There's "charmless"... and then there is just plain callous!

A blogger friend of mine once referred to Tzipi Livni as 'charmless'.  But the more I read about Livni, the more I've come to the conclusion that 'charmless' is about the nicest thing one can say about her.  After reading her most recent comments in preparation for the release this week of the Winograd findings, I think you'd have to agree that she's broken new ground in charmlessness.

According to several published reports, Livni appealed to families of soldiers who were killed in the Second Lebanon War not to allow their 'differences of opinion over the Winograd Report' to create further divisions between the government and the public.

Did you get that?

These poor families spend much of each day trying to simply look away from the gaping hole in their lives left by the death of thier husbands, fathers and sons... and Ms. Livni somehow got the idea that it would be OK to accuse them of selfishly driving a wedge between the government and the public with their inconvenient grief and perfectly justifiable calls for a new government.

If it had ended there I could probably have let her off the hook with just 'charmless'.  But IMHO, her most mind-bogglingly callous quote was this follow-up:

"We have a major problem with public trust and the worst thing we can do is create camps -- us on the one side and the bereaved families and soldiers on the other.... This is bad for the government and bad for Kadima."

This level of callous self-interest is almost too horrible to contemplate!

News flash for Ms. Livni (and her boss):

These families paid the ultimate price so that you and your fellow stooges could get free on the job training and a second-hand copy of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Running a Wartime Government'.  You and your fellow ass-clowns robbed these citizens of their loved ones with your bungling prosecution of the war... as well as your feckless negotiations for a toothless cease-fire... and therefore you've forfeited the right to ask them for anything else, much less malign them for political gain!

Even if any of these people were of a mind to care about your government's sagging approval rating, they have far more important things on their minds right now than what's good for Kadima... or for you.  Just concentrating on silly, frivolous things like getting through the day without dying of sorrow is about all most of them can manage.

Sorry if that puts a damper on your big plans to cling to power.