More Fishy Business in Iowa

By now I'm sure you've all read of the despicable actions of some overzealous staffer, who apparently replaced Edwards campaign lit with that promoting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton at the stoop of a still anonymous Iowa resident.  According to one eye witness, a Ms. sarahlane,  in an account that she says, "You will not believe,":

My mother and I were stomping through the Iowa snow going door to door. If someone was not at home we would leave some John Edwards literature for them. We arrived at one house where the Iowan was not home and we left some literature at her door. We crossed the street and began walking to our next house. A car pulled up at the house where we had just left the literature. I had a feeling that it was another canvasser from another campaign. I told my mom we should walk further down the street and pretend to be busy flipping through papers. I told my mom, who was wearing sunglasses to keep an eye on him.

Well that's not the half of it.  Uhhh, better meet me at the extended diary box . . .

She continued:

The man left his car idling and walked up the Iowan's house. We both saw him bend down and pick up what looked like the literature we had just left. He left the house and got in his car and left. I had a sneaking suspicion that he had done something very unethical. I went back up the woman's doorstep and found out that he actually stole the John Edwards literature! Seriously! He put two pieces of literature for Hillary Clinton's Campaign in the in the door. Talk about disgusting tactics!

Reliable sources are now reporting that the Clinton campaign office in Council Bluffs has been the victim of a rash of bogus pizza orders -- and worse.  As far as campaign officials have been able to piece this developing story together, the first delivery of pizzas came about 12 days ago, when at about 6:10 PM, on either December 17 or 18, a delivery boy from the local Don Tomaso's Pizza and Pasta Villa came by with two of their famous Hawaiian Luau--broccoli, ham and pineapple--pizzas (and the free liter of Tab). "We were just sitting there phone banking," said junior staffer Grady Witherspoon, "when this dude knocks on the door, holding two pizza boxes and that soda-carrier thing."  

Apparently, in the rush of making calls at the dinner hour to eager and excited Iowa caucus goers, the staff of the field office all believed that one of their colleagues had made the call. "Yeah, like, we thought one of the babes ordered the 'zzas, 'cuz, like, on account'a the Tab," said Witherspoon, "so I just paid the dude out of the food allowance, and we polished those bad boys off in no time.  We couldn't, like, ask anyone if they called in the order, ya' know, 'cuz, like, they were all really busy riveting Iowans during dinner with Hillary's sincere and compelling message."  

Perhaps, though, this would only be a below-the-fold story if it all ended at that point, but as later reports would have it, the high-stakes prankery was just beginning.  No more than three days later, another suspicious delivery of pizzas.  But this time the ante had clearly been, in a word, upped.  Not content to saddle the campaign with the three-topping Hawaiian Luau, the merry prankster left the campaign to pay for three of the Don's signature pies, the One Widda Ev'ryting^®  (as well as the two-for-one Red Bull offer).  

"We got a little suspicious this time," explained Witherspoon's supervisor, intern director Peggy Sue Neidermier, "for when we asked who placed the order and we were told it was for something he called the 'Rat Um, You Know Unit' and we knew that we couldn't have called for pizzas." Cleary, Ms. Neidermier was hedging here on what was told to her by the delivery boy, and when pressed, she went as far as this reporter could get her to go.  She said it was the "Like when rats make babies."

Neidermier was incredulous.  "Well, I'm here to tell you," she insisted, "and this is for the record, we have no such unit, at least not at this office."  Pressed further, she finally allowed, "That stuff gets handled out of the main office in Cedar Rapids.  Oops, don't print that last part."  Follow-up calls to Cedar Rapids were not returned by press time.

Total bills for the bogus pizzas: $44.37, and a shot food allowance for the balance of the campaign.  

Clearly, someone with keen taste for the political jugular was on this case, and she or he wasn't letting up.  According to campaign veteran Joe DuMouchelle, whose political involvement traces back to the first presidential run made by Harold Stassen in 1948, when he signed on as one of the candidate's storied Lit Looters, trying to phone bank and canvass on an empty stomach is nearly impossible. "Look, if you don't have money for so much as a Crispy Creme and a small Dunkin' Donuts coffee, you're as worthless to the campaign as a Republican in Massachusetts."

But pizzas were not the only thing that suddenly appeared at the Clinton field office.  In the ensuing days, the staff was treated to calls from suspicious carpet cleaning services ($235.37), pest control exterminators ($337.31, including something called the Time DeLay Program^®), a time share vacation salesman (someone with bad penmanship obligated the campaign to an offer to purchase two weeks in August at the Weeping Palms Motor Manor in Kissimmee, Florida, at $712.37), and a vast array of lobby magazines including The Weekly Standard, Corn Quarterly, the hardcover Heroes of the Bible and once popular Highlights magazine (totaling $137.67 ).

What political mastermind, what modern day Donald Segretti, could be behind this dastardly brilliant plan to up-end the Clinton Campaign?  Those facts are just now coming in.  Officials representing the campaigns of her closest rivals, Barak Obama and John Edwards, denied all knowledge and involvement.

The Council Bluffs office was forced to close as the final blow was registered on December 28, when Don Tomaso's delivered but a single 8" personal pizza, the Seafarer's Special^®--anchovies only--and the campaign had no money to pay for it.  

Something very fishy indeed.