Sen. Clinton is being ridiculed everywhere for the blatant lie she told about her trip to Bosnia. No amount of spinning can hide the fact that she said she "ran with their heads down to the vehicles", while in the video she is shown chatting and smiling and posing for photographs. It does not matter that they were issued flak jackets.It does not matter that some people thought there were snipers in the hills. Sen. Clinton's lie was blatant enough to put her in the same league as Bill Clinton, but of course not even close to  Bush or Rumsfeld. Nobody died because of her lies.

Her lying  is a tragedy for Democrats and the Nation, not just for the Clintons. Because it tarnishes not only her, but one of the shining moments of American foreign policy. The Bosnia intervention  stopped a humanitarian disaster, saving the lives of thousands of Muslims who would have been slaughtered without it. This  was accomplished without invading a country whole sale and without getting mired in a civil war.

The Clinton campaign is denying rumors that it is broke. Howard Wolfson, whose $237000 monthly salary went a long way towards bankrupting the campaign said (NYDailyNews 4/1/2008)

Bills are being paid. We are continuing to raise a considerable amount of money. We had the best fund-raising month in the campaign's history [in February].

Translation: The check is in the mail. And March has not been as good as February.

The NY DailyNews continues:

Still, a review of Clinton's fund-raising records through the end of February - the most recent available - found that Clinton hadn't paid debts to many small shops she hired to organize campaign events.

In New York, records show Clinton owed money to about a dozen outfits - even though the campaign moved away from the Empire State after its Feb. 5 primary. She owed $3,598 to Hudson Yards Catering and $8,441 to a Long Island City production company.

Some bills left over from the early days of the campaign were paid, but late:

Several mom-and-pop shops that provided services for her in long-forgotten Iowa and New Hampshire have had to beg the campaign to settle up.

"They just paid us a couple weeks ago," said Kyle Rhoads, whose Garner Printing was owed more than $48,000 months after the Iowa caucus was over. "It did drag on longer than usual."

Sen.  Clinton is running as the champion of the working class. In OH, PA and ID the base that is energized for her is the ordinary worker: the waitress in a diner, the caterer,the florist. The Clinton campaign started out with a few fatcat donors. After the first time it went broke, money flowed in from hundreds of thousands of ordinary folk, fired up over the promise of her candidacy to fight for them.

So how well is the Clinton campaign treating the folks who work for them? The Chief Strategist Mark Penn-you know,  the guy that pops up from time to call some state or Democratic leader `not significant'- is being paid $2.7 million dollars since January. Nice paycheck if you can get it. Howard Wolfson, the spokesman is paid $237000 a month: that is $1300 an hour, making him the Three Diamond Man of the campaign. Is it any surprise that the Clinton campaign is broke again?

It is not paying its bills. The Politico reports:

New York Democratic pols are already thinking up exit strategies for Sen. Clinton. This according to Jonathan Alter on Countdown (without Keith Olbermann today).

It is clear that while the nastiness of Sen. Clinton's attacks are hurting Obama, it is hurting her even more. Not only can Obama come out of this a wounded candidate, Sen. Clinton might end up embittered herself and isolated in the Senate. So it is sensible to think of alternatives.

If the dream ticket Obama/Clinton were viable, it would solve everything. But now that Obama is pulling ahead in the national polls, ahead in delegates, getting superdelegate endorsements every other day, why does he need her? And why saddle himself with all that Clinton baggage?

A return to the Senate is out of the question:  so many colleagues have stabbed her in the back. Even Judas did not go that far. He only endorsed Satan. So Sen. Clinton's supporters are quietly eying the possibility of her becoming Governor of New York.

After a mysterious episode where I was ..ahem.. accidentally prevented from posting, I am baaaaacckk.

The news this week is that Sen. Clinton was caught making stuff up  about a trip to Tuzla. She said at GWU on March 17

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.

It is not just that she misspoke on this one occasion: the story was repeated  at several venues, embellishing as needed each time.It was repeated with the robotic precision that Sen. Clinton brings to all her statements.

It was something worse than a lie. It was Bullshit.

What is the difference? The essay On Bullshit by the Philosopher H. G. Frankfurt (in 1986) argues the a liar at least cares about what is true. Not the bullshitter. He says,

Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. .. Her description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is merely making up. She concocts it out of whole cloth; or, if she got it from someone else, she is repeating it quite mindlessly and without any regard for how things really are.

Frankfurt wrote this perfect description of Sen. Clinton's recent speeches back in 1986! He is on to a phenomenon of nature here, for which he developed much needed  theoretical analysis:

Obama gave a historic speech last week, the first time since MLK that a leader spoke to the American people about race as if we are adults. What was most remarkable about the speech was not its eloquence but its honesty. Obama dared to speak openly of things we only whisper about to trusted friends; or just think about, not daring to put words to the thought.

Racism is an  original sin of America. Yet we avoided many other sins that have plagued other nations. Our founding fathers created a Republic, not a Monarchy. It sounds  natural in 2008, but back in 1783 it was unique. It was the accepted view that the son and occasionally daughter or wife of a ruler was entitled to continue on the throne.

George Washington could very well have become monarch of America, as Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France a few decades later. By returning to his Virginia farm and not letting his family continue his legacy, Washington set the tone for the future of the country.

News is that the Clinton campaign is in debt: it owes $8.7 million to vendors, not counting the $5 million it owes to Hillary clinton herself. Even after raising a record 35 million dollars in February(eclipsed only by Obama's $55 million).  Much of it (about half)  in small donations. One imagines many hardworking older women who identify with Hillary Clinton's struggles digging deep into their personal savings to contribute to her struggling campaign. It is not all fatcats that are supporting the Clinton campaign.

So where is the money going? Some of it  is the usual stuff of political campaigns: TV ads, Radio, dough nuts for the volunteers etc. But the Clinton campaign stands out in the remarkable fees charged by her campaign's star staffers. Especially remarkable considering their  sheer incompetence in planning and presenting her candidacy.

Yesterday I announced that I was switching to decaf and pay no attention to the Democratic Primary. Because there are no elections for a while. And then I see this on Huffington Post (OK I cheated, I couldn't quit)

    Clinton Aide: Richard Endorsement Insignificant
    "The time that he could have been effective has long since passed," he (Mark Penn) continued, "I don't think it is a significant endorsement in this environment."

You know how it is. Iowa was the most important primary. HRC was doing extremely well, the inevitable nominee. In IA she swore that the MI and FL primaries were meaningless. Her flacks (Ickes and MacAuliffe) had disenfranchised them. Then IA voted.

And suddenly it became an insignificant state. NH was barely significant (by two points) and NV so far the only significant caucus (narrowly). Then came a string of states that held primaries only to prove that they are not significant. NM was (after a long recount because of very close numbers) finally declared significant.

Only the large states and super-delegates are significant, came the verdict from on high. Except sometimes a significant state can have insignificant Governor (MA).