering, and rumor had it that they'd not only bought Rockefeller Center in New York, but all sorts of wonderful, neat All-American things. Remember that? I knew you didn't. Japan's financial pendulum took a pretty hard backswing there after they did that; so guess what, they don't own Rockefeller Center any longer. The Japanese are still pretty well off, but until recently they were whining and mewling about their economic woes similarly to the way we're whining and mewling now.

Tishman-Spier (a developer and real estate landlord in New York) now owns it. And part of the firm's vast collection of modern art is outside, on the promenade, for all to see, and inside of the buildings too. Tishman-Spier also owns The Chrysler Building and a few more of New York's most prime properties, and, God bless their souls, has committed $1 billion (billion with a b) to renovate the rotting Westside railroad yards and trackway in lower Manhattan, creating a "city within a city."

So back to my point. Obama's said he's gonna pull out of Iraq faster than Tom Cruise would pull out of one of his boyfriends if the paparazzi discovered where their tryst was taking place. Barack Obama has a kind of Franklin Delano Roosevelt feel about his policy. Robin Toner in Tuesday's New York Times sums up my feelings about the element of change in Obama's plans; I "yearn for something new, beyond the ideological stalemate. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote, “They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

Now, I was a little taken aback by the fact that he lobbed some of Senator McCain's mud back at him and hit the great war hero in the face with it. Obama had been much more civil, rising above the hysterical vortex of muckslinging that Senator Clinton resorted to. Obama also had a horrible decision to make, and he chose the right path; he's distanced himself from his pastor; the man who performed his marriage ceremony and baptized his children. The reason is, the vitriol that Rev. Jeremiah Wright spews from his pulpit makes Rev. Al Sharpton's rhetoric sound like the purring of a waiter in a fine French restaurant trying to convince you to order what the chef wants you to, and sell you a bottle of wine for $100. Now, I find Rev. Wright's wailings amusing — including howling not once, but four times, "God damn America" and cited reasons which were deserving of the use of the words, yes, but from a pulpit, no. Additionally, he's going to get his Trinity Baptist Church into some tax problems if he keeps up holding what amount to Obama rallies instead of delivering Sermons each Sunday.

So there you have it. I'm like the Grinch That Stole Christmas. My icy-cold, minuscule Republican-voting capitalist heart has grown bigger and bigger.

Wherefrom cometh thy information, you say? Here:

  • http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/03/ten-must-see-je.html

  • http://meatandpotatoesblog.blogtownhall.com/2008/03/26/time_to_hang_it_up_hill.thtml

  • http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/abraham_lincoln.html

  • http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25clinton.html?fta=y

  • http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDVjNzdjMDcyNjhkYTljZjFmZTRiNDYzZjZlZTZlNTc=

  • http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25obama.html?fta=y


Commentary:

Auduster said this piece was "incoherent", among other things. However, thanks to artman2003, I corrected two very serious errors that would indeed lead one scanning the piece to believe that it was. Shame on me. I pray the Court find complete and utter lack of sleep and exhaustion a mitigating factor in the crime.

1. liveforever says re 2008 US Presidential Election: America isn't "the kid from school whom always had the paper with "kick me" taped to the back of his jacket." It's the bully, the big overgrown, slightly imbecilic but dangerous guy who everybody fears... and hates.

 

Part II


MORE IN ONE MONTH