HEY HILLARY, YOU FEELING OKAY?

So, did Hillary Clinton finally talk her way out of the Democratic nomination for president this year? She claimed to have been rushed off a plane under sniper fire in Bosnia back in the 1990's when that nation was in the world focus for their genocidal ethnic-cleansing civil wars. Her husband President Bill Clinton had ordered NATO air strikes on that nation to get them to cut that stuff out and Hillary claimed she was sent there because it was too dangerous for the president to visit. Now, nobody said the Clintons had the ideal marriage or that roving-eye Bill didn't get a annoyed with his strident know-it-all wife from time to time, but isn't that a little extreme to claim that the president would send his wife and their only child into the teeth of sniper fire? Isn't that what Vice Presidents are for?

And why would the president want to expose the comedian Sinbad and the singer Cheryl Crow to sniper fire? They accompanied her on the trip, for reasons nobody can explain, neither one of them having big fan bases in the Balkan States. Again, not our most talented entertainers, but there's no sense killing them either since when that happens you have to endure endless retrospectives of their bland careers and nobody wanted that, to say nothing of the negative publicity that would have ensued by getting your wife and daughter shot in a place where crazy people were slaying their neighbors that looked just like them because they practiced a different religion. That sort of thing has been a national pastime in the Balkans for many centuries, a bit incomprehensible to us, sort of like the Europeans' fascination with soccer, that most boring of sports; an hour and a half of small men running back and forth feverishly and producing usually but a single point. They'd have you believe that 's an indication of the difficulty of the game when the more likely explanation is that soccer players are horrible athletes.

But I digress. Back to Hillary Clinton dodging bullets in Bosnia. Well, it turns out the whole thing was a lie. You'd think that Ms. Clinton would recall that her every move as First Lady was videotaped by somebody and her arrival in Bosnia was no exception. She was met at the airport by women with flowers, reviewed the troops arrayed to greet her, and leisurely strolled around the airport afterwards in the company of her daughter Chelsea and Bosnian women and children. If there were any snipers aiming at anybody there, they were about as skilled as soccer players trying to kick the ball into that giant net with no success at all. All in all it was a peaceful afternoon completely unlike what Ms. Clinton described.

The question is; WHY? Why would Ms. Clinton make up a story like this? What sort of brain fever gripped the woman? You feeling okay, Hillary? If this spells the end to her campaign, what a disappointing final act this will be to what has been an interesting and spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination, sort of like the endings to "The Sopranos" and "No Country For Old Men" where you're left hanging with more questions than resolutions to interesting stories. It was also a history-making campaign, with the two surviving candidates from the long campaign season being a woman and a black man. So it's kind of incomprehensible that a skilled old political pro like Hillary Clinton would shoot herself in the foot like this with a blatant lie. Now you wonder who you really want answering the phone at 3 in the morning when a crisis occurs.

Looks like it's going to be President Barack Obama. I'm comfortable with that, I voted for the guy in the primary. He was leading in all categories anyway; electoral delegates, states and the popular vote, but Ms. Clinton could have made it closer with wins in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and other delegate-rich states. Then her hopes would be pinned on the uncommitted Super-delegates, many of whom she has a relationship with of one sort or another, personal or political. She is, after all, a well-connected and seasoned political pro and could have eked out the nomination if Obama entered the Convention without a complete numerical lock on electoral votes. Now it looks as if that scenario won't happen with the sniper lie. All in all, a puzzling thing in a year that looks like the Democrats will regain the White House no matter who runs.

Of course I could be wrong about that and we could wind up with another integrity-compromised senile old man like Ronald Reagan in the White House, John McCain. Not a bad guy, really, and a genuine war hero, but that's no reason to make him president. For one thing, he's vowed to follow Bush The Younger's policies in Iraq. Who knew Bush had policies? Wasn't he sort of winging it? Anyway, that's one indication of advancing senility, along with his insistence that America will maintain troops in Iraq for as much as a hundred years. He must think we're stealing their oil with a hand siphon pump or something. Any fool knows it won't take that long to relieve Iraq of their sea of oil. What we need is a president who can figure out way to get us out of that mess, out of the oil stealing business and out of the empire racket altogether.

America is just not cut out to be an Empire. We might have the guns and the money and go around acting like an Empire, but our heart just isn't into that whole world-domination crap. John McCain didn't learn that lesson in the war he fought and during which he became a high-profile prisoner, the Vietnam War. We lost that war because the country could not bring itself to completely crush the North Vietnamese, something it was in our power to do but we lacked the will to do so, which is not a bad thing, really. But it was a horrible thing to waste the lives of 58,000 of our soldiers and uncounted hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people while we figured that out.

It's the same now with Iraq. A true Empire would have crushed all resistance, slaughtered as many people as it took to subdue the nation completely and not gave a rat's ass who approved or disapproved. They'd have openly stolen their oil instead of doing it on the sly like we're doing now. An Empire would certainly not have attempted to install a democratic government. But a half-assed imperial wanna-be like America invades, crushes their army and then tries to remake these dusty little tribal nations into mini-Americas, something that in their very long histories has never occurred to these people. If Middle Easterners or West Asians had any history of a deep longing for self rule and setting up a nation of laws instead of brutal dictatorships, tribal warlords and decadent kings they've been pretty good about keeping it a secret for a few thousand years. Real good.

So maybe Hillary Clinton did us a favor by reminding us that no good ever comes to America when we intervene in other nations' business. It's not like the Balkans have become models of good national citizenship. They are still claiming each other's territory from their Connecticut-sized nations and still teaching their children that it is right and proper to want to murder their rivals in their beds, man, woman, child, goats and dogs. Even when they do elect democratically chosen leaders they usually pick the most bloodthirsty and Medieval candidate to lead them in yet another murderous crusade against their neighboring nations.

So we ought to elect Barack Obama president, who's main idea is to de-Balkanize our own politics here at home, where partisan strife has gotten out of hand to the point that many American politicians feel that members of the opposition party are enemies of the state. That was never the case until recent years and it is crippling American government and it made possible the coup 'd etat of Dick Cheney and his political/corporate conglomerate eight years ago. Bush The Younger is merely the simpleton front man for these corporate gangsters, sort of like elevating Fredo Corleone to the job of don while abler hands pull the strings. Any hint of John McCain's desire to continue in their footsteps is an aberration. Let America try to be the best America it can be. That will go a lot further as far as gaining interational respect than all our guns and planes and, more importantly, it will give us back our self respect. Obama in'08.