Untwist Yer Knickers By: Mark W Adams

Al ain't out and Hillary ain't pissed, despite what otherwise sober voices think.

My advice, consistent with the five basic principles of the Progressive Netroots, is not to play Hillary's game. Don't be defensive and apologetic, insisting that no offense was intended, but ask rather what size shoe the former First Lady wears, because her lack of an affirmative, absolute rejection of the escalation of the war seems like a perfect fit to John Edwards' call to stop the madness.

Any apologetic response, a "hey, I didn't mean you personally," defense, will come off weak and mitigate the importance of Edward's message.


The play the Royal Family watches is called, The Mouse Trap...

HAMLET
Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN GERTRUDE
The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET
O, but she'll keep her word. (Act III, Scene 2)

Will she now? Shakespeare's Sister agrees.

Actually, instead of the Danish Monarchy, "Me" thinks that Hillary is actually channeling another woman of wealth and power penned by the Bard. Much like the Lady MacBeth, her demons haunt her subconscious, that damned blemish on her record -- her vote on the war -- that filthy spot...

LADY MACBETH
Out, damned spot! out, I say!

That's of course the one liner -- the quote we all know by heart from Act V, Scene I. But the lady dost go on with her unconscious lament...

LADY MACBETH
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

Sorry your Ladyship (or as I like to refer to the Junior Senator from New York, Ms. Moneybags), no amount of perfume, especially when mixed with the stench of oil and blood eminating from the Middle Eastern Catastrophuck, will clean your dirty hands.

Her continued indefensible defense of her Lieberesque stance up until, oh . . . about ten minutes after she focus-group tested the reaction to John Edwards' unambiguous anti-war position, spotlighted her lack of courage or convictions -- let alone the ability to speak them.

Much like the Player-King in Hamlet's play-within-a-play, she's set an attractive Mouse Trap. She takes faux-umbridge with an imagined personal affront by Edwards, through surrogates (in the continued attempt to keep those hands clean), and attempts to re-frame the very character and reputation of the non-offender.

HuffPost: To celebrate Reverend Martin Luther King this week, John Edwards delivered a stern anti-war speech a Harlem's Riverside Church, where King famously spoke out against the Vietnam war. Edwards cited Rev King's anti-war legacy, clasped hands with his son, Martin Luther King III, and called on Congress to sto funding the war

"If you're in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel. Silence is betrayal. Speak out, and stop this escalation now," said Edwards.

Was that a shot at Hillary Clinton?

Her advisers sure thought so. Howard Wolfson replied with this complaint: "In 2004, John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy."

Is Hillary really so egotistical to believe that out of 535 legislators, in front of 1,200 spectators, sitting next to MLK, III, standing at the same pulpit and invoking the memory of the Reverand King when he called upon us to rise up and protests another meaningless war 40 years ago -- that she thought John Edwards was speaking to her personally?

Certainly her self-perception qualifies her to be president. Her ego rivals "W's."

Two questions unravel the absurdity of Wolfson's comment. Didn't a boat-load of Republicans vote for the war, and have failed to recant? And... Just how, pray-tell, has Hillary been "fighting the Bush Adminstration's Iraq policy?" She still won't just come out and say it.

I messed up. I trusted them.

Is that really so hard?

No Madame Senator, you not only own your vote, you own the fact that you never, ever, not even once considered admitting that you were wrong. Silence IS Betrayal, and Hillary's silence is deafening.