Is it bad to expose Democratic corruption?

Great Debates
41

In my view, calling Clinton’s actions “corruption” is disingenuous. While you may trot out the dictionary and point to definition #2, and how it “could be” that, the reality is that when you discuss politicians and corruption, the clear inference is some sort of malfeasance in office - of using the office for personal gain.

That’s not what happened. If you meant perjury, say perjury. But Clinton did not, in this instance, use the powers of the Presidency to dodge an investigation, as did, for example, Nixon, against whom ‘corruption’ is absolutely appropriate.

More to the point, it matters not a whit that I think he was guilty of perjury. The Sentate was the group in charge of determining what penalty, if any, he would suffer for what the House said he did. They declined to convict him.

  • Rick
42

Even Stoid agrees with me on this point! )See her post 3 or 4 before yours, wring.

BTW wasn’t there a Saturday Night Live with Nonica as host? That demonstrates popularity.

43

Not at all. And I speak as a party official. We want to know about corruption as soon as possible.

Now on to your post. None of these people ever exposed Democratic corruption of any sort. They manufactured a lot of it though.

– Ken Starr-- unethically failed to disclose in writing his representation of Paula Jones while asking to be allowed to investigate an aspect of it on the federal payroll. Wasn’t able to tell the difference between a blow job and corruption.

– Paula Jones–woman who posed nude for photographers while having sex with her boyfriend claims to be shocked when Clinton supposedly propositions her at an exact time and place when in fact at that exact time and place Clinton is speaking in front of several hundred people.

– Linda Tripp–last person to see Vince Foster alive carries out several year spying mission against Clinton administration. Ultimately befriends young intern who manages to seduce Clinton and illegally tape record her.

– Lucianne Goldberg-- Professional Clinton hater and former professional spy against her employer (McGovern 72 campaign) which is a crime and breach of trust is now a publisher. Encouraged illegal taping.

– Newt Gingrich – repeatedly commites same act that his own party accused Clinton of. Has same definition of sex/not sex. Has enough shame to not mouth off about Clinton. Serves divorce papers on wife while she is in hospital bed recovering from cancer. Marries his Monica Lewinsky.

– Richard Scaife – Billionaire funds efforts to manufacture evidence against Clinton, perhaps unwittingly. See Hunting of the President

– The Arkansas Project – effort to manufacture evidence against Clinton. See Hunting of the President

– Rush Limbaugh – not involved in above except to report it with usual bias. Not fair to include him in this list.

– American Spectator Magazine – see Arkansas Project above.

– House managers for impeachment trial – Henry Hyde commits adultry when a member of Congress at age 44. Calls it excusable youthful indiscretion. It breaks up another marriage. Not a crime either, but excused since he was a Republican. In very safe district and overwhelmingly reelected by Republicans who only oppose adultery in their political opponents. Other “impeachment managers” in less safe (yet strongly Republican leaning) districts are removed by the people as is their right and duty.

During the Iran/Contra affair, none of these people had the slightest objection to the Reagan administration selling deadly arms to our Iranina enemies in violation of laws prohibiting exactly that and giving the proceeds to bands of murderers in Nicaragua, in spite of laws also specifically prohibiting that.

So if I understand correctly, getting a blow job is corruption while treasonsouly selling weapons to our enemies and giving the proceeds to support murder squads is not. Is that your position? Iran/Contra was easily a more terrible assault on the constitution that Watergate, yet you have said nothing about it being corruption?

(Watergate, just for the younger, was a Nixon campaign break-in (burglarly) to McGovern’s campagin office to gain political information that Nixon did not know about in advance, but went to great lengths to try to cover-up, including breaking a number of laws. Pretty bad, but doesn’t hold a candle to Iran/Contra. And pretty stupid too considering that even then they knew they were going to beat McGovern by an unprecented margin. Oh, and while we are on political info stealing, it was a Republican who tried to set up the Gore campaign by sending Bush’s private briefing papers to Gore to “supposedly” help him plan for the debates. George Will, conservative commentator, used stolen plans from the Carter campaign in the 1980 campaign to prepare Ronald Reagan, giving Reagan a significant advantage in coming up with one liners.)

So if I understand correctly, blow-jobs, adultery, theft, treason, murder for hire are all okay if you are a Republican and not corruption, but corruption for a Democrat is an adulterous blow-job worthy of crippiling government for 6 years?

Not that I have an axe to grind or anything.

44

You should have stopped there. Just before “however.”

45

Bricker, we’re just quibbling over semantics. However, I consider Nixon to have been perhaps the most corrupt President in history, and he was never accused of financial malfeasance. That may be the only type of crime he didn’t commit.

BTW “disingenuous” means dishonest. How can it be dishonest to follow a dictionary definition? At worst I could be accused of a clumsy choice of word. But really, Bricker, why should your definition of a word be more compelling than the dictionary’s definition?

46

Actually Nixon admitted to taking gifts having a monetary value, the Republican cloth coat for Pat and the dog Checkers. His argument was that it was trivial. Trivial as I agree it was, the public had a right to know, unlike the Clinton blow job, which was essentially a private matter.

