[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Californians have more in common with Europeans — wanting an effect without a cause. They want good healthcare, provided by ________. They want lots of jobs, provided by ____________. They want clean air and clean water, provided by ________________.
Yup, gotta love those rational Californians.[/quote]
I’m sure if they quite pouring out $100B a year, they could afford to buy those things…
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Monday is a half day for me and I listen to Limbaugh (of course) on the drive home. He shredded Clinton thoroughly. He points out so many contradictions in Clinton’s actions and his words today, it appear Clinton is pathological. The constant attempt to shift the blame, for ex, for everything from himself to the CIA and FBI is almost childish. (Bush NEVER blames subordinates, btw, for anything.)
Many of you gents laugh or ridicule Rush, but when he uncovers lie after lie, contradiction after contradiction, you have to put that aside and open your ears.
If you have a lot of time to listen to Limbaugh and you wonder why you don’t make enough money then you need a reality check.[/quote]
Temporary blackout? I’m a teacher, dude. What should I do on Monday afternoons, go and bag groceries at a supermarket? LOL!!
[quote]knewsom wrote:
either post me a transcript regardig specific points, or don’t say anything at all.[/quote]
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092506/content/clinton_interview_overview.guest.html
Especially scroll to the bottom, after reading, for all the ORIGINAL source material.
Liberalism is in its death throes.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Do you think more people watched it than would have watched it without the hissy fit? Significantly more? I sure do.
hspder wrote:
Looking at the relatively poor ratings, I doubt it. But assuming you are right – how did the hissy fit change the way the extra audience read it?[/quote]
I don’t know whether it did or didn’t – I rather think those who would be more attracted to watching it simply because they had heard of it (probably a large group of the extra audience) wouldn’t have changed their perceptions at all.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Of course, this is aside from the main point of my statement, which is that the mockumentary, and more particularly the hissy fit, made it so Wallace’s question was newsworthy today.
hspder wrote:
As I said before, I do not believe that is relevant at all – if indeed the explosion was calculated, it just makes Clinton look smarter…
You don’t see me accusing Wallace of any wrongdoing – in fact, I can only thank him.[/quote]
I was making that point in response to people claiming that Wallace was simply out there baiting Clinton and trying to do a right-wing hit piece.
I was in college, working an time-filler job for a year and then starting law school. So while my memory may be slightly besotted with hops and barley, I was paying fairly close attention.
But I don’t have to trust my memory. For instance, here is the National Review editorial from September 14, 1998:
[i]COMEDY Central’s The Daily Show called it “Operation Desert Shield Me from Impeachment.” Funny, but too cynical. The U.S. missile strikes against terrorist facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan were a response to a real threat: They targeted the operations of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind who, according to U.S. intelligence, was responsible for the brutal bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and was plotting further attacks on Americans.
Congressional leaders were therefore right to support President Clinton’s action. The last thing Republicans should do is add to the inhibitions and hesitations of an Administration congenitally averse to the forthright use of American military power. The White House’s blatant exploitation of the crisis for its own political purposes-dragging Mr. Clinton back from vacation for a portentous Oval Office address to the nation-should be a source of amusement only. Richard Nixon, too, tried to claim indispensability for his foreign-policy expertise-a much more valid claim in his case, and at the height of the Cold War to boot. It didn’t help him.
Launching 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the training camp in Afghanistan and the chemical-weapons plant in Sudan was, by Clinton standards, a strong performance. In June 1993, responding to an Iraqi assassination attempt against ex-President George Bush, Mr. Clinton launched 23 cruise missiles at a military-intelligence headquarters in Baghdad-in the middle of the night, so that no one would get hurt! This time, the strike in Afghanistan was aimed at a gathering of terrorist leaders reported to be taking place on that day. Admirably cold-blooded, that.
