GERRY-MEANDERING

Perhaps the only thing more idiotic than Geraldine Ferraro's statement that Senator Barack Obama is only where he is in the Democratic presidential race is because he is black has been her repeatedly pathetic attempts to defend the moronic statement. She probably believes the absurdity that Hillary Clinton is best suited to be President of the United States based on merit and qualifications and not because she was the wife of Bill Clinton - when in fact Mrs. Clinton would not even be the US Senator from New York had she not been married to Bill.

Clinton's much publicized 2000 "listening tour" of New York counties can hardly be described as the needed cure for the state's ills that many caring, committed, hard working NY Democratic politicians have built their resumes trying to fix. And, finagling a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee was a clear indication that her carpet-bagged backpacking trip through New York was merely a preamble to a campaign to become the nations Commander-in-Chief. However, her concern for our men and women in the military, the safety and security of the United States, and our friends and allies is morbidly false. The reaction of the Clinton White House to the rising threat of Islamist terrorism against the US at home and abroad was to cut the military budget and go after Bosnian strongman Milosevic instead - a move that was highly unlikely until the repercussions of the public revelation that Mr. Clinton was victimized by the sight of Monica Lewinsky's thong.

And now Hillary Rodham Clinton is imploring the country to believe that her White House "experience" makes her better suited to answer early morning crisis phone calls though all evidence points to the contrary. When Al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 the White House phone kept ringing. When Al Qaeda blew up American GI's in the Khobar Towers in 1996 the phone kept ringing. When Osama bin Laden's murderous ideologues willfully demolished two American embassies in Africa in 1998 the Clintons did not answer the crisis phone. And when the brazen Al Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole murdered 17 sailors in Yemen in September of 2000, the Clinton response was to meet the body bags at Andrews AFB, eulogize the dead, and get back out on his wife's Senate campaign trail - all while the aforementioned Al Qaeda continued to plot and rehearse the devasting Day of Infamy that would occur 12 months later. Answering the crisis phone has never been a Clinton priority.

Mrs. Ferraro's ongoing attempts to define and defend her inane statement begs the question - why did Al Gore and John Kerry get 90% of the black vote? They look nothing like Barack Obama. Bill Clinton, who has recently shown a cryptic disdain for black people, at least the ones who did not vote for his wife, received nearly 90% of the black vote. He also lacks Sen. Obama's pedigree.

By denigrating the success of Barack Obama's presidential campaign to his skin color, Geraldine Ferraro and the punditry who unsuccessfully try to justify her ignorance, subconciously denounce the successes, both public and private, of non-white Americans as undeserved aberrations rather than the well-earned outstanding accomplishments that they are.