As for more Nixon financial misdealing, he frequently asked that the IRS investigate his opponents (they claim to have ignored him) and his campaign paid hush money to the Watergate burglars to try to keep them quiet. Also, Nixon set up the tape recording system at public expense and then kept the tapes as his private property.

47

And I disagree w/stoid (who’s main point you neatly pass by, that Tripp earned her unpopularity). Both were poked fun at. Both were vilified. Lewinsky has attempted to parlay her negative attention into a career, with dismal results. Tripp has attempted to parlay her attention into a book deal and a job (remember her pleas to the Bush administration to ‘please hire me’?)

I reiterate. You were wrong. ** Both** women were vilified in the press. your attempts to show ‘popularity’ of Lewinsky fall quite short.

I find your response to Sua quite typical as well. After your point has been artfully taken apart point by point, you still maintain that the sum of all your mismatched pieces add up to your conclusion. So although your logic is invalid, the assumptions you based your conclusions on were wrong, your conclusion itself is untainted?

Let me demonstrate w/numbers.

december asserts the length of the room is 2 feet. The width of the room is 4 feet. therefore the area of the room is 42 square feet.

Poster A : length of the room is 5 feet, not 2.
Poster B: width of the room is 3 feet, not 4.
Poster C; your calculations on the area are wrong as well, area = width x length, which in your example would be 8 feet.

december your logic may be correct, my data apparently isn’t quite accurate, but I’m confident in my conclusions.

48

From one Democrat to another . . . cites, please?

49

It is disingenuous to claim that disingenuous means dishonest.

The M-W definition is “lacking in candor.” It means the apparent innocent reference to an event or use of a word that actually means something more, all the while pretending that one is “innocently” pointing to some simpler meaning or understanding. (It is related to ingenue, with its emphasis on naivetè.)

Picking a dictionary meaning for a word, when one is well aware that the word is more commonly used in a different way (and that it carries connotation far beyond the dictionary definition) would generally be held to be a disingenuous act.

Sorry.

I do have an example of Democrats seeking out corruption among Democrats: When Dick Celeste left the Governor’s office in Ohio, the incoming Attorney General, Lee Fisher, was a Democrat. Celeste and several of his cabinet appointees had pulled a number of stunts while in office, some simply ill-advised, some treading on ethical quicksand, some illegal.

Fisher spent the better part of his term in office running down the fraud and corruption and bringing them to trial.

While making a great deal of the corruption that Fisher was turning up and prosecuting, the Republicans never admitted that it was actually a Democrat who was pursuing the cases.

He was ousted in the next election by a Republican who claimed that Fisher was not a “real” lawyer (he had very little trial experience). Interestingly, his succseesor, (who seems to be doing an otherwise OK job), has not pursued many of the cases that Fisher was unable to complete for lack of time.

50

“**Is it bad to expose Democratic corruption? **”

Hands up, those of you who think it is bad to expose corruption of any sort?

Muffin looks around and does not see any hands go up.

Debate ended.

Everything else in this pitiful thread is not relevant to the topic put forward by December.

December: why don’t you simply hold out a topic for debate, such as whether such-and-such an event or activity is corrupt, or whether upon investigation of corruption so-and-so has been harmed for pushing the issue?

Learn about logic. Learn about fallacies such as petitio principii. Then come back and debate.

Don’t offer “**Is it bad to expose Democratic corruption? **” as a topic for debate, for it is not.

51

From Mary Hart’s Legs’ American Leftist Propaganda Strikes Again! thread:
Jackmannii: “Those on the Left who frankly acknowledge a media slant in their direction on “social issues”, argue that since the major media are “corporate-controlled”, this somehow equalizes matters by benefiting the Right.”

Mandelstam: Can you please provide a citation for this? It is so facile and misleading that I’d like to know
who the self-described leftist who allegedly said it is.

Here you go, Mandelstam.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gadarene *
**

[quote]
…I’ll give you my personal opinion. The mainstream media tends to be:…
[list=a]
[li]profit-driven[/li][li]access-driven[/li][li]audience-driven[/li][li]establishmentarian–see (a) and (b)[/li][li]secular[/li][li]socially centrist-liberal–see (c) and (e)[/li][li]economically centrist-conservative–see (a), (b), (c), and (d)**[/li][/QUOTE]

Gadarene’s Fox News discussion will undoubtedly be interesting, except that I would probably have to watch Fox News in order to gain the full benefit of his analysis. Perhaps for my and others’ benefit in that discussion he can expand on item 7 on his list above, citing all the business coverage that the major media slant in a conservative direction, or else how Capitalist Dogma in the news benefits the Right.

I had to scan this thread rapidly to forestall nausea, but on one score I am forced again to agree with elucidator*, regarding Newt Gingrich. He is one of the last people I would cite as a dogged rooter-out of corruption, considering the amount of manure that his piled up in his own barn.

*elucidator, considering how often you describe yourself as rolling around on the floor slavering and gibbering, I have to know: How much time do you actually spend upright? :slight_smile:

52

No thanks, Jack! Still waiting for your response on the Bonds thread. :slight_smile:

53

Gadarene, what an entertaining way of ducking out of a debate!

