Consider this a companion peace to the earlier “Rights.”
I’ve noticed a recurring theme in many political discussions in which I’ve engaged, and what it boils down to is this: “How dare you criticize Bush when your hero, Bill Clinton, has done the same or worse.”
Putting aside that I’ve never said Clinton was my hero…indeed, putting aside that I’ve openly stated he embarrassed the office of the presidency…
…that makes it okay…how?
See, that’s what I don’t comprehend. Bush supporters spouting high dudgeon that he’s criticized for his actions when, of course, conservative pundits never said ANYTHING harsh about Clinton in the entire eight years of his presidency. Not a word, not a syllable.
Is anyone suffocating on the double standard? Because I certainly am.
Right on this board, it was stated, in referencing the Dixie Chicks, that Trent Lott was on solid ground suggesting Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo was a dodge to distract from impeachment proceedings, and how Lott was then being made to apologize. So why, too, shouldn’t the Dixie Chicks be made to apologize? Let us not even discuss that a passing remark by a singer is simply not comparable to an inflammatory prejudicial remark made by a senior member of a governing board about to pass judgment on the chief executive (tantamount to a judge saying, “The defendant’s hired a high price lawyer, probably to try and make him seem less guilty when he comes before me.”)
Instead let us ponder the double standard. Lott’s remark is understandable, acceptable. But opine that perhaps, maybe, Bush was motivated to go after Saddam because his vow to bring in Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” (remember that?) has proven fruitless and he’s worried it’ll hurt his re-election chances, and suddenly you’re showing unpatriotic disrespect for the office of the presidency.
The message is clear. Clinton was fair game. Bush isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, because we’re at war. Which, it might be observed, is exactly the status that he craved. Keep the people off balance, keep them running scared, so they’ll be too afraid to make a change in 2004 (or, as one poster said in positively Bushian style, 2006.)
JFK, endeavoring to speak German, informed the people of Berlin, “I am a jelly doughnut.” That doesn’t make it okay that our current president can’t string two sentences together without it being an adventure. FDR signed a document consigning Japanese American citizens to prison camps. That doesn’t make beyond reproach the enacting of acts violating fundamental aspects of privacy and due process. I mean, how far back do you want to take it? Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. That’s MUCH worse than authorizing burglaries and covering them up, so Richard Nixon should never have resigned from office.
Someone asked me if I thought we’d have invaded Iraq if Gore were president. I’m thinking no. Why? Because even if he’d wanted to, Congress would never have given him the authority to do so. Besides, they’d be too busy with month eighteen of probes into the security lapses that allowed the destruction of the WTC and trying to blame it on him. My belief is that, rather than 9/11 defining his presidency, it would have been the trigger for attack dogs to have been let loose with one simple message: Terrorists think Gore is weak and therefore attacked us. This never would have happened with a Republican in the White House.
But blame Bush? Naaaah.
Double standard. Conjecture, granted…but not wholly without foundation, I think.
No one should be above consideration and criticism. And this attitude of trying to punish the critics or excuse the subject of criticism because others have allegedly done the same or worse, rather than giving thought to what’s being said…
…now THAT’S unAmerican.
• 
Here’s it goes again. Arguing over Bush’s and Clinton’s records of service. WHAT’S THE POINT?!? Do you expect pro-Bush folks to go, “geez, I guess that ISN’T a fair comparison…”??
THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE FACTS. Facts have been so degraded now, they only serve as the starting point for spin.
The best you’ll get from them is “both sides do it”, which sounds relatively benign, but is still a get-out-of-jail-free card for any responsibility on their part.
Folks, the game is RIGGED.
Well, since you asked…
What percentage of newspaper endorsements did Al Gore get in 2000 compared with the 48.5% of the popular vote he got?
Based on numbers from Gore2004us.com (surely a source that would bias to the left, yes?), of 211 “Leading US Newspapers”, 99 (46.9%) endorsed Bush, 98.5 (46.7%) endorsed Gore, 7.5 (3.6%)endorsed Nader, and five (2.4%) made no endorsement (the two half-newspapers were because the Austin Chronicle endorsed both Gore and Nader).
How many of the weekend news shows are being run by former Democratic politicos?
This one’s a little tougher to get the numbers on. I’m running the TV Guide listings for my local area, starting at midnight Saturday morning, running through 11:59 Sunday evening. Here’s what I’ve got:
25 hosts spread out across 23 shows (10 of which air on the generally conservative Fox News; it’s next closest competitor is CNBC with 4). Of these, Tony Snow (of Fox News’s Weekend Live with Tony Snow) worked in the Bush Sr. White House, Brian Williams (of CNBC’s The News With Brian Williams) worked in the Carter White House, Lawrence Kudlow (of CNBC’s Kudlow & Cramer) worked in the Reagan and Bush Jr. White Houses, and George Stephanopolous, as already covered, hosts ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopolous. (And all this is without mentioning Oliver North’s show on Fox News.)
How many Republican presidential candidates got invited by a top journalism school to teach a class on a subject they know nothing about, as Al Gore did?
Okay, there ya got me; probably none (but I will point out, it’s not uncommon for politicians to be invited to be honorary professors of areas other than their expertise).
