The attention given to most issues involving Clinton is in inverse proportion to their importance. Or how about a Kossian version of Gresham's law where bad discourse drives out good.Neither Hillary Clinton nor any other Democratic candidate wants to stay in Iraq forever. Neither Hillary Clinton nor any other Democratic candidate wants to drop bombs on Iran. The same "progressive" Dem-haters who once called Al Gore a corporatist whore now perpetuate these hallucinations.
One of the most important points made by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons in The Hunting of te President concerns the problem of the pseudo-hip. Back in the 1990s, anyone who doubted the various anti-Clinton stories floating around (Clinton killed Vince Foster, Clinton killed Ron Brown, Clinton ordered the Waco kids burned so he could eat their roasted flesh on Walpurgisnacht) were regarded as naive rubes by folks who insisted that they just knew better.
Remember those guys? Remember the rolled eyes, the smug smirks, the attempts to win arguments through belittlement instead of the accumulation of evidence? "Oh, you don't really believe that Foster killed himself, do you?" Snort. Snicker. A condescending pat on the head.
These people -- many of them on the left -- considered themselves among the Illuminated, among the Truly Plugged In -- simply because they presumed the worst of a Democratic politician. Never mind the paucity of proof.
Illuminates of this stripe now tell us that Hillary wants to nuke Tehran. They will say similar things about Obama or Edwards if Hillary were to drop out. The real message: They're all corrupt, so don't bother voting. Let the Repubicans win.
Now as in the '90s, I find the pseudo-hipsters infuriating.
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Well, I didn't think they were even pseudo-hip. They listened to talk radio and watched Limbaugh (remember when he was on TV?) but wouldn't admit it. They were like moles, they loved trying to read Hitchens and Cockburn while hating themselves for being semiliterate. They're the ones who said "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush". They did coke and could afford to get off DUIs.
If you ask me, I think Hillary's fate is already sealed, but we don't know what it is yet. I expect a 1964-like landslide in her favor plus veto-proof Democratic majorities in Congress (to keep her balanced and in check); Lani Guinier as the Attorney General; Naomi Wolf her first Supreme Court nominee (I just want to watch her turn Orrin Hatch into a sobbing penitent); and I want Bill to play sax at her Inaugural Ball! Anything less will be disappointing, but loving Hillary now is the best foreplay I've ever had in an election.
Personal anecdote: last year I was driving on I-40 in Arkansas, and a black Chevy or GMC Jimmy passed me, its windows darkened, its Arkansas license plate: HRC-1. (The Italians have a saying, "Even if it isn't true, it's well imagined".)
The so-called progressives have forgotten the need for unity in the base which is required to win elections. The inner-party bickering that goes on benefits nobody but the opposition.
Vote For Hillary Online
well, I'm guess I'm a semiliterate hipster i guess-- I still think that Bill knew about Mena, I still believe in Michael Parenti's views of the Dems, and well if Vince Foster's death was by his own hands, it certainly was unlike Jose Trias, and Danny Casolaro (and later David Kelly), Britt Hume's son, Dan Lasater's friend Ghandi.... and I believe that SIBPATSWR*
*but there's a WR there --within reason-- and not just because the GOP is full of closeted sexual weirdos (as opposed to closeted hot huma huma... i guess?) but also because they seem to get into wars more readily than the gop (of course, Carter was no saint when it came to East Timor, Bill in Bosnia..) but WITHIN REASON. So at the end of the day you have that one vote. And even if they are 90% the same (does ADM give more to the GOP than the DEMs? yeah $1M to the right and only $900K to the dems... do the dems ignore Raytheon's needs? or heed Eisenhower's warning of the military/industrial?) But that 10% difference really does mean a lot.
And for the record, i don't do coke, never watched Rush, and i did say a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. And again up here in Canada (where we just voted in our very own Rightwing Christian zealot) that a vote for the NDP (left of our Liberals) and derided my friends in the Green Party for helping put a reactionary bastard in office. At the end of the day when i saw that our canadian Liberal party was going to loose, I actually voted for them (as opposed to my standard ruining of my ballot-- which i have always done, knowing full well in advance that the Libs were going to walk away with the crown) when push comes to shove you have to do the best with what you got.
I guess that's why I don't feel a kinship with the purists. I know you have to be pragmatic on certain levels... but that does not mean that I have to cow tow, stop questioning, or wear the team/gang colours.
