Bless Us, Comrades, for They Have Sinned

Clinton Scores Points by Admitting Past U.S. Errors

“It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: she says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in
gratitude.

“On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said here that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked.”

The NYT refers to this, without intending any sarcasm, as Hillary’s “contrition tour,” part of the larger Obama administration project of “paving a new road. It is recognition of the fact that previous policies have failed. Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure.”

There’s nothing easier than showing contrition for someone else’s sins, perceived or actual. Obama showed how this works over the weekend when he expressed gratitude that Marxist Daniel Ortega’s diatribe against America didn’t include Obama personally, as he was only three months old during the Bay of Pigs.

Of course, Obama wasn’t traveling to Trinidad-Tobago as a private citizen, but as President of the United States--successor, hard as it still is to believe, of all former American presidents for the past half-century, including Kennedy, who believed a tough stance against Castro was in order.

There’s certainly room for debate as to whether or not the fifty-year embargo against Cuba accomplished its original purpose, as Hillary claims it did not. But is the point really what will or won't work wth Cuba? Isn't all this really about buying the world's affections with promises that gruff old Uncle Sam is gone now and replaced with President O'Barney's I-love-you, you-love-me foreign policy?

Asked whether the United States would build bridges to hostile Latin American leaders, like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mrs. Clinton said, “Let’s put ideology aside; that is so yesterday.”

Should Have Sent Nancy Pelosi

When I made reference yesterday to Our Lady of Guadalupe I had no idea that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (revered by Democrats as Our Lady of Roe v. Wade) had only just visited the Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City on Thursday.

Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 27, 2009 / 04:59 pm (CNA).- During her recent visit to Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people,” after asking who painted the famous image.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary’s eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image’s lack of decay.

Mrs. Clinton was received on Thursday at 8:15 a.m. by the rector of the Basilica, Msgr. Diego Monroy.

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!” ("Hillary Clinton leaves flowers for Our Lady of Guadalupe, asks ‘Who painted it?’")

Some critics have blasted this as a diplomatic blunder. They say Secretary Clinton's staff should have done a better job prepping her as to the significance of the basilica and its famous image.

I think that's being too hard on Secretary Clinton. It assumes that any of the Catholics in her retinue knew enough about Guadalupe themselves to explain it to her. This seems very unlikely to me, not least because Our Lady is the Patroness of the Unborn, and the pre-eminent religious emblem of the Catholic pro-life movement. Catholic Clintonistas surely would be as unaquainted with Guadalupe as Obama's economists are with Adam Smith.

More likely is that the Catholics on Hillary's staff, whom we can safely presume endorse her moral vision, are of the same "ardent-Catholic," we're-Democrats-first school of catechesis as Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. This type of Catholic tends to shun, and has been taught to shun by the example of his parish leaders for forty years, most things miraculous (unless occultic), anything morally absolute, and certainly those unsophisticated religious practices identified with unschooled peasants and unschooled immigrants--practices just like veneration of Guadalupe--practices that might make those hard-to-please east-coast WASPs sneer down at Catholics as dumb hod-carriers and cobblers.

I still don't know what to make of the cosmico/karmic significance of what happened with Hillary next, as reported by CNA:

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America --the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization's founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston,Texas.

World Upside Down?

Now we can’t talk about the Kennedy assassinations?

I have to say I’m just not getting it about Hillary’s reference to Bobby Kennedy, even though she’s getting criticized for it from both left and right.

Here's what she said in an interview:

Asked if her continuing fight for the nomination against Senator Obama hurts the Democratic party, Sen. Hillary Clinton replied, "I don't. Because again, I've been around long enough. You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just don't understand it. You know, there's lots of speculation about why it is. "

Keith Olbermann, never hinged enough to now call unhinged, used Hillary’s foo poo as an opportunity to restate the ever-narrowing limits on free speech that we American’s are required to respect:

"The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!"

Sounds reasonable. I know I’m always glad to update my Index of Forbidden Speech with the latest image, word, phrase, allusion, or historical event that I’m not allowed to use, Anywhere! At Any Time!

(Here in Detroit they had a very moving funeral for the n-word--never again anywhere! at any time!-- it was presided over by the embattled Mayor--except he dug up the term 2 months later when he needed it to throw around at his State of the City address.)

It's not only Obama's surrogates who are trying to turn Hillary's remark into a Big Deal. At Hot Air, they’re skeptical about Clinton’s defense that she was only referring to the historical fact that previous Democratic primaries have extended into June. If that's the case, they wonder, then “Why didn’t she use Teddy’s run at Jimmy Carter in 1980 instead?” (Here's one answer: maybe because no one remembers Teddy’s 1980 campaign, while all liberals recognize RFK in 1968 as an Icon).

