“The Most Perfidious Way of Harming a Cause Consists of Defending It Deliberately with Faulty Arguments.” - Nietzsche

Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams has responded to the terrible charges that Hillary’s people are circulating a picture of Barack Obama wearing some funny tribal outfit during a trip to Africa. It turns out this is all Obama's fault! Why? We don't know, because it makes no sense! Here's the statement from the Hillary camp.

Enough.

If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.

We will not be distracted.

Hey, wow, that totally avoided THE ENTIRE ISSUE.

This is kind of like the linguistic gymnastics they employed to get around the plagiarism issue:

I asked Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, if they could assure the public that neither Clinton nor McGovern has ever done what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, did when he used the rhetoric of Gov. Deval Patrick without footnoting him.

They would not.

In fact, Wolfson seemed to say it wouldn't be as big a deal if it were discovered that Clinton had “lifted” such language.

“Sen. Clinton is not running on the strength of her rhetoric,” Wolfson said.

Which is a good thing, because, as it turns out, she might have lifted a line or two from other sources, as well.

Whether she did or not is beside the point. The point is, her campaign staff is getting positively Orwellian on the media's ass when it's called on to defend its mud-slinging tactics—which is really kind of sad, especially if you're the guy that had to resign for saying Obama used cocaine or if you're the guy who said Obama was a Muslim.

The only words of comfort I can offer those guys are, “Sorry, guys, I guess, as with most things in life, it's all about the timing.