Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Friday April 27, 2007

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Dear Mr. Mullings

I thought about two things while watching the Democrats debate in South Carolina: The first was the famous lyric by Paul Simon from his song, "Mrs. Robinson":

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.

Everyone who cared the least bit about this debate knew that, although there were eight candidates on stage (including, unaccountably, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel), it was really a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Clinton did little to distinguished herself, but it was clear that she is far better at this than Barak Obama who drifted into campaign-speak on far too many occasions including one fairly astonishing answer on global warming when he said he was trying to teach his two daughters about � light bulbs.

Mrs. Clinton had some moments, as well. When she was asked if hedge funds were good for America she went off on a riff about how hedge funds are an example of the entrepreneurial spirit of the American economy. Either she didn't know, or forgot, that hedge funds (according to investorwords.com) are funds

"used by wealthy individuals and institutions, which are allowed to use aggressive strategies � including selling short, leverage, program trading, swaps, arbitrage, and derivatives."

The second most egregious answer by Mrs. Clinton was in response to a question about Walmart. Walmart is based in Arkansas, where Clinton, you may remember, lived for some time before she bought that New York Yankees cap. She said Walmart was a "mixed blessing."

In its earliest days, she said, it gave people in place like rural Arkansas the chance to stretch their dollars. However, now that the Walmart business model of allowing everyone to stretch their dollars has made it the largest retailer in the history of the planet it has become bad. I suppose it depends on what your definition of "stretch" is.

On the issue of the Virginia Tech horror, Mrs. Clinton allowed as how she had gone to Columbine with "Bill" and then went on to say that we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those who are mentally unstable.

SIDEBAR

I guarantee that hours and hours were spent on how Hillary should refer to her husband: President Clinton? The first President Clinton? That SOB who lied to me?
In the end they settled on "Bill" which was probably the best of a bunch of bad choices.

END SIDEBAR

Columbine occurred in April of 1999. She and "Bill" were running the country until January 2001. They had 20 months to fix the flaws in gun laws she identified, but didn't. She has also had over six years as a US Senator to fix them. But didn't.

Obama stumbled badly on the foreign policy question: Name our three best allies.

He appeared to be blurry on the difference between the European Union and NATO as one ally; he named Japan as our second best ally; then he named China as "neither a friend nor an enemy."

Moderator Brian Williams asked Obama why he had left out Israel and about his statement that "no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people." Obama said that the full quote was that the Palestinian people had suffered because their Palestinian leaders refused to recognize Israel.

The AP coverage doesn't appear to support that recasting of the comment, but in any event, the damage was done.

I said that there were two things that I thought about while watching the debate. The second was: The clear winner between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was � Bill Richardson.

Because he had so little to lose and a great deal to gain, he was free to swing for the fences and, in my opinion, Bill Richardson hit a grand slam.

On a the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the AP piece about Obama's "Palestinian People" comment; and a snapshot from yesterday's NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. Also a Mullfoto which proves having a camera with you at all times is a good thing and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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