Interesting how those numbers go, isn’t it?
Anyways, I am glad to see so many people (Peter David included) underestimating the inteligence of Pres. Bush. It means he is even more likely to reelected.
Are you kidding? Lack of intelligence is his greatest asset. Expectations for him going into the debate with Gore were so low that all he had to do was not drool on the podium and not trip, and people responded with, “Well, he’s not *so* bad…” Gore would have needed God to show up in a burst of flame and high five him in order to impress people.
PAD
**Gore would have needed God to show up in a burst of flame and high five him in order to impress people.
**
Ok, you got me there. I would have been impressed if God had appeared in a burst of flame and had high fived Gore. Then again, if God had appeared, the liberal media would have censored it . . . just kidding. 😉 God would have just appeared on Fox News, giving it yet another ratings boost!
Who had better grades in college…Bush or Gore? The answer may suprise you. Yeah yeah I know grades aren’t everything but during the election people were saying that Gore had better grades than bush which just isn’t true. If you don’t believe me I’ll post a reference.
The news media may be owned by 95% conservative organizations (I don’t know that it is, and I would guess it isn’t)
And your guess would be wrong. Large media folks like the Cowles newspapers, the Knights, the Hearsts, the Pulliams (y’know….Dan Quayle’s family), the Chandlers, the Blethens and so forth are all almost all Republican and are avowedly conservative. The NY Times and the Washington Post might be excepetions to that (and somewhat prominent exceptions), but looking at the ownership of these corportions will not reveal few people who are noticeably liberal. And the smaller presses tend to be evevn more conservative than the bigger, more cosmopolitan chains.
Given that (and it’s kinda easy to match up the Hearst and Knight papers with their op-ed pieces), what does that say about ownership? That they don’t really care about the politics of their employees, as long as they sell papers. ‘Cause they certainly have the power to change the slant of their editorials and news if they wanted to….
Hard to say. Kind of liked McCain, actually.
The closest I ever saw McCain come to hypocrisy was during the South Carolina primary, when he said it was up to the South Carolina voters what to do with the Confederate flag. After the election, he admitted he’d said it out of political expediency, and said that was his one regret of the campaign, that he hadn’t denounced the flag.
Of course, that was an ugly primary all around, with Bush operatives calling South Carolina voters to inform them the McCains had a “black child in their family” (they have a [then 8-year old] adopted daughter from Bangladesh, where Cindy McCain did aid work), and making an issue out of his Cindy’s past addiction to prescription painkillers (she’d been in a car accident). Sweet people Bush pals around with, huh?
And now McCain is at it again, opposing the Bush tax cut for the rich. Why he won’t run as an independent in ’04, I don’t understand… he’d pull in voters fron across the political spectrum, and wouldn’t have to deal with ugly Republican primaries.
Apologies if this has been said already but I haven’t the time to read every post in this interesting thread.
My take is that this whole issue revolves around hypocrisy.
When Clinton was in office, his each and every transgression was defended by the Clintonistas as “you should support the president” or “its not proper to criticize the president.” Bushites are simply pointing out that now, with the roles reversed, and especially in a time of war, why don’t those same rules apply?
I mean, during the Lewinsky hearing, how many times was Clinton defended as “its not our business” or “he’s a busy guy and we shouldn’t be bothering him with trivial matters like Oval Office BJ’s.”
My point is they wanted to place the presidency on a pedastal, above critique, reproach and even the law. So now Bush is in office and all the people who passionately cried out for kid gloves on Clinton are firing scud missles at Bush.
Basically, I think the issue boils down not to who did wrong and how wrong it was but rather “Do you think its proper to criticize the president?” Your answer may be “yes” today but the rub lies in the fact that the answer for many Democrats 6 years ago was “no.” And you can’t have it both ways.
Robert asks:
To those who say Bush failed to get international support for the Iraq war, I have a question:
Under what circumstances do you think France would have supported a Security Council resolution supporting regime change, and if the answer is none, under which circumstances would it be acceptable to go to war against Iraq anyway?
I have no idea what it would take to turn France’s position around — but it’s a false question. You cast it as though France’s opposition and France’s opposition ONLY is what constituted our “lack of international support.”
Not so. We couldn’t even get a simple majority of the Security Council on board, and that’s after attempting some serious bribery in the bargain. Nor was a majority of the General Assembly in favor, unless my memory is seriously faulty. Even countries that officially supported us had huge segments of their populations opposed to the war.
France is not the primary problem here. If everyone else were on board and France were still acting snarky, I’d probably have been willing to see us ignore the U.N. That’s not what happened.
Meanwhile, Chris observes:
My take is that this whole issue revolves around hypocrisy.
When Clinton was in office, his each and every transgression was defended by the Clintonistas as “you should support the president” or “its not proper to criticize the president.” Bushites are simply pointing out that now, with the roles reversed, and especially in a time of war, why don’t those same rules apply?
Okay, others have already commented on the “especially in a time of war” bit. Wartime is, if anything, a time when it’s even MORE crucial to have dissenters around to make sure that the folks in charge can explain coherently and ethically why we’re suddenly deciding it’s a good idea to kill lots of some other country’s people.