Then Michelle Malkin says “Stick a fork in her. She may, at long last, be done.”

Chris Wallace told Terry McAullife on Sunday the remarks were “tasteless and ghoulish...even to use the word ‘assassination.’” Ghoulish? Even to use the word? Between the two, McAullife made more sense.

Which, of course, is The World Turned Upside Down!

No, I’m afraid I just don’t get this one.

I learned the hard way in chat room debates that once you have to start diagramming declarative sentences, all hope for rational discussion is gone. I also figured out that 90% of intellectual errors in this country are caused by poor reading comprehension.

Suffice it to say I’ve read Hillary’s statement several times, and watched the video, and I find no place that she ever “invoked” RFK’s assassination, (“mention” and “invoke” are not synonyms). Nor did I see where she either threatened Obama with assassination, nor expressed a hope that he be murdered.

Hell, I can’t even find where she said anything clumsy, stupid, or ghoulish. RFK was still in the California primary in June 1968, wasn’t he? (That is, until you-know-what happened. Or am I still allowed to say that?)

I just don’t see the offensiveness in this. But I admit I’m out of touch these days. Maybe this really was the most horrible thing anyone’s said, since, say, “God damn America.”

Apparently, a lot of us are willing to accept the Left’s extra-low threshold for imputing malevolent meaning into remarks that only tangentially touch upon a subject someone's willing to be hypersensitive about. Maybe conservatives are jumping on this too because they’ve got a version of the same derangement about Hillary the Left has had about George W. Bush the last 7 years: give us something, anything, and we'll use it to prove her diabolical pedigree.

But when did “assassination” become off limits? Who exactly is the victim group here? On whose behalf must Sharpton obtain an apology? The Kennedys?

Besides, liberals have been openly advocating Bush’s and Cheney's assassinations for years.

My complaint is that by granting to the Left, and through them the media, the power to impute malevolent meaning into neutral words, the heavier the control of free thought they can exercise. And controlling thought means a lot more to them than merely controlling free speech. You’ll never dare say what you don’t dare think.

When this power was granted to the Left in regards to race, they promptly used it to forbid white Americans from discussing race, even amongst themselves, except under the strict rules laid down by a civil-rights priesthood ordained, and carefully controlled, by the Left.

(And that's why we still can’t have a conversation about race, in spite of Obama’s ad hoc suggestion that we must have one: because a conversation is impossible when one side is forbidden to speak on the subject matter).

The Left has seized power in a similar way to limit thought about homosexuality, about abortion, and now, about the science fiction of global warming.

I have no interest in defending Hillary or her campaign. I see this as defending myself, and all the rest of us who still value what’s left of our right to free speech. And my right to not have any obstreperous son of a bitch telling me what I can and cannot say, Anywhere! At Any Time!

How the CIA Created AIDS in Their Lab

Yesterday on WCHB’s morning talk show, Mildred Gaddis’s Inside Detroit, I happened to hear a reference to a story about “a Clinton pastor” who was just sentenced to 3 years in prison for child sexual abuse.

Ms. Gaddis, and some of her callers were wanting to know why the media was ignoring this story. After all, if the Clinton's own pastor just got sentenced for abusing a 7-year-old, that would take some serious wind out of Hillary’s sails after all the criticism she’s heaped on poor Obama for his refusal to denounce Rev. Wright.

As one blogger repeating the story wrote:

The blogs are talking about it, but the mainstream news is not. Still, this is interesting. Blogs such as AdvanceAmericablog, commondreams. org, the National Journal's Hotline, and wakeupfromyourslumber. com are talking about the scandal that has enveloped the former Pastor of the Clintons, but it appears only the Utica, NY newspaper is covering the story. The rest of the mainstream media is silent. Perhaps the story isn't divisive enough for the mainstream media to take notice. Of course, it is as unfair to blame Hillary Clinton for her former pastor's abuses just as it is unfair to blame Barack Obama for Rev. Wright. Still, that means the mainstream media is far more enamored of condemning Obama for his Rev. Wright's tirades about 9/11 and race than it is concerned with the plight of a seven year old girl abused by Hillary Clinton's former pastor.

Then I heard Ms. Gaddis mentioning it again this morning, and again with the emphasis on why no one in the media was talking about it.

Ms. Gaddis is very smart and runs a good talk show.

Which is why I was surprised she was still talking about it today. Because, based on what I heard yesterday on WCHB, I was able to find out before 8:30 am Thursday that the story is false, as it’s being told, and predicated on a pretty silly mistake.