Bin Laden, the terrorist kingpin, is a new phenomenon, but we should not exaggerate either his novelty or the difficulty of defeating him. (There is a canard that he is an American creation. There is no evidence that he is. He did win his spurs in the Arab world’s equivalent of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade-the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan-but U.S. money and arms went to the Afghan freedom fighters through the Pakistani military.) While he is a freelancer, bin Laden is dependent on the support of renegade governments, such as Afghanistan’s and Sudan’s, against which we have leverage. We can target his physical assets by military or covert means and his financial assets through other controls (as Mr. Clinton has also done). His Islamist revolutionary ideology is increasingly discredited in the Muslim world, even in Iran. Defeating him will take time, but it will be done.[/i]
Does that mean there weren’t any critics from the right? No. But there was hardly a unanimous voice, or a “vast right-wing conspiracy” leveling charges at Clinton on these - like NAFTA, he got some of his strongest support for taking these actions from those pesky right-wingers at National Review, the Weekly Standard and those dastardly Congressional Republicans…
You’d think perhaps, if the theme could be encompassed by the idea that Clinton was “obsessed” with bin Laden that one could find just 1 little story in a four-year timespan during his presidency, when millions upon millions of words were written about him, that might have used the phrase to capture the idea? How many synonyms are there for “obsessed” anyway? I guess all those right-wing stories might have preferred words like “consumed” or maybe a phrase such as “fanatically absorbed” – or maybe, for reasons of humor, something like “infatuated” or “ardently attracted,” but you’d think just one of all those numerous right-wingers employing the concept might have actually used the word “obsessed” and “bin Laden” together. No dice though. Strange, that…
Just so you don’t think my memory was all that addled by the adult beverages back then, here’s another contemporaneous source on the reaction of those dern right-winger Republicans to the Clinton strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/react082198.htm
Tough Response Appeals to Clinton Critics
By Guy Gugliotta and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 21, 1998; Page A17
President Clinton won warm support for ordering anti-terrorist bombing attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan yesterday from many of the same lawmakers who have criticized him harshly as a leader critically weakened by poor judgment and reckless behavior in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.
A few senators, however, noted that the timing of the attack raised the question of whether Clinton had ordered it to deflect attention from his personal affairs. Others suggested the scandal may be preventing the president from paying attention to critical international problems.
But most lawmakers from both parties were quick to rally behind Clinton in a deluge of public statements and appearances yesterday, a marked contrast to the relatively sparse and chilly reception that greeted his Monday statement on the Lewinsky matter.
“I think the president did exactly the right thing,” House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said of the bombing attacks. “By doing this we’re sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists.”
Gingrich said he was told “very precise details” of the attack before it occurred, and praised Clinton’s aides for being “sensitive to making sure we were not blindsided in this.” Other congressional leaders, several of whom were on vacation or difficult to locate, said the White House had made an effort to notify them before the attacks.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called the attacks “appropriate and just,” and House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said “the American people stand united in the face of terrorism.”
Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) praised Clinton for doing “the right thing at the right time to protect vital U.S. interests against terrorist attacks,” and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said the United States “should respond forcefully when U.S. lives are at stake.”
It was clear from several lawmakers’ statements that support for Clinton was not just a knee-jerk reaction, but also a response made easier because of former GOP senator and current Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. “I have enough confidence in [Cohen] to believe that he would not be involved in anything orchestrated for domestic political purposes,” Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) said.
Gingrich dismissed any possibility that Clinton may have ordered the attacks to divert attention from the scandal. Instead, he said, there was an urgent need for a reprisal following the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
“Anyone who watched the film of the bombings, anyone who saw the coffins come home knows better than to question this timing,” Gingrich said. “It was done as early as possible to send a message to terrorists across the globe that killing Americans has a cost. It has no relationship with any other activity of any kind.”
To underscore this view, Rich Galen, one of Gingrich’s top advisers, sent an e-mail to conservative radio talk show hosts entitled “Wag the Dog,” after a recent movie of the same name in which White House spin doctors concoct an international crisis to draw attention away from a president’s sexual indiscretions.