As for the “it’s not right to criticize the President” argument, it’s hogwash. Clinton was savaged by many congressional Dems during the first year or two of his administration, and I’m far from happy about lots of the things he did. He did a lot more good than harm, but that didn’t stop me from pointing out objectionable things when I saw them.
I mean, during the Lewinsky hearing, how many times was Clinton defended as “its not our business” or “he’s a busy guy and we shouldn’t be bothering him with trivial matters like Oval Office BJ’s.
Um … I can only speak for myself here, but my argument was certainly not that “he’s a busy guy.” “It’s not our business” would be a lot closer to my view. I don’t especially give a dámņ about Bush’s sexual activity either — if it showed evidence of hypocrisy I’d find it worth discussing, but certainly not worth bringing the entire dámņ country to a halt.
In the scheme of things, what’s more dangerous to the country — someone who’ll get a bløwjøb in the Oval Office, or someone who believes that “the jury is still out on evolution” and puts people in power accordingly?
I know of very, very few people who wanted the presidency placed on a pedestal during the Clinton years — and that includes most of the people who voted him in in the first place. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but it doesn’t match the conversations I had in the least.
Is it proper to criticize the president?
Yes. Always and often. Especially when we’re at war. Even more especially when … nah, I’ll leave the ad-hominems for another time.
TWL
Um, neither of those articles show any example of someone being held down or refused work or being oppressed based on their right-leaning politics.
Are there a lot of liberals in Hollywood? Well, duh … but that’s not the issue. Bo Derek may think Hollywood liberals are close-minded and obstinant to deal with but she never even hinted that her being conservative has affected her career. Same with Selleck and the rest of them.
“Hollywood [liberals] are very adamant and almost militant about their views,” Bo Derek recently told the New York Post. “It’s tough to have a nice, open conversation of any kind. People get really angry, and they treat me as though I’m some hateful monster. I have been told that I’ll never work again.”
Perhaps I’m just easier to please, but I’d call that a hint.
Thank you Peter, for a fascinating exhange, and to those who took the time to express their opinions, most of which have been thoughtful, well-reasoned and more often than not, backed up with the appropriate documentation. It’s interesting to note that this discussion is taking place at the same time that transcripts of the McCarthy hearings are finally being unsealed. As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I’m also confounded by those who keep insisting that Clinton was a better president than Dubya, or vice versa. To me, it’s like saying Chang was better than Eng. Maybe so, but they’re both Siamese twins, with no more than a few inches of space between them.
We’re living in a world of absurdity. We have a president who dresses himself up as Tom Cruise in Top Gun so that his presidential campaign has images of the right stuff, which they can now use to get him re-elected. We talk about our God-given right of free speech, but those who express the wrong opinions get shouted down or called unpatriotic. We just went to war to disarm a country to whom we provided weapons, and now we can’t even find them! And here’s my favorite: the one true war hero in the current admistration is the guy who’s been pushing for peace as secretary of state- and being overruled by a group of Hawks, almost none of whom ever saw combat themselves.
Peter, if you’ll permit me the indulgence, I’d like to share a quote I ran across a few days ago, which amused me to no end: ‘For he argued thus: that the use of speech was to make us understand each other, and to receive information of facts; now if anyone said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him, and I am so far from receiving information that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing Black when it is White, and Short when it is Long. And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying , so perfectly well understood, and so universally practiced among human creatures.’ It’s from Gulliver’s Travels, ironically during his visit to the land of the Yahoos. In light of this discussion, it seemed oddly appropriate.
Missed that line, sorry ’bout that.
Honestly, and I’m not saying this to back pedal, Bo Derek’s hardly a reliable source and one person saying something with no one corroborating or agreeing or even acknowledging doesn’t exactly make her points golden.
There are many conservatives in Hollywood, operating in plain sight. They’re hardly being oppressed.
I call it the “so’s your old man” riposte
I remember an analysis of the “Clinton-draft dodging” stories. The analysis concluded that, since Bill Clinton was the first Baby Boomer running for president, the story was “oversold”. Later Boomers would not be subject to the same scrutiny because it was no longer considered a big deal. That story was written in 1993.
As a result, GWB got a pass on his Vietnam days. Justifiably so, imho. Like Quayle and Clinton, I thought the whole set of Vietnam stories were irrelevant. I don’t know of very many 18-20 year olds, no matter how “legal” they are on a sheet of paper, think things through very clearly. That’s actually a good reason for them to be IN the military at that age.
If you want a real comparison of Clinton and Bush, look at them as governors. Both did pretty well. Clinton got credit for being a moderate Democrat in a southern state trying to move the party to the center. Bush worked with both parties in Texas and with the Lt Governor (who really controls the legislature) to make things happen.
In their presidency’s, Clinton inherited an economy in recovery, Bush in recession. Clinton raised taxes as soon as he started because of the recovery, Bush lowered them because of the recession. Deficits were the result of both. In his first two years, Clinton was projecting deficits for a decade until the Republican Congress came in and forced a balanced budget.
As far as criticism goes, they both deserve it. Clinton disgraced the office. Bush is still too reactionary post-9/11.
Policies during war can be questioned, though it must be done carefully. Those protesters who physically attacked members of the National Guard go over the line. Those who try to incite riots go too far. Those who express concern for the direction of the policy are right to do so.
