…Hillary Clinton! For phoniest display of belated emotion in a Presidential campaign!

Hillary’s emotional outburst, last month, at the tanking of her multi-million dollar, mass pandering campaign reminded me of a scene in Mike Myers’ Wayne’s World where he, as Wayne, throws water on his face and emotes about something while “Academy Awards Clip” flashes on the screen. Hillary Clinton does not do anything that is not coldly, if not icily calculated. However, seeing her ambitions and life’s work of becoming the first female president go down into the primordial-primary ooze may be something for which she might exhibit a little emotion.

She showed no emotion when I met with her along with another Gold Star Mother: Lynn Braddach from Oregon, whose son Travis Nall was also KIA in Iraq. We poured our hearts and souls out to her and she hardly even blinked, let alone shed a tear for our heartbreak for which she has been a major neo-connette chearleader. Well, at least she was “for it” before she was “against it.”

The meeting with the Senator from New York occured in September of 2005, just a few short weeks after we left Camp Casey in Crawford, Tx on August 31, 2005. Anti-war sentiment was high and the apex was a mass march and rally that hundreds of thousands of like-minded (many for the first time) attended in the belly of the evil empire on September 24th. Since then, the motivation and energy of the anti-war movement has ebbed and flowed with each subsequent fresh assault on peace and democracy by BushCo with the help, support and justification of “Democrats” like Hillary Clinton.

After Hillary was roundly booed at a campaign event in New Hampshire, I am sure that there was a high-level meeting of her campaign that came up with the strategy of the new and improved and “emotional, but not too emotional” Hillary Clinton. This is the same campaign that thought Hillary could demonstrate that Senator Mike Gravel (who chastised her in a debate about her vote to sanction Iran) was crazy by laughing at him, as if she were the insane one, with a very bizarre and disturbing cackle. This is the same campaign that told Ms. Clinton that she should, under no circumstances, apologize to the families of the needlessly and tragically fallen for her support of the war that killed them. This is essentially the same campaign that handed the White House over to Bush again in 2004. Kerry’s campaign was such a resounding “success,” Hillary thought she could run the same careful and calculated one and be victorious… There seems to be a disconnect here.

America is tired of panderers and blatant political animals that carefully campaign so as not to offend anyone by telling the truth.

The truth is something that has been profoundly lacking in most political discourse for many, many years. BushCo did not invent lying and deceptions; they have just elevated dishonesty to an art. The truth is hard and can be as cold as Hillary in New Hampshire in January, but I believe we all thirst for it and will drink from the cup of the candidate who offers it to us.

The two remaining Democratic candidates can not run on their records (which are essentially the same), so they have to run on an ephemeral and hard to quantify promise of “change.” We need change, but do any of the remainder candidates really offer it? Or will it always be more of the same old, same old until we break from the mold of the two-party duopoly that is designed to block democracy, not elevate it.

With the radical shake up of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, we will have to see what the next “new and improved” Hillary will look like. With little excitement in a contest that seems to be dragging on ad infinitum, at least we all have something amusing to look forward to!

As many on the real left predicted, the contest for the next corporately owned and operated president is narrowing down to a few chosen-ones. Consequently, we the people of this country, whether we are black, white or in between; rich or poor; Christian, Jew, Muslim, or religiously ambivalent; straight, gay or sexually ambivalent; we must reclaim and reassert our role in democracy which is to keep the politicians as close as possible to honest.

BC Guest Commentator, Cindy Sheehan, is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan who was tragically and needlessly killed in Iraq on April 04,2004. Since his death, Cindy has become internationally known for her anti-war activism and is currently running for Congress against Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. She wrote this article from her current location of Cairo, Egypt. Click here to contact Ms. Sheehan.