# Bill Clinton Has a Hissy fit! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 25, 2006, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067 "2006-09-25T14:24:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/321 "2006-09-28T06:55:18Z")
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy] Character without intelligence leads to incompetence, royal screwups, and being steered by smarter folks into serving their own cynical ends. Give me razor-sharp mind and in-depth grasp of the facts and their implications over clueless bumbling and Bible thumping any day. [/QUOTE] Why do you hate America? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/322 "2006-09-28T07:03:08Z")
For what it’s worth: [Debunk](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/debunk) -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/323 "2006-09-28T07:16:00Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] “…assured you have no contact with…” [/QUOTE] I do have occasion to ferret out information. This doesn’t mean I slavishly listen to Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly, etc. in order to be told what to think, such as many of the ‘usual sus’…ah, never mind…such as many around here would prefer to believe. Thanks for the insight though; now I can see a little more readily how so many of you around here come to the conclusion that I’m a talk-radio addict. But the truth of the matter is I just rock along, thinking my clear-headed, right-thinking American thoughts, and whenever someone decides to yell “CITE!!!” I go browsing around Google for the appropriate info, and all the Loosey Lefties around here go “Talking points! Talking points! Limbaugh-licker!”, etc. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/324 "2006-09-28T10:36:39Z")
[QUOTE=Starving Artist] :rolleyes: Intelligence without character doesn’t add up to much of a man, and Clinton may have the least character of any president this country has ever had. [/QUOTE] Either your knowledge of history or your definition of “character” is a bit fuzzy. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/325 "2006-09-28T14:26:37Z")
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy] Character without intelligence leads to incompetence, royal screwups, and being steered by smarter folks into serving their own cynical ends. [/quote] Exactly. - Character without intelligence (competence, really; they may have been smart in other areas) gets you Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding. No thanks. - Intelligence without character gets you Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy. Sign me the hell up. - Intelligence AND character gets you Jimmy Carter. Hmm…you’d think the combination of the two would have worked out better. - Neither intelligence NOR character…know what, I’m just going to leave the cheap shot right where it lies. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/326 "2006-09-28T14:26:51Z")
[QUOTE=Starving Artist] I just rock along, thinking my clear-headed, right-thinking American thoughts [/QUOTE] Maybe you should start sharing some of them. It might go better for you here. ---
**Author:** ![GLWasteful](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f05b48/32.png) [@GLWasteful](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GLWasteful)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/327 "2006-09-28T14:50:46Z")
Damn! Get a little work done, go for a ride, have some adult beverages and everything changes. [QUOTE=Shodan] The allegation was that the outgoing Clinton administration trashed the White House. They did. [/quote] You forgot to finish that last sentence. Here, lemme help: “. . .no such thing.” “Trashed”? What a load of crap. _Some_ keyboards were missing the letter “W”? And you call that vandalism? Trashing? Such a rarefied and civilized world you live in. Mebbe if you were to, y’know, _read_ the entire GAO report, rather than parroting a single sentence, you’d be better prepared to argue things that are true. Understand, though, that I don’t expect anything of the sort to happen. [QUOTE=Starving Artist] He could have taken advantage of the numerous opportunities he had to kill or arrest bin Laden. [/QUOTE] Well, any chance to kill him would have entailed taking out a whole lot of people, leading to outrage that the president would do such a thing, internationally as well as domestically. And if he had, I daresay that the R’s in congress would have impeached him all over. As to arrest, what would he have done with him afterward? There wasn’t enough to try him in the US, and we would have to wait a while before a court system that has nothing to do with the rule of law and everything to do with the whims of said president. Alack! Alas! Had the president of the United States but known that “bin Laden determined to strike in the US”, we would be in much better shape. Wait a minute. . . Now to try and read this mother and see if I can join in again. Damn my busy social life! ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/328 "2006-09-28T15:10:10Z")
At one point in my life I was the live-in super of a small apartment building. Had to clean up after tenants when they moved out, report to the landlord any items that needed fixing, whether the unit needed repainting, supervise the repairmen, etc. I’ve seen trashed. I’ve seen a bedroom filled to bursting with heaps of crap the departing tenants didn’t want to haul out. I’ve seen vandalism. I have a good idea of what it costs to deal with it. What the GAO reported, for a building the size of the White House, is not “trashed”, not even close, not in the same county, heck, not on the same continent. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/329 "2006-09-28T15:27:34Z")