“Expectations for him going into the debate with Gore were so low that all he had to do was not drool on the podium and not trip, and people responded with, “Well, he’s not *so* bad…” Gore would have needed God to show up in a burst of flame and high five him in order to impress people.”
Well, that’s all very clever and all but the truth is, Gore was dreadful. In the first debate he tried to go all alpha male and came off as a jerk. In the second he must have been screamed at by all of his handlers because he went 180 degrees in the opposite direction and appeared to have been pithed or something.
he found a better balance by the third debate but it doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence that he bats, at best, a whooping 333 against the man his supporters call Mr Stupid.
But hey, I’m sure those Think Tank candidates I saw on the podium in South Carolina the other night will mop the floor with him.
If not…at what point does the refusal to admit you’ve been outwitted become stuborn hubris?
Bill Mulligan is right: for somebody who was supposedly so intelligent, Al Gore performed incredibly poorly in the debates. I may be completely off the mark here, but I got the feeling that Gore was given consistently bad advice, while Bush’s advice was much better. Plus he had the hindsight of a dad/former president to draw on as well, which probably didn’t hurt.
Having said that, if the theory of quantum physics is actually true, there’s a parallel universe out there somewhere, in which Bill Bradley and John McCain fought each other for the presidency. And the phrases ‘hanging chad,’ ‘lockbox’ and ’embedded’ all had a very different meaning…
About the only thing I can do is repeat the obvious fact that most politicians are proud hypocrites. They know that most people’s memories of typical political events lasts about a year: then the same old tactics will work again. I will add that most people following politics are as bad or worse: cheerleaders for their own sides, who only use logic when it serves their purposes directly. Appreciation of truth has never been common in human societies, but its semblance has always been popular. It is comforting to think that politicians supporting your cause are morally spotless, but not many people want honesty stopping anyone from supporting their favorite causes.
PAD:
No one should be above consideration and criticism. And this attitude of trying to punish the critics or excuse the subject of criticism because others have allegedly done the same or worse, rather than giving thought to what’s being said…
Oh, I agree totally with you here. Unfortunately, too many people aren’t being critical of Bush, they are being insulting. If you (the royal you…not neccessarily you Peter David) don’t like the presidents actions or motivations, then by all means feel free to speak out. We need the debate. If it’s just a knee jerk item like “we’re ashamed he’s from Texas” or “he’s stupid”, then that’s not lending anything to the conversation.
I’m a news junkie, and had never heard anything about Bush’s missing months from the Air Guard. I took some time to look it up and found a lot of sites that say the time he missed was anywhere between 1 year and 2 years. And most of these sites have links to each other. I’m not saying they are untrue, but there seems to be no solid story about his absence (from the critics or from Bush himself). It makes me curious…but in the same way I’m curious about the stories of Bill Clinton using the Arkansas Highway Patrol to pick up women for him. Both are bad if true, but there have not been enough answers on either for me to reach a conclusion. And I honestly believe that if there was a story there, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather would have been all over it. Or at least a 3 part Nightline followed by a 90 minute town hall segment on Friday night.
When Clinton was in office, his each and every transgression was defended by the Clintonistas as “you should support the president” or “its not proper to criticize the president.” Bushites are simply pointing out that now, with the roles reversed, and especially in a time of war, why don’t those same rules apply?
You must have read different debates than I did.
PAD
I think Gore’s problem in the debates stemmed from the fact that while he is intelligent and eloquent, he is also a very dull speaker. He speaks in too much of a monotone which promotes sleep or distraction from what he is saying. It’s much more entertaining to watch someone stumble over their speech and Bush showed much more emotion. I remember how entertaining Admiral Stockdale was when he was running with Perot! Laughed my fanny off I did!
I read your statements Peter and I’m always wondering if we would have even had 9/11 occur if Gore had become president.
In my opinion one of the reasons Bush Jr. hasn’t done his part to really look for Osama is because Daddy doesn’t want him to.
Records clearly show (though no one ever really wants to talk bout them that when Bush Sr. was head of the CIA, he helped fund weapons and money to Bin Laden in Afghanistan back before anyone would have ever thought of him as a major threat. They were both after the same goals then.
But since 9/11, this fact has been swept under the rug. And there were never any overt foreign terrorism attacks made on US soil during the Clinton era.
But, this isn’t a “he did it cause Republicans are in the office” statement. It’s a “he did it cause Bush’s son is in the office” statement.
I feel 9/11 was as well a personal statement to Bush and his son for their own part in not only putting Bin Laden in this position but then I’m sure slapping him in the face afterwards and screwing him over (not there’s anything wrong with that specificially).
And what happened after: He pleged to get Bin Laden, promptly ignored Bin Laden, and went after Hussein, a man who while I’m glad to see deposed and an event which while I’m sure was a long time in coming, was brought on by unamerican wants and needs and desires.
And there’s still no body, so he’s out there somewhere no doubt plotting something against us.
But it won’t come with Jr. in the office. It’s not gonna come till later when we’ve gotten complacent and not ready for any surprises.