It turns out the convicted pastor, Rev. William Procanick, 54, is a former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God Church in Clinton, N.Y. So he is a "Clinton pastor" in one sense only, that he used to be a pastor in a town called Clinton. Moreover, it's fairly well known that Hillary is a Methodist. Nor does the original report even mention the former First Lady and her husband.

That’s it. No connection with the Clintons at all.

But the story of the Clinton pastor that Hillary must now denounce still has wheels, for now.

It was being told on a website called AlterNet, and it's appeared as a topic for discussion at Democratic Underground (no relation to the true Underground).

Sample comment on the posting: “Hillary sat in the pews for 20 years and watched this creep sexual [sic] abuse children?”

When I tried to get the details for myself after hearing it on WCHB, I soon found out why the media wasn’t covering it. The mix-up was briefly explained by Madison Times reporter George Curry. ("Wright’s words used for political gain").

It was a small-time story about a nasty crime--grave enough for the victims, but hardly a national story except when linked --erroneously--with the notion that it involves the former President and Hillary.

The interesting thing to me is the carelessness with which this story was picked up by people who should have known better, such as Ms. Gaddis, and the next thing you now it is a national "scandal."

Ms. Gaddis--who really is quite sharp, was still repeating it as a fact even after 24 hours, when it could have been easily vetted and debunked with minimal Googling and, in her case, she might have been corrected by a message from one of her thousands of listeners advising her of her error.

Also, on the discussion boards, I saw no posters either challenging the truth of the story, or even curious about the when, where, how, and why of a “Clinton pastor” emerging in a town the Clintons never lived in, and that no one had ever heard of before, nor why the story doesn’t even mention the Clintons.

This isn’t sloppy journalism, or at least not as far as I can tell. I don’t know if it was a journalist at all who first saw the phrase, “Clinton pastor sentenced,” and gleefully started calling his Obama-supporting friends about a story to good to be true.

But for some people in the country right now, the sentencing of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pastor for a sex crime with a child is almost as solid an historical fact as the occurrence of their own birth.

That's how easy that can be. And this particular urban legend, in my estimation, was probably the result of an accidental misreading of the original report.

Now, imagine the opportunities for mischief from someone really trying to spread disinformation.

Springsteen: Barack Knows All About the Darkness at the Edge of Town

From the LA Times:

Springsteen endorses Obama for president

You may remember that 70s-era TV ad where Robert Young, whose big show at the time was “Marcus Welby, MD”, had to explain to the audience that “I’m not a real doctor, I just play one on TV.” He was selling Sanka as being medically more beneficial than real coffee.

For some reason everyone alive from that era remembers that line.

Maybe it was the implicit insult we all felt that Madison Avenue thought we needed to be told that the guy from “Father Knows Best” wasn’t a real doctor; or maybe we all felt the same glum confidence that a lot of folks were going to start buying Sanka based on a hazy referral they’d been given by some guy with an M.D. after his name.

Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of Barack Obama is the same kind of cynical thing. If you can't get a real doctor to hawk the health benefits of Sanka, get an actor who plays one; if you need a blue-collar spokesman to try to explain Obama’s idiotic remarks about small-town, working-class people, get someone who himself impersonates a small-town working class guy every night in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans?

"I'm not a real doctor," said Robert Young.

Just so, now Bruce is saying, “I’m not a real small-town, working-class American, but I play one on stage. I wear t-shirts, a leather, biker boots and jeans during all my shows, and I sing a lot about people worried about money and the police. I sing about fixing up cars, punching clocks, mean streets, giant Exxon signs--all that shit. Which is what qualifies me to reassure you--on behalf of all heartland America--that Barack Obama is not the priggish, out-of-touch Harvard snob that everyone can see that he is. Now who're you gonna believe? A guy like, me whose always got his hair styled to make me look like a greaser, or someone like Eva Longoria Parker, who plays a rich suburban housewife with a style she’s trying to maintain, and supports Hillary? What does Eva know about Katrina, or coming back from Vietnam to no job?”

Of course Bruce is entitled, as any other red-blooded American, to endorse and support the candidate of his choice. I just find it a bit hard to take having Senator Obama's blue-collar credentials vouched for by a guy who made his first million probably longer ago than Bill Gates did.

Hillary Searches for the Missing Lincoln

Hillary Clinton, secretly impressed with Obama’s speech on race, (the one he gave to deflect criticism of his close association with Jeremiah Wright, and that earned him comparisons with Abraham Lincoln), has decided, in order to deflect attention from Snipergate, to give her own speech setting forth her views on lying.