“Speaker Newt Gingrich has made it clear to me” that the attacks were necessary and appropriate, Galen said. “This is a time to put our nation’s interests ahead of our political concerns. I am asking you to help your listeners, your friends, and your associates to look at this situation with the sober eyes it deserves.”
Gingrich made the same point himself during a conference call with House Republicans late yesterday, telling colleagues that while none of them has to mute criticism about the Lewinsky matter, “on this topic I think it’s very useful and I think it sends a powerful signal to the world” that the GOP stand with Clinton.
But Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), one of Clinton’s severest critics earlier in the week, said, “There’s an obvious issue that will be raised internationally as to whether there is any diversionary motivation.” Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.), a possible presidential candidate in 2000, noted “there is a cloud over this presidency.”
And Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who called on Clinton to resign after his speech Monday, said: “The president has been consumed with matters regarding his personal life. It raises questions about whether or not he had the time to devote to this issue, or give the kind of judgment that needed to be given to this issue to call for military action.”
Told of these criticisms, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, branded them “preposterous,” and noted that Osama bin Laden, suspected of bankrolling the installations that were bombed, “is one bad mother.”
“Even if that [a diversion] were an element, what in the hell does it do to us around the world for leading American officials to even suggest that?” Biden asked. “It is not very sound judgment to speak in terms of motivation other than national security at this moment.”
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who in recent days has been very critical of Clinton on the Lewinsky matter, also supported the bombing raids, noting, “In the past I was worried that this administration didn’t take this threat seriously enough, and didn’t take Osama bin Laden seriously enough; I’m going to support him, wish him well and back him up.”
And urge him on, a view supported bluntly by House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). “If anything, this was somewhat overdue, and I’m not talking days, but months and years. This needs to be the first punch we land. We need to land more,” Goss added, warning that “now that we have struck back, it is sure to inflame them even more. All Americans need to understand that.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) stressed the importance of a strong U.S. role in foreign affairs, and criticized the administration for ignoring problems other than bin Laden, including Iraq dragging its feet on arms inspections, “North Korea building nuclear weapons,” a stalled Mideast peace process, and "thousands of people being ethnically cleansed in Kosovo.
“This administration for the last seven months has neglected compelling national security threats besides this,” said McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “I cannot say that they’ve been neglected because of Monica Lewinsky, but I can say unequivocally that they have been neglected.”
Staff researcher Ben White contributed to this report.
? Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
BTW, I note that Salon has a piece full of critical Republican quotes ( Smearing Bill to get Hillary? | Salon.com ) – but they are not obviously about the strikes against terrorists. They very well could be criticizing the strike against Iraq (mentioned in the NR editorial above, critically, as occurring at night so as not to do any actual damage) or the Kosovo conflict, which indeed was criticized more harshly – and thus not against the cruise missle strikes Clinton made against al Queda in Somalia and Afghanistan.
In fact, my two sources would seem to dispute that there was a large body of criticism leveled against Clinton for his anti-al Queda strikes – which again, directly contradicts both Clinton’s claims and various peoples’ sterling memories…
It is simply false that Republicans opposed Clinton’s efforts to get bin Laden or that most of them claimed he was just “wagging the dog.” To the contrary, most Republicans strongly supported Clinton’s August 1998 missile strikes and many on the right actually claimed that he wasn’t going far enough.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Doogie,
I appreciate calling the bluff of the dems.
Please realize, however, that they will read 1/100,000 of what you just posted.
Whether it is 100% truth, matters not.
Rush said it. Therefore, it must be ignored.
It is a defense mechanism that allows the dems to declare things like, “it’s all about a blowjob” and “clinton isn’t a pansy.”
My advice after you’ve rammed the quotes down their throat, is to use their favorite tactic against them: the soundbite.
When they regurgitate a soundbite, hit them with a better one.