Evan Meadow wrote:
>In my opinion one of the reasons
>Bush Jr. hasn’t done his part to
>really look for Osama is because
>Daddy doesn’t want him to.
Pure rubbish.
>And what happened after: He pleged
>to get Bin Laden, promptly ignored
>Bin Laden,
I’m baffled at this sort of thinking. Do you honestly think the govt. doesn’t want to catch Bin Landen? That they have completely given up looking for him?
Honestly, I think the “what about the other guy who did it too” question should sometimes be asked. Because it too is about double standards. It’s a legitimate question to ask “If you’re saying Bush is bad for X, what do you have to say about person Y, who I’ve heard you support, who also did X?” The idea is, if you excuse it in one and not in another, it’s made clear you’re arguing from an improper illogical foundation. The opponent is then free to dismiss your views.
Now, I grant this argument rarely has such goals behind it. It’s most often a poorly done and transparently hostile deflection. The aim is to fuzz the issue and ignore a proper argument by putting the critic on the defensive without asnwering the points. But I don’t automatically put aside such questions, because they can in theory be valid points and a good check of the consistency and validity of ones beliefs. My stock answer is, “If Y person did the exact same thing, they’d be wrong too, and here’s why.”
—
Burt Ward, adding random ramblings at 2am
I read your statements Peter and I’m always wondering if we would have even had 9/11 occur if Gore had become president.
I’m thinking yes. The only difference would be that Gore would have been blamed for it.
In my opinion one of the reasons Bush Jr. hasn’t done his part to really look for Osama is because Daddy doesn’t want him to.
Look, God knows I’m not the guy’s biggest fan, but even I have trouble buying into that notion.
PAD
Considering the discussion going on now and over the past week or so, these seem to resonate well:
http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2003/05/05/
http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2003/05/02/
When Clinton was in office, his each and every transgression was defended by the Clintonistas as “you should support the president” or “its not proper to criticize the president.” Bushites are simply pointing out that now, with the roles reversed, and especially in a time of war, why don’t those same rules apply?
You must have read different debates than I did.
All I know is in the middle of the whole Lewinsky mess, I turned on Bill Maher and day after day he would mock, belittle and openly shout down any person who dared to criticize a president he liked (Clinton).
I remember Bruce Willis stirring controversy when he mentioned what an embarrassment Clinton was to the office.
In fact, I remember whenever somebody on some talk show would denigrate Clinton, he’d be met with a chorus of boos and catcalls.
Does any of this sound familiar to anybody? How quickly people forget. You can color distinctions about behavior and presidents however you like…the end fact is that the Republicans are using the same arguments against Democrats that the former used against the latter lo those many years ago.
Can somebody just tell me exactly why this should be controversial and/or suprising??
Oh, and the fact that the impeachment hearing broke along almost exact party lines seems to have been forgotten by the majority of you. So lets stop with this “plenty of Democrats abandoned Clinton” nonsense.
FYI, for what its worth, I voted for both Bush and Clinton and if the Dems can field a decent candidate, won’t be voting for him again…but because I feel his economy handling is laughable..not because of some grade-school level insults about his speechifying ability or some minor military usage (don’t all presidents do that?).
Chris
Is there a “liberal” media? Well, I can’t answer the question definitively. Who could?
But I was a reporter for five years, up until about a year ago. One of the reasons that I got out of the business was the conservative foundation.
It’s not a political left and right kinda thing. It’s just that the media, for all its reputation for doing “anything” just to get readers/viewers, is in fact terrified of doing anything that will shake up the views held by its audience.
Granted, I was still pretty low on the totem pole of media outlets but what I found was that if you wanted to write the truth about any story instead of something that made blue-haired old ladies comfortable while they were eating their corn flakes in the morning, you were considered a trouble-making freak.
Now in theory, you would rise above this “fear of offending anyone” as you got to media outlets that took pride in their reputations for telling the truth, consequences be dámņëd but my belief was that if you had to work your way up by constantly censoring yourself, how honest were you when you got to the position where you could write the “truth”?
My point is that for whatever reason, the public is behind this war. I personally think we’re lynching Negroes. A black man raped a white girl and since we can’t find that black man, we’re going to ride into the outskirts of town and lynch a black man because you know how those people are and even if he claims he wasn’t involved in that rape, he must have been up to something and if you have any kind of problem with that, you’re obviously in favor of little girls getting raped.
So expecting the media to bring you the truth in this situation makes no sense. It’s a business. They’re in it to make money like any other business and any thoughts that the media has a higher calling is just idealistic nonsense. They’re there to keep you watching between deodorant and fast food commercials. They give the customer what they want and if the customer wants happy news about the war which implies that no one is really getting hurt during this conflict (no one American, so no one who matters) that’s what they’re going to get. And as bitter as I sound, I don’t blame the media because if people wanted a more balanced news approach, there are plenty of places they could get it and if they were seeking it out, the big outlets would respond.
And if no one else has pointed this out, the poster who said that Clinton was involved in the drug trade and had more than 80 people killed to prove it, I just wanted to say that you need to add another layer to your tinfoil hat because the microwaved messages from the Communist Martians are clearly still getting through.
So much upon which to comment.
So won’t just yet.