First, we had Stoid with “Since you’ve been mean to me, I’ll pretend your arguments don’t exist”.

Now we have Gadarene with “You didn’t give me the answer I wanted in a previous discussion, so I’ll pretend that your arguments on an entirely different subject don’t exist”.
Neat strategy. No doubt it’ll save you much mental and psychic wear and tear. :wink:

54

I don’t have a cite for the Bush campaign employee who was finally caught and convicted of stealing and lying in same investigation, but maybe if you did a search at democraticunderground.com you would find something. Whether she did this on her own and to help which side we may never know.

And Gingrich did complain a lot about corruption, just never in the Republican ranks. In all fairness, the parties are supposed to police each other if they cannot do it themselves. Ultimately the problem with Gingrich was that he was abandoned by his own party for not being out in front in casting stones on the Lewinsky thing, a wise move since the press was well aware of his personal escapades and had been for many years (Mother Jones had done a number of stories about his sexual escapades). The problem I had with Gingrich was his constant tearing other people down. But scapegoating from the right has always seemed to me to be their overriding impulse.

As for public perceptions, maybe this just reflects my personal bias, but I think the public in general loaths Linda Tripp and feels a bit sorry for Monica Lewinsky. As for cashing in, Tripp claims to be in deep debt while Lewinsky made a few million off of her book.

A lot of loyal Democrats, like George Stephanopolis, remain angry at Clinton because they went way out on a limb for him to cover this stupid affair, feel that they were lied to and found that Clinton was a moderate, not a liberal. Obviously I have more distance and appreciate the Clinton Administration on most issues. The only issue I can say I support the current Bush Administration on is pursuing war against our enemies.

55

Do you really take issue with that rubric, Jack? I’m disappointed. You know I live to please you. :smiley:

(By the way–“didn’t give me the answer I wanted” != “didn’t give me any answer at all.” Hope this helps.)

56

So in other words, it’s just this idea you have, huh? I was in Austin, and in Austin political circles, when that happened last year. I heard vague rumblings that the woman who sent the tape (employee of a Bush campaign consulting firm, IIRC) must have been trying to make the Dems look bad, but not once did anybody produce the slightest evidence that she was a Republican. The federal judge who sentenced her, Sam Sparks, is a damned good judge and far from a conservative. If there had been anything to the doublecross theory, I am quite certain it would have at least been raised in court. It was not.

Frankly, the idea sounds to me exactly like the sort of baseless rumor-mongering conspiracy theory crap that certain people of the Republican persuasion like to believe is true. I would like to think we Democrats are above that kind of thing. Obviously, not all of us are.

57

You are squirming, sir. And you think me stupid if you think I’ll let you get away with it.

I and others have asked you identify the “corruption” which has been “discovered” and “made known” by the gang listed in your OP. It is a simple, straightforward question. You have still not answered it. So long as you refuse to do so, I will say what I believe to be true, which is that your OP is a lie you knowingly told.

I will withdraw the charge when you answer the question with facts.

stoid

58

To refresh your memory, since you insist on dragging in relatively ancient history, you demanded in the Bonds thread to know what more your hero could have done to prolong the Giants’ season. I responded that he failed in the category of intangibles, i.e. being a team player/leader. You didn’t like that answer and chose not to respond to it, instead pretending that I hadn’t answered you at all. It’s an increasingly threadbare tactic of yours.
(Hint: “Your answer makes me uncomfortable and leaves me with no good rebuttal” does not equate to “You’re not being responsive.”)
Sorry for continuing Gadarene’s hijack, but the OP here virtually consisted of an invitation by december for his fan club to hijack a dubious premise and whack him over the head with various hobgoblins of the Left.

59

<coughcough**december, look at this**coughcough>

60

As I recall it, both these assertions are incorrect. The person who stole the briefing book was a Democrat, who was employed by a Republican consulting firm.

I believe the George Will story is confused with another related controversy. During that campaign, there was a controversy over the fact that George Will positively reviewed Reagan’s performance in the debate in his column, without revealing that he had helped him prepare for the debate.

As for the OP, I would consider it beyond obvious that Democrats are more inclined to judge corruption by Democrats as being minor/not corrupt etc. It is equally obvious that Republicans feel the same about corruption by Republicans.

I don’t think Watergate is a valid comparison. It was an extremely egregious case of corruption, and even so I’m pretty sure Republicans were less enthusiastic about prosecuting it than were Democrats. Today, it has receded into the past, and conceding corruption in Watergate does not reflect badly on the Republican Party to a significant degree, so people can look at it more dispassionately. I don’t think Republican’s treatment of the many Reagan/Bush era corruption scandals differed markedly from Democratic treatment of the Clinton era ones.

Of course, the Republicans believe that the Reagan era scandals were trumped up political nonsense, by contrast to the Clinton era scandals that were real scandals. The Democrats feel that the exact opposite is true. Bottom line is that there is no way to objectively answer the question. So the only thing left is to argue each case on a case by case basis. There’s no point is arguing the sweeping generalities.