There's Backwards and there's . . .

BurkeWords

Monday, November 3, 1997

Saddam Hussein is up to his old tricks again. Once again, he's stirring up troubles in Iraq right before Election Day. Too bad, he forgot to check his calendar. These are the "off-year" elections, with only a handful of seats on the line and nothing worth riling folks over.

On the other hand, what's Saddam's been up to is worth a measured response. He's kicking U.S. inspectors out of the weapon factories that he's supposed to be dismantling. And he's got President Bill Clinton fired up -- why just yesterday he screamed at a heckler in a crowd he was addressing . . .

You gotta love that Bill, keeping up with things as he does.

While American flags are burning in Iraq (Actually, I think the term for that is perpetual flame), Mr. Clinton was campaigning for Democratic interests. And truth be told, I have no problem with that because it seems that every time he campaigns for a candidate in the off-year elections, his candidate loses. By this yardstick, he's done phenomenomal work for the G.O.P.

Now here's where I start to go off on tangents. After all, it's not like he's doing anything about Saddam.

Yesterday, Clinton stumped for Ruth Messinger in New York City, who regular readers know is the woman whose political career will go up in smoke come election day. What made this event memorable was the image on the news of a heckler being escorted out -- by three security men. A little on the rough side, don't you think.

Ahhh, but it got better. When I flipped channels (you get more news that way, in a shorter time), I saw the same scene again, only this time with audio. Clinton told the AIDS activist/heckler (how do you like that -- he was heckled by someone on the left side), "If you have something to say to me then say it to me outside, but don't take away from this lady here." (somewhat paraphrase, I didn't have a tape running)

Gee, Bill, I hope his escorts allowed him to stay until you left the affair. I hope he got to speak his peace with you. I noticed that you weren't splattered across page 1 as your predecessor was with his "Shut Up and Sit Down!" remark, but that's the media for you. (And we know how much that they are for you.)

Bill, you said that you were standing by Ruth Messinger. And you urged people, particularly all those Democrats running over to Rudy, to vote for Ruth. But I have to tell you, I'm happy that you didn't call me an anti-Semite for not voting for her in the same way that you implied that I was a racist for wanting to oust Mayor David Dinkins. But if you really want to stand by Ms. Messinger, offer her a job. This time next week, she'll really need one.

Okay, this one I couldn't pass up. I have an update on Clinton's line-item vetoes in the military budget.

Remember how Clinton crossed out lots of little ticket items to make himself look good, but eliminated less than one percent of the pork-laden defense bill? Well, now he says that he made a couple of mistakes. He vetoed a couple of items that he didn't mean to veto.

You know the ones, don't you? The ones in the districts of the key Congressmen he still needs to get fast-track status approved. Yeah, that's right, those vetoes. There were a couple of mistakes. Actually, more than a couple. A few. Really, several. In fact TWENTY-EIGHT.

Now, let's forget what that means to the less than one percent statistic. Let's look at the more important issue here.

President Bill Clinton has been granted the most powerful weapon that any President has ever had in his arsenal to use against Congress and he made a mistake? You mean, his fingers slipped or something? Twenty-eight times??

I almost want to see those vetoes overridden just out of spite, but let's face it, they're still pork and he wants them overridden, or at least resubmitted somehow.

The ironic part of it is that he's not going to get his precious fast track status. The reason: the Democrats don't want it. They need the union vote. And Gephardt wants to shine.

The Supreme Court decided not to overturn the Proposition. But some folks, including elected officials, are not happy and have vowed to never enforce any referendum or legislation that copies the verbiage of the Civil Rights Act. They must object on copyright violation reasons or something.

With dubious victories for "medical" marijuana in California and Arizona, some deep pocket backers are pushing for legalizing in Washington state, using the same feel-good approach that they used before, trotting out all the sick grandmas who want their pot.

What they fail to say is that Washington's proposal is just a tad different. It would legalize the purchase (not the sale, mind you, but the purchase) of "medical" heroin, "medical" LSD, and "medical" PCP.

To be fair, many elected officials, Democrat and Republican alike, are speaking out against it and are trying to rally the public to squash this, but they are being massively outspent. And the dope crowd knows that there's always next year.

And, finally, taking a look at last week's turmoil in the stock market has taught us all a valuable lesson. Namely, the media like to play up tragedy. Really.

In the past week, I've heard references to "Monday's crash" a dozen times, even after the subsequent recovery. Folks, there was no such thing. In financial circles, they don't even call it a "correction" until it hits ten per cent, and the Dow only hit seven. Wall Streeters are calling it a "rollback", but that doesn't sound as "sexy" for the news promos, now, does it.