It’s a nonsensical rollar coaster, but it’s fun watching them squirm.
JeffR[/quote]
Hey Effr0, who brought up the blowjob?
You guys did. The man trashed your wimpy Wallace, and you guys brought up the blowjob.
You told us he blew up and was agressive. But he was a pansy also.
I’ve read Doogies post carefully. I wonder why Clinton didn’t have anything to say. I’m starting to suspect he wasn’t even in the studio ! ! !
It’s one thing to trash a man when he has no chance to defend himself. This is the Rush tactic, and you seem to admire him for it.
It’s another to confront him on his own turg and whip his ass. This is what Clinton did, and you hate him for it.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Wreckless wrote:
doogie wrote:
knewsom wrote:
I don’t give two shits what Clinton did with his dick. That’s his business, not mine, and I do not have the right to critisize his personal life. Neither do any of you fucks. I don’t even care that he lied about it. If the man had an abnormal penis, and people accused him of having one, and he lied about having an abnormal penis, would anyone think less of the man? FUCK no.
What in the holy fuck are you raving about? No one gives a shit about your micropenis. We’re talking about breaking vows and oaths.
No, we’re talking about Wallace trying to ambush Clinton, like he was told.
And getting his ass kicked. That’s what we are talking about.
Clinton AGREED to an open forum, then went ballistic when the dude followed the program. Hell, he got pissed when the man quoted Clinton himself. He’s fucking deranged! So, that’s why you like him.
You’re probably envious of Monica too.
You’re late for your train.
[/quote]
Show me where he went balistic?
He looked rather articulate to me. Especially when compared to your current leader?
You keep repeating he went balistic. He didn’t. He kicked your boys ass.
[quote]ChuckyT wrote:
knewsom wrote:
If you want to talk about impeachment for lying, let’s talk about going to war under false pretenses. Whether an oath was made or not, the consequences of that lie have been far greater. If you think Clinton deserved to be impeached for his sins (which I’m certainly not denying - he had plenty), don’t you think Bush should be investigated and impeached for his?
Do you even know what the word “lie” means? I wonder why your boys in congress don’t press the issue of Bush lying in any meaningful way. Probably because most of them voted in support of the “lie”? Based on the same intelligence? I wonder why they don’t press impeachment too?[/quote]
Are you claiming the congress has the same information the president of the US has? You’re kidding right?
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Show me where he went balistic?
He looked rather articulate to me. Especially when compared to your current leader?
You keep repeating he went balistic. He didn’t. He kicked your boys ass.[/quote]
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/rice.clinton.ap/index.html
Enjoy, lib. I think Clinton has Alzheimer’s, in all honesty.
Also, I made this point earlier, but Tom Maguire makes it more fully – for those who think Clinton’s genius was more at work than his temper:
Bill Clinton, Political Genius
Bill Clinton does the finger-wag ( Video: Clinton flips out over Osama hunt on "Fox News Sunday" – HotAir ) again, this time with Chris Wallace of Fox News (transcript: http://thinkprogress.org/clinton-interview ). And what has vexed Mr. “It’s All About Bill”? The same thing that vexed him just before the airing of ABC’s controversial “Path to 9/11” ( The Path to 9/11 - Wikipedia ), namely, the suggestion that his Administration was lax in pursuing Osama Bin Laden.
And does debating this topic really benefit ( Domain Registered at Safenames ) the Democratic Party just now? In his current melt-down Bill Clinton demands that we read Richard Clarke’s book, which lays out the pro-Clinton case.
Read Clarke’s book? Please - maybe we can ask President Kerry how the Richard Clarke attacks worked for the Dems in 2004.
I have a compilation of Richard Clarke links here ( http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/03/richard_clarke_.html ); Dan Drezner had an excellent overview of the initial debate ( danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: Regarding Richard Clarke ) and his own take on Clarke in a follow-up ( danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: Reading <i>Against All Enemies</i> ).