Instead, will first pose a question:
If, during the ‘total air travel shutdown’ in the days following 9/11/01, it had been, for the aske of argument, Pres. Gore who had personally authorized the only non-military flight allowed to take off: a chartered jet, leaving Boston, destination Saudi Arabia, carrying the members of the bin Laden family and their asscoiates who were resident or visiting in the U.S. at the time, is there the teeniest probability that one side of the political spectrum would have brought the roof down over such a thing?
Now substitute the name Bush for Gore. Because that is exactly who authorized it.
And nary a peep.
Well, a few comments more.
For Jeff: pretty good short background just this Monday, including reference to material that was printed in reputable sources during the election, on the Bush/AWOL thing:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh050503.shtml
(One big problem is that so many key records are missing, and that the whole thing has been shoved under the rubric of ‘youthful indeiscretion.’)
Clinton, regardless of the inelegance of his communications and handling of the situation, was still thereafter at least subject to the draft – but his birthday date drew a number in the lottery high enough that the matter was, essentially, moot.
Won’t even attempt to explain how Bush jumped over a 100,000 person waiting list to get into the TX Nat’l. Guard in the first place.
To those who point to Clinton reducing the budget of the armed services:
a) with no imminent direct military threat, it would have, at that point in time, been imprudent not to.
b) the military many are now cheering on in Iraq and Afhanistan is the one funded by Clinton – the bulk of the equipment, force structure, etc. did not magically go from R&D directly to the battlefield in just the last 2 years.
One of the first actions by the Bush administration (I do not point directly at Bush, as I cannot say with total accuracy that it was he) was to shut down and disband the terrorism and security intelligence task force the Clinton administration had set up.
Sadly, it is impossible for me not to mention my utter and complete disagreement with nearly anything said positively about the Reagan administration.
T.R.’s quote from up above in the posts is even more apt in that it was made during WWI (granted, he was out of office and there was certainly no love lost between Roosevelt and Wilson).
Several more quotes some may find enlightening:
“Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold, and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children….This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
For one truth must rule all we think and all we do. No people can live to itself alone. The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense. The economic need of all nations—in mutual dependence—makes isolation an impossibility; not even America’s
prosperity could long survive if other nations did not also prosper. No nation can longer be a fortress, lone and strong and safe. And any people, seeking such shelter for themselves, can now build only their own prison.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957
“When even one American – who has done nothing wrong — is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”
— Harry S. Truman
“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
— Mark Twain, “Chronicle of Young Satan”
Madison’s papers and letters on why the power to invoke war was placed solely with the legislative, rather than the administrative, branch of U.S. government are also relevant, but I’m just too dog-tired to go dig out copies.
Nattered on much more than I intended. A Good Night to all.
**Records clearly show (though no one ever really wants to talk bout them that when Bush Sr. was head of the CIA, he helped fund weapons and money to Bin Laden in Afghanistan back before anyone would have ever thought of him as a major threat. They were both after the same goals then.
But since 9/11, this fact has been swept under the rug. And there were never any overt foreign terrorism attacks made on US soil during the Clinton era.**
Aimed at Bush? Are you forgetting the embassy bombings in Africa? The USS Cole? The millenium bombings (that were stopped)? All of these were attacks on US interests, though not necessarily on US soil. There was also the FIRST attack on the WTC in 1993 that people forget about. So, this wasn’t the first time.
The WTC hijackers were training in the US in the summer of 2000, before the election. Yet, you insist the bombing was directed AT Bush? Put away your conspiracy cap. These were attacks on the United States, not the President. The sooner this crap gets set aside the better.
Some One wrote:
I read your statements Peter and I’m always wondering if we would have even had 9/11 occur if Gore had become president.
PAD responded:
I’m thinking yes. The only difference would be that Gore would have been blamed for it.
PAD, come on dude. They had a congressional investigation into it to see if 9/11 was Bush’s fault.
At least one congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, was so fervent in her belief that even the Democrats had to distance themselves from her. She was voted out in the last election.
I willing to agree with you though that if Gore had been elected, 9/11 would have still happened, but both Afghanistan and Iraq would still be under previous management.
**Honestly, and I’m not saying this to back pedal, Bo Derek’s hardly a reliable source and one person saying something with no one corroborating or agreeing or even acknowledging doesn’t exactly make her points golden.
There are many conservatives in Hollywood, operating in plain sight. They’re hardly being oppressed.**
Generally speaking, those conservatives are also big box office draws who didn’t let their conservative views beknown until they WERE big names. If anything trumps politics in Hollywood, it’s MONEY.
As has been pointed out, the 9/11 attacks were planned well before it was known who would be president. In addition, there was an act of domestic terrorism linked to Osama bin Laden during Clinton’s presidency — the first WTC bombing.
As for what would have happened if Gore was in office during 9/11, we can make conjecture all we want. My conjecture is that Gore would have made a speech from Ground Zero and droned on and on about the environmental impact. The fact is we’ll never know.
As for Gore getting blamed for it, with the obvious implication that Bush did not get blamed for it, that’s hogwash. There’s an overpass near where I work where someone spray painted “BUSH KNEW”. No less a figure than Hilary Clinton stood on the floor of the Senate holding a newspaper with that headline. When it was discovered that some intelligence expert somewhere wrote a memo about terrorists crashing planes into buildings, the usual suspects went ballistic asking why Bush didn’t do anything about it.
