Tipper, you may recall, underlook to promote her hubby's Presidential prospects a few years back by assailing naughty lyrics in popular music. Hillary has updated this schtick with an attack on naughty video games. These people really are fresh out of ideas.
Speaking of tired old Democratic ideas, here's another Clinton brainstorm: The "Army Relief Act." The act's preamble sagely observes that "There is, as of yet[sic], no substitute for having sufficient troops to conduct personnel-intensive post-conflict missions."
Who writes this stuff? I've often suspected that Washington doesn't attract the very top drawer of bright young things, and this kind of gabble suggests I'm right. There are so many ways this phrase fails to make sense that it's hard to know where to start. Clearly, a "personnel-intensive" mission demands troops by definition, so in this case Hillary's anonymous bill-drafter has risen to the level of tautology, at least. But if a mission is "post-conflict," why does it need troops? Troops are there to conduct conflict -- again by definition.
It gets better. "Our engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Greater Middle East is, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, a 'generational' one." Bear in mind these are the Democrats talking -- they're supposed to be the opposition. And what does the phrase "Greater Middle East" mean? What are the boundaries of this hitherto undiscovered geographical entity? One suspects it includes much of the world. Maybe not Antarctica.
But of course the punch line comes at the end -- or rather, since this is a shaggy-dog bill, the absence of a punch line comes at the end. The bill amends existing law to "authorize" 100,000 more troops in the Army -- to 582,000. How exactly we are supposed to find 100,000 more chumps and persuade them to sign up, under present conditions, the bill does not say.
Apparently the habit of making empty gestures is a hard one to break. The Democrats have been feeding their "core" constituencies for years on stones and serpents, and now they seem to think they can play the same game to entice constituencies the Republicans have got locked up.
Lotsa luck, Hill, but I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than that.
