E. J. Dionne, Jr. The Washington Post Writers Group

February 15, 2010

E. J. Dionne, Jr.
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017

RE: Who date sayin’ Bubba Ho-Tep? Some comments on your column in the New Republic of 2/15/10 about Big Bill and Osama.

Mr. Dionne,

What the Hell does “Bubba Ho-Tep” mean?

First I thought because “Ho” was in the title it was a back handed reference to Big Bill’s trouser snake. There hasn’t been an unblinking eye like that in Washington since the dollar bill was designed.

It appears now that the Democrats have managed, Lord willing, to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I am not good in Math but if every Democrat in the House and every Democrat in the Senate voted for the Health plan it would have passed. Why is it the fault of the Republicans? Their votes weren’t needed.

Honorable men can argue whether specific policies are good or bad. What has been validated again is the process that was set in place in 1787. A society that has no place for the “permanent things” is in the speed lane for Avernus.

I’ll spare you the tutorial on Madison. It wouldn’t make a difference.

What I will comment on is the following:

“Yes, Clinton put his presidency at risk over a sex scandal and
his infuriating moments around the 2008 South Carolina
primary disheartened even his most vocal supporters.”

That Billy would hump a snake if someone held its head was never in doubt. That’s not why he “put his presidency at risk”. It was “at risk” because he perjured himself.

Presidents lie all the time. It is a requirement of office. Nowhere in the tablets of office that are handed off from outgoing Presidents to incoming ones does it say that he has to perjure himself.

“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if
it were water. He opens his fingers at his own peril.”

You say he “disappointed his most loyal followers in the South Carolina primary”. Not so, not so, as the great Rumsfeld used to say. After decades of humiliating his wife – What is the feminine version of cuckold? – he felt he owed it to her. His comparison of Senator Obama to Jesse Jackson was minor league. If he had called him a “macaca” like the Senator from Virginia did – What was his name? – he may have had to become an out patient at Offensive Word Re-Hab.

If he had twice said that Senator Yama Bahama Osama, to paraphrase what Lard Kennedy called him, was a “dreaded ‘N’ word” like former Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd [D-WVA] who knows what would have happened. Maybe Hillary would have made it to the Oval Office. Who knows? Maybe she could have tried to impersonate Catherine the Great. Bill had a cow. She could have had a bull.

In 1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator McCarthy [Joe, not Gene] if he had “no sense of shame”.

In 1996 Robert Dole asked, “Where is the outrage?”

Here it is, 2010. Still no shame; still no outrage.


Kevin Smith


PS – Maybe you, as a big time media mogul, can give me the answer to a vexing question on health care. In 1993 we were told that there were 43,000,000 uninsured. In 2008 we were told that there were 47,000,000 uninsured. A few months ago the President, and Blessed be his Name, told us there were 30,000,000 uninsured. That’s a swing of more than one third. “Close enough for government work” does not apply here. Can you peek behind the curtain and tell me what the number is? Also, the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia came to America for his heart treatment. Why didn’t Bubba go to Quebec for his treatment? I thought that NAFTA required that.