If Gore were president at the time, and he wanted to go into Iraq, he would have had a *much* easier time getting Congressional authorization than Bush did. Republicans generally don’t go all partisan over foreign policy issues. You certainly wouldn’t have had two Republican congressmen going to Bagdhad to say they trusted Saddam more than Gore.
More on the “Clinton got a free pass” argument:
Oh, and the fact that the impeachment hearing broke along almost exact party lines seems to have been forgotten by the majority of you. So lets stop with this “plenty of Democrats abandoned Clinton” nonsense.
That’s kind of a big leap. I never said Congressional Democrats abandoned Clinton — I said they savaged him and a lot of his policies during his first term. I’ll stand by that assertion.
That’s very different from voting to remove him from office for what were, frankly, utterly nonsensical (to use your favorite term) reasons. Since when is lying about a bløwjøb tantamount to treason? (Oh, wait … since it’s Clinton. Sorry. My bad.)
Yes, the impeachment proceedings broke mostly along party lines. That would be because the Democrats recognized that Clinton’s actions, while certainly less than classy and generally deserving of scorn, were not subverting the Constitution. The Republicans were still seething over the man getting into office in the first place, and most of them were willing to push things as far as they could if it damaged Clinton in some way. (I’m sure some of them honestly felt Clinton’s actions were sufficiently horrible to merit removing, but my sense is that a lot more of them saw the Lewinsky thing as a good excuse to try forcing him out and closed ranks.)
Sure, both sides were politically motivated — but that doesn’t make the two positions equivalent or equally defensible.
On a different note, I stumbled across this a day or two ago and think it’s worth the read, long though it be. Granted, it’s from a magazine that’s not going to have any intrinsic love for Bush, but unless all the quotes presented are just flat-out lies (and thus libelous), it’s information people need to know about the folks we’ve currently got in charge and the reasons why they’ve got no worries about their environmental policies.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15814
TWL
All I know is in the middle of the whole Lewinsky mess, I turned on Bill Maher and day after day he would mock, belittle and openly shout down any person who dared to criticize a president he liked (Clinton).
And you noticed who was shut down almost immediately after 9/11?
Maher.
PAD, come on dude. They had a congressional investigation into it to see if 9/11 was Bush’s fault.
At least one congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, was so fervent in her belief that even the Democrats had to distance themselves from her. She was voted out in the last election.
Hmmm… especially since Haliburton was having direct dealings with Al Queda a month before 9/11… (and who was an ex-official of Haliburton?)
The ties of dubya to Al Queda are tenuous, but they are there.
Oh, and the fact that the impeachment hearing broke along almost exact party lines seems to have been forgotten by the majority of you. So lets stop with this “plenty of Democrats abandoned Clinton” nonsense.
I don’t know about plenty… but I abandoned Clinton. Which is the most important vote, I believe.
Clinton Republicanized the party… he backed down on too many critical issues, and accomplished very few things. As a populist democrat, I suggest people read: There’s Nothing In The Middle of The Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos and If The Gods Wanted Us To Vote, They’d Have Given Us Candidates, both by Jim Hightower.
Bill Mulligan is right: for somebody who was supposedly so intelligent, Al Gore performed incredibly poorly in the debates. I may be completely off the mark here, but I got the feeling that Gore was given consistently bad advice, while Bush’s advice was much better. Plus he had the hindsight of a dad/former president to draw on as well, which probably didn’t hurt.
Which is sad, because I have heard Al Gore speak (over the radio) on Martin Luther Kind Day. He was at a Black Church. It was a rousing amazing speach. It was shocking to me that it was Al Gore, because the year was 2000, the press had already labeled him a dull stick of wood, and the major debates hadn’t even begun.
I didn’t even know it was Gore until after the speach, and my jaw dropped.
I think Gore’s campaign manager must have been the same guy who told Bob Dole “People don’t want to hear your sense of humor.”
Travis
\\And you noticed who was shut down almost immediately after 9/11?
Maher.\\
This would be the same Bill Maher with an HBO talk show, a best-selling book under his belt, and a one-man show on Broadway? That’s an…expansive…definition of “shut down” you’re using.
PAD, come on dude. They had a congressional investigation into it to see if 9/11 was Bush’s fault.
Actually they had congressional hearings to investigate “intelligence failures” prior to 9/11. They deliberately steered clear of blaming the Bush administration.
Republicans generally don’t go all partisan over foreign policy issues.
Tell that to the people who worked on the Kyoto Accords. Or the ABM treaty, for that matter. You know, that treaty that’s supposed to limit WMD’s — unless, apparently, you happen to be us?
TWL
PAD, come on dude. They had a congressional investigation into it to see if 9/11 was Bush’s fault.
Is this the one that:
A) is still ongoing, so the “had” part is just wrong, and Bush has not been cleared of any fault;
B) they’re spending a bare 3 million dollars on, to investigate the deaths of 3000 people? As compared to the investigation into the Columbia explosion, which will spend $40 million to investigate the deaths of seven people?