DU has been unable to confirm the authenticity of draft excerpts provided us, but we’re posting them anyway, because I'm tired and doing so just proves I'm human:

...This is the reality in which Bill and I and other sixties-style liberals of our generation grew up. We came of age when Richard Nixon was facing impeachment, and opportunity for dishonest statements and political hits on enemies was systematically constricted for all public officials. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of increased scrutiny of public statements, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way, like Bill and me, for example.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past. In fact, the past never even happened.”

But even for those ambitious political animals who did make it, habits of lying, perjury, and trickery continue to define our worldview in fundamental ways. And occasionally that dishonest worldview finds voice at political rallies, in press interviews, or in stump speeches we repeat over and over again. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear the falsehoods in some of my speeches simply reminds us of the old truism that the most gullible moments in American life occur during presidential campaigns. Our tendency to lie is not always productive.

But the dishonesty is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists among the voters.

I can no more tell the truth about things like the Bosnia visit than I can disown Bill Clinton. And I can no more disown him than I can my black grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, the typical black woman who taught me all the old Negro spirituals—(sings) “I aint no ways tard!”—and took me to march with her at Selma when I was only two, where we dodged bullets fired at us by police, which made me cringe.

I have never been so naïve as to think that I can get through eight years as President without ever once leveling with myself, or you, the American people, about anything.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in my own absolute correctness about things, and faith in the gullibility of the American Democratic voter - that working together we can move beyond some of the ridiculous things I say, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path to the more perfect utopian society I have so carefully planned for this nation.

Close Enough for Government Work?

I have a friend who used to tell personal anecdotes that, at the last moment, would turn slightly fantastic. When people realized they were begin kidded and challenged him, he’d always laugh and say, “Well, it coulda happened.”

Hillary Clinton apparently has a similar sense of humor, as she now remembers her trip to Bosnia differently than the way she’s been telling it. Instead of a corkscrew landing and a life-or-death dash for cover under a hail of Serbian sniper fire, Senator Clinton merely meant to say that “she was told they had to land in a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire.”

It coulda happened, so why not tell it that way?

Barack Scares Liberals, Too

Apparently Barack Obama’s childish foreign policy ideas are scary enough to shake up even those on his own side. Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic is by no means impressed with Obama’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief, due, largely, to Obama’s attachment to the image of himself international “conciliator” when, as Wieseltier sees it, “we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation,” specifically, in facing a massive military showdown with Al Qaeda in Pakistan. (“Forever Young”). (Thanks to Wll D for the link). In which case he’s not exactly telling us something we don’t already know. But these are New Republic liberals he’s talking to, and there’s an awful lot they don’t know, what with their heads so stuffed full of facts and figures about global warming. Wieseltier goes on to explain to them:

It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)

Once again, the glaring facts that Islamists are planning to blow us to bits is boilerplate too those of us who've been living with and repeating this since 2001. We know they can. We watched them do it.

But to the antiwar, it’s-all-our-fault-anyway Left, Wieseltier is uttering something like a heresy. The media, academe, the intellectual classes, and the Democratic Party have all been agreement that it is “the politics of fear” for the Bush administration, or commentators on the right, to point out that we have Islamist enemies who want to blow us up. So dogmatic has the Left been on this point that they even drove Joe Lieberman--one of their own on almost every other point--right out of their party because he refused to stop talking about it. Nor has Hillary escaped criticism for her refusal to repudiate her Iraq war vote, in spite of all the creative triangulating she has done throughout her campaign.

So why does Wieseltier find Obama’s blind spot worthy of notice when he is only one amongst many, many millions who believe the terrorist threat is a made-up diversion cooked up to enrich Dick Cheney’s friends? Probably because he thinks Barack may actually wind up in the White House--the one situation in which a single unchecked liberal can do untold damage in no time flat. So Weiseltier's genuinely shook up about Obama’s utter failure to grasp global realities: (I can appreciate the emotion, as I share the same dread):

One of the striking features of Obama's victory speeches is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense….

And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world?... There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in?

Yes, indeedy. As Chesterton wrote somewhere, we can abolish war when we can abolish will. Mankind not being on the verge of abolishing will, (though I think Hillary Clinton hopes to make a start on that as part of her health-care plan), we therefore must face the tiresome necessity of defending ourselves from those who, if we let them, will happily step in and begin making decisions about our fate according to their own ideas.

Until now, the USA has only fought back against global jihadism, (that is, since 9/11), under the leadership of George W. Bush. On this one issue he is the only father figure the Left has ever rebelled against. Just like the bratty thirteen-year-olds (American thirteen-year-olds) with whom their fatuous worldview makes them comparable, they’ve abused Bush, protested at how unreasonable and unfair he’s been, vocally wished he was dead for six long years, and finally stomped up to their rooms to play their records too loud--thereafter slipping peacefully into their smug, European-based dreams with all the calm and confidence of kids nestled in the sweet knowledge that an adult is in charge of the house after all.

