hillary Hillary HILLARY!

Usually, I couldn't give a toss who ends up appointed as the next titular leader of the Great Satan, since every one of the candidates will full-throatedly champion the interests of unrestrained capitalism, above all, when push comes to shove.

However, over the past few months, I have become aware of a hitherto unsuspected visceral dislike, on my own part, for Hillary Clinton.

I have always despised Bill Clinton, of course. But Hillary? "Who cares?", I used to think. No better or worse than the rest.

After this winter's exposure to Hillary, though, her actions (or those of her campaign staff, same diff) have made clear to me she is just as much of a triangulator as her piece-of-shit husband.

Ie. no strong principles or beliefs, just the propensity to do whatever it takes to achieve and maintain power.

This is from an article Molly Ivins wrote in 2006, entitled I will not support Hillary Clinton for president:

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

Molly goes on at length, describing her distaste for a senator that has always followed 'where the wind blows'. I could have cut and pasted the whole article here, but I believe that would be lazy on my part.

Instead, I choose to cut and paste a posting from my favourite Political Satirist (aside from Rick Mercer, of course), Barry Crimmins:

I have no respect for the Clintons. None

Why? They took an already weak political party and sold it (OK, remaindered it) to the corporate bosses.

Hillary Clinton has taken more money from the enemies of peace and prosperity for average people than any other 2008 presidential candidate. Period.

Her finance chief is the criminal Terry McAuliffe.

Her chief strategist is Blackwater apologist Mark Penn.

She looks upon the presidency as if it should be hers as a perquisite for keeping her mouth shut about her husband's cheesy conduct.

That husband has risen in stature because he was replaced by a braying, criminal jagoff. Now there's an accomplishment!

She promises to revitalize Rush Limbaugh and an array of reactionary blowhards by reinvigorating an ancient feud that will resume on so many fronts that there will be no way to avert our gaze from it. Our nostrils won't be spared, either. It's no surprise that Limbaugh is urging Republicans to cross primary lines to vote for her.

She runs as a feminist on the basis of her gender, even though anyone even remotely politically literate understands that she is a tool of the patriarchy. War machine = patriarchy.

And so I find candidate Clinton to be contemptible. This doesn't mean that I am some naive foundling on the Obama doorstep. I'd just like to see him end Clinton's run for president. That summarizes my excitement concerning the Senator from Illinois.

Actually this is only an amuse-gule for the rest of Barry's post. But you get the basic idea.

No matter how much of a mooncalf Obama is, at least he isn't Hillary Clinton.

NDP intentions clarified!

Thanks to a responder from my last posting, I was directed to a weblog with some inside info on the negotiations that went on between the Liberals and the NDP prior to the Tuesday vote (a motion to curtail Canada's military participation in Afghanistan by 2009).


According to ceasefireinsider,

The Liberal motion was uncritical of the military mission and supported its continuance unchanged, yet called for the government to notify NATO that our troops would be withdrawn from the combat mission in Kandahar when the current commitment ends in February 2009.

(snip)

In politics, the wording of a motion is important. When I first read the Liberal motion last week, I feared that it was D.O.A., or Dead-on-Arrival. The motion let the Conservative government off the hook by not expressing any concerns at all about the failing mission, did not call on the government to change the focus from war-fighting to peacebuilding, and missed what is becoming an obvious solution to the war: a diplomatic settlement.

We urged the Liberals to make a small amendment to their motion in order to win NDP support, and Former UN Ambassador for Disarmament Peggy Mason actually suggested specific changes to the language that would likely have been palatable to both Liberals and the NDP. We sent the suggestions to every Liberal and NDP Member of Parliament. The NDP even proposed an amendment during the debate, but the Liberals rejected it.

Whew!

That is a relief. If this account is factual, though, it only increases my still relatively small fear that Dion is listening to the wrong people.

He must have some sort of workable strategy! I am even possibly prepared to accept some triangulation at this point.

Also, it lets me off the hook for my potential 'J-Lay' confrontation. As a Canadian, of course, I reflexively recoil from anything confrontational.

Is Michael Ignatieff 'triangulating'?

The concept of 'triangulation' was first popularised in the '90s by the administration of puffy sleaze-bag Bill Clinton. In practice, this meant that he would alter his ideas on legislation depending on how the political wind was blowing. Triangulation is defined, kindly, in Wikipedia as:

The act of a candidate presenting his or her ideology as being "above" and "between" the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

Now Iggy seems to be following a similar path to power. A couple of months ago, he mentioned in a press interview that he wasn't losing sleep about Israeli actions in Lebanon. The result: lots of criticism from the Quebec and Youth wings of the Liberal party.

Suddenly, this week, in a french-language interview, Iggy is singing a different tune: he described certain Israeli actions in Lebanon as "war crimes", which pissed off the 'Israel right or wrong' wing of the Liberal party to the extent that his campaign manager resigned.

Beyond the pathetic squabbling of the Liberals, this latest statement implies, to me, that he wouldn't lose any sleep as Prime Minister when informed about any future war crimes.

This sort of whatever! attitude may be ok for you and me, since we as everyday Canadians (ie. not Jewish, Muslim, Lebanese, Israeli, or evangelical Christian) probably didn't lose much sleep over it either.

But then you or I have no driving need to lead this country.

Perhaps, due to his total lack of experience in government, Iggy can be excused for his apparent ability to piss off everyone concerned regarding an important international issue. But who can excuse his staff? By all accounts, he has the majority of the Liberal 'brain-trust' behind him whole-heartedly.

Good luck at the convention, Iggy, you deep-thinker you.