“If Gore were president at the time, and he wanted to go into Iraq, he would have had a *much* easier time getting Congressional authorization than Bush did. Republicans generally don’t go all partisan over foreign policy issues.”
Well, that’s not true. Almost every decision made by our representatives is now made along party lines and that holds true for both Democrats and Republicans. A good example is the last election. There were few representatives of either party that actually wanted to find out who really won the election. Our representatives presented themeselves with the emotional maturity of 10 year olds when confronted with this problem. They split along party lines and resorted to petty bickering and insults rather than working together to determine who the winner was. During that period, I wish they would have held a total re-vote so that I could vote for someone other than Bush or Gore since they handled themselves so poorly in public. There desperately needs to be a strong third party so that things are less likely to be split down party lines.
I’m consumed with interest about Bill Bennett, especially now that his wife has laid down the law. My guess is that when she saw that he had lost 8 million dollars over the last decade, she freaked. What kind of husband does that? My guess, too, is that the real reason why he told the media that he had broken even – a lie, of course – was to put a spin on it for wifey’s benefit. If you noticed an even more ample second chin on Mr. Bennett it’s because gluttony is also not off his list of vices. Nor pride. Nor mendacity. This guy is riddled with unvirtuous holes.
For someone who writes more than 3 books a month, you sure got a lot of time to keep a lengthy journal entry!
How does he do it
I think that even worse than the “if you accuse my guy of being bad I’ll accuse your guy of being worse” argument is one that peter himself relies far too much on; the “let’s jump into Dr Doom’s Alternate Reality Machine and argue about what might have happened in the Land Of Make-Believe”.
I mean, when you say that if 9/11 had happened on Gore’s watch those mean old republicans would have blamed him and prevented him from having the kind of success that Bush (pah! feh!) has had, what kind of rational response can one give? It’s like two kids arguing over who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?
Which is actually pretty tough because Supes gave Batman a kryptonite ring just in case he got mind controlled by Magneto or something so there’s that, but, you know, Superman could just hover in the stratosphere and scorch the whole Eastern seaboard from a safe distance. So it’s kind of a toss up.
Republicans generally don’t go all partisan over foreign policy issues.
Tell this to all the Republicans who criticized Clinton for attacking Iraq in Operation Desert Fox. They didn’t seem to think Iraq was a threat in 1999 but get a Republican in the WH and things change.
Republican opposition to Operation Desert Fox, such as it was, was not based on whether they thought Iraq was a threat. It was based on the perception that Clinton was using his power as commander in chief to get himself out of impeachment. As it turned out, Operation Desert Fox ended just as Clinton was impeached, and I can’t think of one way the bombing campaign benefitted America or the world.
Keep in mind this was the same president who chose the day of Monica Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony to bomb an aspirin factory in the Sudan. It’s not like convenient timing was out of character for Clinton.
As for Kyoto, the ABM, or the Florida recount debacle, what do any of those things have to do with whether a Republican congressman supports a Democratic president on foreign policy issues?
Hey Robert, when exactly was Clinton impeached? Where was the guilty verdict?
Republican opposition to Operation Desert Fox, such as it was, was not based on whether they thought Iraq was a threat. It was based on the perception that Clinton was using his power as commander in chief to get himself out of impeachment.
There’s the rub, if Saddam Hussein was such a threat then why should motivation matter? The fact of the matter is that nearly everytime Clinton ordered troops into action there was always some Republican in Congress denouncing it. Let’s not forget our friend Tom Delay blaming Clinton for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Ken,
It’s a common misconception that Impeachment means removal. It doesn’t. Impeachment is the trial in the Senate. Clinton was Impeached, but not removed. In other words, he was put on trial and acquitted. People act like the Impeachment trial was terrible, but Clinton had his day in court, which is not a bad thing.
The anti-Dixie Chicks hysteria continues…
DJs Suspended for Playing Dixie Chicks
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030506/ap_on_en_mu/djs_dixie_chicks_3
As for Kyoto, the ABM, or the Florida recount debacle, what do any of those things have to do with whether a Republican congressman supports a Democratic president on foreign policy issues?
And again the argument changes midstream.
The statement was not referring to “does a GOP congressman support a Democratic president?” It was, and I quote you exactly, “Republicans don’t go all partisan about foreign policy issues.” Kyoto and ABM are two very prominent examples of that claim having difficulties where the truth is concerned. (Florida I’ll grant you, as it’s not a foreign policy issue.)
Desert Fox is an even better piece of evidence. Why was it wrong to go after Saddam then and not now? For those who say “oh, but that was just convenient timing by Clinton because of impeachment and so fair game for criticism”, how the hëll is that any different from delaying an aircraft carrier’s return by a day just so Bush can get a 2004 campaign commercial ready? THAT’S not convenient timing?
TWL
Whatever anyone’s opinions on this, let me point out that if Saddam is a dictator, and there has been evidence that he tortured people in prisons in Iraq, well I for one am glad that his regime is now crushed to pieces. And the bonus? The price of oil, transportation and gasoline’s been going down too! And then, with any luck, the price of books, movies, electronics, groceries, and even comics could go down too!
I suppose the way to put it is that while even I’m not a Bush supporter, I most certainly DO support the war on Iraq.