...my flight to DC just got in several hours ago. The new x-ray scanners are a nuisance and I mentally calculate the exposure I will receive from the quick roundtrip flight. The meeting should prove fascinating. Once I learned the purpose of the meeting, I knew I would love to have a recorder going in the room but electronics are a major no-no. Security is removing watches and ahead of me one prominent politician's hearing aid is also being confiscated for the duration.

The watches in the holding area look like a Rolex jewelers display case and as I remove my watch a ladies Piaget 130th anniversary edition catches my eye. With a value of more than many Americans earn in a year, it acts as a reminder of the vast socio-economic divide I am partaking of.

The meeting begins with a message from George to the group. Beside him sits Hillary, and my eyes bulge out as he puts his arm around her and makes a joke. Listening to Hillary joke with George is uncanny. I had never known of her partnership with George in 2004 and of their strange alliance now, but politics makes strange bedfellows. Hillary speaks forthright about the 2008 race and apparently it has been arranged to turn Obama into the frontrunner early and then let her sweep in after a faux 'tight race'. This ways she avoids any 'real' competition. One very fat and very rich media tycoon interrupts her and promises his full cooperation in turning Obama into...and I quote, "the famous upstart ass, everyone is tired of reading about".

I sit near Dick and he hasn't smiled, genuinely, once since I entered the large room. He is wearing his pinched poker smirk and I sense he is not happy with the apparently longstanding Bush-Clinton alliance. Though seeing the somewhat nauseating chumminess in person, I now suspect this same alliance helped defeat Kerry. Next to me a high-powered CEO type is laughing just a bit too loud and a bit too long. The smell of Vodka is emanating from the CEO rather strongly and I suspect his chaffeur drove him here in his quasi-inebriated state. Everywhere I look the very wealthy elite and the powerbrokers - at least the one's aligned with George and, apparently, Hillary - fill out the room and I am quite certain I am the designated pauper. My presence is more of a fluke, since I have another meeting with George and Dick after this one wraps up. Another media chief, who has an office a stone's throw from the White House, and is sitting two seats from Hillary speaks up:

"The people are being conditioned well. They want us to bail out of Iraq, and we will. They will be grateful for the resolution of Iraq, and whomever is perceived as having successfully extracted the troops will earn their votes. Hillary here will have the 'winning proposal' for an 'exodus' that we will support and promote. Meanwhile, the endless bad news stories will keep riling up the fringes, till they are climbing the walls, and encouraging her opponents to overshoot the mark, leaving her with the wholecloth, mainstream mindset that can then be applauded at just the right moment."

The media chief smiles at Hillary and it is one that you don't see often. It is a the way a pet owner looks at their prize pedigreed animal, the one who they groom, train and teach tricks. Hillary smiles back but I can sense her loathing of this chief underneath it. She needs her alliances and this powerful media alliance is one she can't live, politically anyways, without.

Such 'honesty' and simultaneous 'dishonesty' is a shocking, sickening spectacle. I'm glad I didn't eat on the plane over or it might be decorating the carpet by now.

I meet eyes with Hillary and I know she knows what I am thinking. It must be written all over my face. She gives me a warm smile and I know she has no idea who I am, but is hedging her bets. I smile back, in the way I imagine a bored powerbroker is supposed to smile at the person they want to become next President of the United States.

Dick whispers something almost unintelligible and I don't know if he's talking to me, himself or clearing his throat. For all the world I think it sounded like..."maybe I should run." Then it occurs to me how painful this must be, to be a sitting VP and sit through a meeting of the "George-Hillary" powerbroker fan club.

Now they are laying groundwork for an Iran incident in 2009.

I start to think about the anteroom and the myriad of feared potential electronic recorders that await to be returned to their broad-seated owners. I don't think it would matter if the meeting was recorded - because no one would ever believe it.

I know I certainly don't.