And I will take this opportunity to repeat what I think was my only original contribution ( http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/04/no_higher_prior.html ) to this sprawling brawl about Clinton’s priorities - Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam delivered “War in a Time of Peace ( http://www.amazon.com/War-Time-Peace-Clinton-Generals/dp/0743223233/sr=1-1/qid=1159283091/ref=sr_1_1/102-5383740-9047332?ie=UTF8&s=books ) - Bush, Clinton, and the Generals” ( The 90's Wars - The New York Times ) in May of 2001. Although he covered Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, there is not a hint of a mention of Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. That suggests that, in all his digging and interviewing on the topic of Clinton at war, Halberstam never uncovered Clinton’s war on terror, or did not experience Clinton’s people pounding the table and emphasizing its importance.
Well, if Bill Clinton wants to spend the next month discussing his slack pursuit of Bin Laden as we run up to the election, let’s everybody blow the dust off their archives and get it on.
MORE: A call for perspective from the Captain ( Captain's Quarters ):
We have all the investigations and tell-all books we will ever need. We have all formed our opinions. None of us will have them changed at this point. What we need to discuss now is what we do from here, a much more pressing debate that has actual real-world consequences, and we can’t have that debate successfully until we stop the useless sniping about pre-9/11 failures.
I infer from his UPDATE that the kinder, gentler Captain has triggered a reader revolt:
…as a nation we need to end this argument if we want to get some consensus on engaging the enemy, and the enemy is not Bill Clinton.
Yes, but - tell that to the people who think the enemy is George Bush. If our friends on the left really want to lose this debate again, why not? I’ll have time for all the calm and perspective in the world starting on the first Wednesday following the first Tuesday in November. (If I can sustain my enthusiam that long - looks like I picked a bad season to give up caffeine…)
MIGHT BILL HAVE A PLAN? Bill’s temper tantrum may not help any Dems in 2006 but the obvious beneficiary for 2008 is Hillary. If he bullies interviewers away from that question, she wins. Or if asked, any answer she gives will seem calm and sensible by comparison.
The only negative -do we want a First Spouse complaining about right wing media bias? Been there, overcame that.
…
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Wreckless wrote:
Show me where he went balistic?
He looked rather articulate to me. Especially when compared to your current leader?
You keep repeating he went balistic. He didn’t. He kicked your boys ass.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/rice.clinton.ap/index.html
Enjoy, lib. I think Clinton has Alzheimer’s, in all honesty.
[/quote]
Looks to me like Rice went ballistic. I hate it when that happens, especially in women. Perhaps it was her day of the month eh?
Or perhaps she needed the attention of a real man? Who knows?
But she want ballistic allright.
Oh, and she was a pansy also.
I am amazed at how many people fall for politicians spreading lies.
To pretend Clinton was obsessed with bin Laden is silly.
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Right wingnuts don’t like Clark. That is not news.
[/quote]
Limbaugh (if you’d bother to read) was USING Clark’s words against Clinton.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
a load of crap…
…[/quote]
Just keep repeating he went ballistic.
The morons that vote for Bush will start to believe the lie. Eventually. Not there yet.
Also, keep posting parts of the interview on the internet. Not the full interview. The full interview shows how Clinton whipped your boy.
And boy, did he whip your boy. It was beautifull.
So, never the full interview. Only parts. Ok?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Also, I made this point earlier, but Tom Maguire makes it more fully – for those who think Clinton’s genius was more at work than his temper:
[/quote]
Oh please.
It’s easy to find hatchet jobs of either stripe if you are willing to scour the blogosphere.
You are making me laugh posting all this bullshit like it actually contains facts instead of pure opinion. It’s perhaps half a misstep above the level of the Rush job done by Rush.