I think the best thing you have done for me, Joe, (aside from some corrections, making me re-read Dark Alliances to see there is no Parking Meter mentioned..) is that you helped me see the difference between puritanism and radicalism. And I thank god/alla/flying-spagetti-monster that you yourself are a radical Joseph (maybe a different stripe and age than us young crazies, but) and people like Saul Alinsky, who showed that when it really matters, your vote is only one thing.. you can actually act, do your homework, organize, and get real change happening. Regardless of what is happening on the grand chessboard...
-lee (your submissions have changed.. i can't sign in like normal = (
The Vince Foster case is far from settled, imo. I consider it most likely that some part of the official story is wrong, and that either he didn't commit suicide at all, or that if he did it, he did it somewhere other than the park and was transported there.
(Apparently, no keys in the car, no keys on his person, until they appeared in the morgue with the arrival of some WH staff, suddenly then 'found!' in his clothing, which had already been searched previously for exactly these keys with a null result).
Does that mean I'm a Clinton hater, or that I think one or both of them were involved? No I'm not, and not necessarily, respectively.
If some credible explanation can be found for why Vince Foster as White House Counsel took repeated one day trips to Switzerland, the case would begin to be resolvable. Not until then, however, imo.
I have a long history of arguing the pro-Clinton side against anti-Clinton conspiracy theories (not here, but back in the old days of the Rush forum on Compuserve, etc.). Plenty of ridiculous positions were put out there, and deserved push back. However, the Vince Foster matter isn't some outlandish issue, but rather, a genuine mystery with significant outstanding issues yet to be resolved.
The unanimity of the 'nothing to see here' extended (quite oddly) to inveterate Clinton-hater R. Emmett Tyrell's 'The American Spectator,' where the review of the book 'The Strange Case of Vince Foster' was so scathing and dismissive as to p-o Tyrell's backer, Richard Mellon Scaife into withdrawing his financial support from the magazine. (!)
There is a reason Bill Clinton as Arkansas governor uniquely, I believe, sent his National Guard units down to train in Central America **with the freaking Contras**. Three or four biographers assert Bill Clinton was recruited into the Agency out of Georgetown U., one claiming a source seeing his 201 (employment) file (iirc). Various details of his college days overseas travels, such as how he supposedly afforded these tickets and lodging expenses, would be explained if he was on the Agency payroll, as these biographers assert.
...sofla
Let's differentiate a bit here between the tinfoil hat crowd and those who truly believe our nation needs a leader less "moderate" than Hillary Clinton.
I don't think we have a situation where a few Democrats sniping at the front-runner are going to give the Republicans any ammunition they don't already have. Clinton-hatred is in the Republican Party DNA.
There are many, myself included, who believe that we have strayed far from our Constitutional moorings and have a Republic in mortal danger. We want a leader who will halt the dangerous increase in executive power, and who will restore the rule of law by holding the criminals in the current administration responsible for their actions.
Will we get such a leader from the Democrats? Unlikely, but should we simply keep quiet and allow a centrist to get the nomination? Would that help the party win in November? I think not.
So sofla what you're saying about Clinton is that he agreed to the plan whereby he would commit perjury in a non-political, non-criminal legal proceeding, and be impeached for it, and he could walk, unindicted for anything else. Wasn't that already obvious when the SCOTUS ruled 9-0 that Paula Jones could sue the POTUS about something he was alleged to have done when he was a governor? Most of us (like me) can't fathom what kind of egomaniac would seek high political office, but we can hardly fault our beloved leaders for their best qualities. Pretty much everyone was 'recruited' by gov't agencies when Bill went to college. First you took a personality test or an aptitude test or an academic interest test. Scouts would keep their eyes on the hot dog performers. A lot of money was available as scholarships and fellowships, grants, student-exchange programs, and many other awards from foundations and endowments. A lot of students take the king's shilling and never realize it. It's still like that, and students can be bought off and recruited at the same time, like happened in Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons". It's already obvious that at some time Cinton went down to the crossroads and fell down on his knees. Politicians don't kill people, bullets kill people. Why do we think politicians are ordinary people, or anything like ordinary people? They're surely not normal, either, no matter what the bell curve is measuring, unless it's measuring other politicians. I mean, someone's alleging heinous wrong-doing and someone's denying it are equally silly wastes of time. Does anyone have a good Porter Goss anecdote? I'd rather see his dossiers made public than Larry Flynt's.
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