I could be wrong about this, but isn’t a tradition for the outgoing staff to play some pranks on the incoming staff when the administration changes? Isn’t that what this was all about before it got blown out of proportion by the rabidly anti-Clinton folks? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/330 "2006-09-28T15:32:44Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] I am willing to grant and concede everything you say, with the exception of the TV remote thing. Have you ever not been able to find your TV remote and stayed up all night looking for it? Do you remember how annoying that is? No right-thinking Conservative would misplace his remote. Fucking liberals. [/QUOTE] Look, we can lose remotes between the sofa cushions just as well as any Bushevik can, I’ll have you know! I bet the White House has enough sofas to swallow a lot more than 15 remotes. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/331 "2006-09-28T15:33:25Z")
Last I heard, the allegations of white house vandalism by the Clinton administration were unsubstantiated. Is that not correct, though? -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/332 "2006-09-28T15:34:52Z")
> [@](#): > > I could be wrong about this, but isn’t a tradition for the outgoing staff to play some pranks on the incoming staff when the administration changes? Isn’t that what this was all about before it got blown out of proportion by the rabidly anti-Clinton folks? Indeed. I read the report, and was a little surprised at what had been done, but then considered that the style of reporting might make what had been standard practice seem like something awful, simply because there hadn’t been a report on it for a previous transition. The results of the report are frustrating in that some White House personnel with long experience said thyat this was the worst they’d seen, while others said that they saw nothing out of the ordinary. Frustrating, that. But the key point is on p. 21, in the “Conclusions” section: > [@](#): > > Because of the lack of definitive data available to compare the extent of damage, vandalism, and pranks during the 2001 transition with past transitions, we were unable to conclude whether the 2001 transition was worse than previous ones. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/333 "2006-09-28T15:36:27Z")
[QUOTE=Starving Artist] whenever someone decides to yell “CITE!!!” I go browsing around Google for the appropriate info, and all the Loosey Lefties around here go “Talking points! Talking points! Limbaugh-licker!”, etc. [/QUOTE] Well, maybe you shouldn’t use the political equivalent of the Weekly World News as a factual source. Just sayin’. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/334 "2006-09-28T15:36:44Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] I could be wrong about this, but isn’t a tradition for the outgoing staff to play some pranks on the incoming staff when the administration changes? Isn’t that what this was all about before it got blown out of proportion by the rabidly anti-Clinton folks? [/QUOTE] Yeah but this: > [@](#): > > …the leaving of certain voice mail messages, signs, and written messages… They clearly crossed the line with the leaving of certain voice mail messages. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/335 "2006-09-28T15:40:25Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Well, maybe you shouldn’t use the political equivalent of the Weekly World News as a factual source. Just sayin’. [/QUOTE] Laugh of the day! Thanks! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/336 "2006-09-28T15:43:37Z")
[QUOTE=Patty O’Furniture] They clearly crossed the line with the leaving of certain voice mail messages. [/QUOTE] Yes, that is outrageous. I hope those guys are serving hard time for that crime! ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/337 "2006-09-28T15:45:27Z")
Oh, and by the way, I hope you don’t mind my grabbing that for my sig. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/338 "2006-09-28T15:49:42Z")
You all know of the infamous 8/6/01 “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” PDB that Bush did basically zip to respond to. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal [reminds us](http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009003) that President Clinton, the U.S.A.'s last President, received a similar PDB, on December 4, 1998, titled, “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” [Apparently Clinton’s response was a bit different from Bush’s](http://mediamatters.org/items/200609280001?src=newsbox-atrios.blogspot.com). [Per the 9/11 Commission](http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.htm): > [@](#): > > The same day, Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York City area airports. Of course, Taranto leaves out that part, but that’s another story. The main thing is, here’s one instance where Clinton and Bush received very similar warnings about impending terrorist attacks, and we can directly compare how they responded. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/339 "2006-09-28T15:51:55Z")
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy] Oh, and by the way, I hope you don’t mind my grabbing that for my sig. 😃 [/QUOTE] I’m honored and flattered. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067/340 "2006-09-28T15:57:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Why must he ask the exact same question(s) to Bush officials that he asked to Clinton? Seriously? You need someone to explain this to you? He asked Clinton “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?” Since Bush has been in office for 6+ yrs now, and still hasn’t captured him… why in the hell wouldn’t he be asking Bush that question? Should he wait until hes out of office to ask him? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-has-a-hissy-fit/374067.md?page=18)