My last defense of my poor, addled memory, from Jake Tapper ( http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2006/09/the_truth_about.html ):
EXCERPTS:
Paul Gigot ( http://www.pbs.org/newshour/shields&gigot/august98/sg_8-21.html ):
But I thought when Dan Coats says something, I usually listen, because he’s a serious guy; he’s not a grandstander, and I took that as a sign …of how much credibility the president has lost on Capitol Hill. I think Dan Coats [Note: reference to a “wag the dog” insinuation from Republican Dan Coats] was wrong." Gigot called any Wag the Dog accusations “frivolous.”
The National Review editorial ( http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr082198.html ):
“Whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, surely Sandy Berger and Bill Cohen would not take part in any wag-the-dog scenario. Republicans who suggest otherwise–including, to our astonishment and his embarrassment, the usually sober Sen. Dan Coats (R., Ind.)–should be ashamed of themselves. President Clinton should instead be commended for finally responding appropriately to a terrorist attack.”
Pat Buchanan ( http://www.mclaughlin.com/library/transcript.asp?id=46 )(at the time still considered somewhat within the realm of the mainstream):
“there was every justification for it. It was a retaliatory strike, it’s a pre-emptive strike, it was decided a week ahead of time, unanimously in the Ex Com of the National Security Council. There is not a scintilla of evidence that the president timed this for political reasons, and I think the Republicans who have stood behind the president in these strikes are exactly right.”
How about those right-wing conspirators in the mainstream press?
DATELINE NBC ( Error ) devoted a December 1999 piece directly using clips from the film to question the basis for the bombing.
Frank Bruni in the NYT had a whole article devoted to the exploration of the “wag the dog” hypothesis ( Is Life Imitating Art? 'Wag the Dog' Springs to Many Minds )[i]
Hmmmm – what happened to ALL those right-wingers?
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
a load of crap…
…
Wreckless wrote:
Just keep repeating he went ballistic.
The morons that vote for Bush will start to believe the lie. Eventually. Not there yet.
Also, keep posting parts of the interview on the internet. Not the full interview. The full interview shows how Clinton whipped your boy.
And boy, did he whip your boy. It was beautifull.
So, never the full interview. Only parts. Ok?[/quote]
Look, we realize that you have trouble with reading comprehension as English isn’t your first language, but if you’re going to try to parse out something, please do try to get the point.
Otherwise, stick to your wonderfully witty insults: “Your brother has the most retarded brother.” A classic of sandbox reparte. Really, how do you do it?
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Also, I made this point earlier, but Tom Maguire makes it more fully – for those who think Clinton’s genius was more at work than his temper:
vroom wrote:
Oh please.
It’s easy to find hatchet jobs of either stripe if you are willing to scour the blogosphere.
You are making me laugh posting all this bullshit like it actually contains facts instead of pure opinion. It’s perhaps half a misstep above the level of the Rush job done by Rush.[/quote]
vroom,
While you can put together a better sentence than Wreckless, your post was just as tertiary to the main point. If you want to change the subject, why bother quoting my post at all?
I don’t get it! Who cares what action was or wasn’t taken 6-8-10-12 years ago. This is still no predictor of what has since ocurred.
If the best the Republicans have is to bash the former Pres. that is telling.
If the best the Dems. can throw up to the American public is someone who made decisions 7 years ago then that is also telling.
Not one of you know the truth as it happened back then. How can you then critique any statements?
It is quite clear Clinton is the quintessential public speaker and politician. He handled himself quite well, of that there can/should be little argument. So what!! He is a performer, that is what he did best.
And who the F on here said they feel safer with Rumsfeld in any position of power. This guy has really bungled the entire matter and the Rep.'s should have bounced him long ago.
I would like to second the poster who wants clarification from hspder about not trusting Rice with his car keys. She has been very successful in all that she has tried. She is obviously very intelligent and seems to be very in control of her emotions and thoughts.
This place is getting just like congress. Noone wants to discuss. Everything immediately turns party and the discussion turns ridiculous.