(Do you remember, right after 9/11, how all those liberals were rolling there eyes at one another, and passing embarrassed sideways smirks they thought we wouldn’t see: “Goddamn, to think that 3 weeks ago we were whining Al Gore wasn’t given the election--now thank God that pansy isn’t in the White House!”)

And now, with the idea that within a few short months the inexorable planning and violence of Global Jihadists may be the problem of a Democratic president, it's suddenly not so much fun to sneer at "Bush’s war." At least Bush fought his war (our war, my war), not perfectly, but with a will. If it becomes Obama’s war, well, he just won’t take ownership--he may not even vote "present." And that means someone else will step up and claim it--Bin Laden and Zawahiri, just for starters.

Which is why Wieseltier worries.

To which I say, "So welcome to our world."

'The Best Person for the Job'

We've already had our primary in Michigan, but this Tuesday's primaries are critical for the nation's future.

The following excellent article by Walid Phares summarizes the stakes in the presidential race as it affects our war with global jihadism. Though I was never going to vote for a Democrat, I do number myself among those who believe that John McCain is in reality an "anti-conservative," and I would only consider voting for him to forestall the horrors of a Clinton or Obama presidency.

The Best Person for the Job
Walid Phares, PhD

When it comes to US Presidential elections, the post 9/11 era has changed the rules of engagement for national security experts and for those who can read the Jihadists’ minds. While the counterterrorism community should let the voters chose their chief executive first, then later offer expert advice to the President, unfortunately, the world has changed.

Indeed, since the 9/11 and the engagement of the nation in the war with Jihadism, the selection of the US President can fundamentally affect the very survival of the American people. Whoever occupies the White House in 2009, for the next 4 to 8 years will have to make decisions that will have cataclysmic consequences on the physical security and the freedoms of 300 million citizens in this country, and eventually on the free world as a whole.

The leader of the most powerful democracy in the world has to be able to know who the enemy is so that all resources are put into action against it. Without this, the next US President could cause a major disaster to happen to this nation. American voters cannot afford to install a man or a woman who can’t identify and define the enemy. If you can’t see an enemy, you simply cannot defeat it.

The 2004 Presidential elections took place in quasi-popular ignorance. The sitting -- and fighting -- President was reelected by the basic instincts of Americans, but not by enlightened citizens. An overwhelming majority of voters was not fully informed as to the real stakes. The country was told that the war in Iraq was wrong, and about half of the country believed it. They were also told there was no war on terror, but worse, they were never told who the enemy was or what it really wanted.

Phares goes on to provide a fair account of the views on the war on terror of both leading candidates, from either party. He finally comes down for Mitt Romney, based on Romney's most accurate identification of our enemy as Global Jihadism.

Please read the entire article here. Let us know what you think.

Democrat Dream of Bombers 'Turning into Butterflies' Thwarted for Now

GOP Moves to Halt Money for Woodstock

By ANDREW TAYLOR and DEVLIN BARRETT –

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hippies used to say if you remember Woodstock, you weren't really there. Republicans say presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton can forget about getting $1 million in taxpayer funds for a Woodstock museum.

Clinton and Charles Schumer, Democratic senators from New York, want to earmark the federal money for a museum that would commemorate the 1969 music festival in their state.

Senator Schumer was the main force behind the earmark, behind which Senator Clinton, after asking the senior New York senator if she could “walk beside him," also threw her support. A disappointed Schumer said afterward the whole thing left him feeling he didn't know who he was, "like a cog in something turning."

Senator Clinton was much more upbeat. While acknowledging that Republicans still have the country trapped in the devil’s bargain, she was confident, she told reporters, that “when I’m president, every American will be guaranteed equal quality access back to the garden.”

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, But Don't Overdose

John le Carré wrote this descriptive line in his novel, The Night Manager.

“Madame Latulipe let out the peal of wild laughter that is the signature-tune of humourless people.”

I don't mean to suggest that a lack of humor is a character flaw. I look on it as merely a defect, like baldness or being color-blind. Where the character issue comes in is when a humor-challenged person tries to fake a fairly unfakeable human response.

From the Jon Stewart Show: "Hillary Showcases Her 'Humanity'"

Actually, these are not the best examples of Senator Clinton's odd laughter. In these clips she comes across more like those romantic-comedy film actresses from the early 1960s who get silly from too much champagne.