Today my postal mailbox yielded yet another in the endless stream of solicitations from "Friends of Hillary."
Hillary's mailing starts off like so:
"Dear Friend,
Part of my job is being a good listener. Whether it's listening to my colleagues in the Senate, voters back home in New York, or Americans across the country as I work hard for the causes so important to us - like improving access to health care, strengthening the economy, protecting social security and our constitutional rights, and fighting for wiser national and homeland security policies - it's an important part of what I do"
Hillary goes on after the flip....
Her mailing continues...
"Now, I'd like to listen to you. Specifically, I'd like to know what's on your mind right now, and how I and other Democrats can do more to address your urgent concerns."
It goes on like this for a couple pages, laced with familiar campaign pleas for money, highlighting a few of the Bad Things that Republicans run amok have done to screw the country and the world (not in so many words, of course).
Enclosed is a 4 page "survey" which asks you to rank the issues which are your greatest concerns. Oh, yeah, there's a place to enter your credit card info and make a donation. No big surprise there.
What's also not a surprise - but should be - is the fact that of the 9 issues she asks you to rank, there's not a single word about the bloody and shameful war in Iraq.
That's right, the elephant in the room is carefully and completely ignored - just like it always is in her mailings.
I guess it's just not on Hilary's radar scope. It's certainly not anywhere on her 4-page "survey" of important issues.
So I do what I do every time I get crap like this from a politician who pretends to be a "leader" on the national stage. I get out a big, fat red marker, and I write the following on their solicitation:
NO, YOU MORON.
IT'S THE FUCKING WAR IN IRAQ!
IDIOT.
Then I put the survey back in their postage-paid business reply envelope, and send it back.
I keep thinking that I ought to tape it to a brick first before mailing it, so it costs their campaign ten bucks in postage instead of just a few pennies. I figure if enough people started doing this, they might actually pause briefly while counting the checks and maybe, just maybe think for a brief moment how morally bankrupt they are.
OK, that's naive.
Still, I cannot just sit here, shrug it off, and simply send this crap to the recycling bin over and over. When these Republican-lite assholes - who are responsible for starting this war - refuse to even acknowledge that it's an issue, as far as I'm concerned, they're no different from Bush and the other fascists - they just have diferent PR firms crafting their talking points.
It offends me that they aspire to lead the Democratic party.
So what's the appropriate response to these crass politicians who pretend to be leaders, yet refuse to even see the single biggest issue facing our country today?