Ummmmm… like when bobdole said he was going to represent the Americans who voted against Clinton by filibustering all his legislation? Like Lee Hamilton and his continuous “let’s get anything we can on Clinton” hearings? Like Newt Gingrich calling Bill and Hillary Clinton “the enemies of normal Americans,” and blaming Susan Smith’s murder of her children on the Democratic Party? Like Fred Thompson’s hearings? Like more than 40 million dollars spent on the “Whitewater” investigation which yielded only a blowjob? Like the impeachment? Like Henry Hyde, Tom DeLay, and Bob Barr?
I can only hope that the Democrats get as angry, and stay as angry, as that lot, and hope that they can find as generous a sugardaddy as Richard Mellon Scaife, and don’t listen to anybody who uses the term “gracious.” JDM
One approaches the awesome majesty of a Moderator with trepidation when one has no other intent but to declaim one’s utterest adulation and compliance. How one’s knees tremble, how dry the mouth and uncertain the sphincter, when one tries to muster the temerity necessary to…to…no, it isn’t quite possible. There is a limit to lese majesty, somethings cannot be contemplated by lesser mortals in the Presence.
If one could, however, one might be moved to point out that Mr. Moore, like a terrier, harries the rich and comfortable to the amusement of, well, us. (No doubt, Sir, your own pursuits are vastly more honorable, and we would be awed into silence if we were but aware of them.) Did not, in fact, the Straight Dope itself originate in what was then charmingly referred to as an “underground” newspaper, much akin to the Berkeley Barb? Is not the title itself rather a puckish pun implying some familiarity with recreational pharmacology? Hippies, beatniks, and other Anti-Establishment types?
Cites?
Hey I almost forgot: Like Jesse Helms threatening Clinton’s life if he went to a military base in Helms’ state? Damn those Republicans are classy! JDM
That was Jesse Helms, a lone and well-known jackass, not Republicans in general. Jesse Helms has no class. Unlike Jesse Helms, 99% of all Republicans are not the spawn of Satan. Don’t measure an entire party by the biggest asshole that happens to be a member of it.
And Manhattan, I second your opinion of Michael Moore.
Hooray, manhattan!
And JDM, please post some cites. The only things you wrote about that I’m familiar with are riddled with errors, notably the idea that Clinton’s sole fault was receiving oral sex. The man was impeached and will likely be disbarred. He committed some serious crimes to get himself into that state, and oral sex was not one of them.
The argument I’ve heard put forward is that the oldest and most error-prone tabulation machines are all in the poorest, Democratic counties. Therefore, so they say, the Republican counties had fewer undervotes and would pick up fewer votes on a recount than would the Dems.
**
I believe that they did count those votes did they not?
I’m with Guinastasia - Let the chads fall where they may.
I heard last night that Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is going to do a Freedom of Information hand-count of Florida ballots.
So we can all rest easy. We’ll know the “real” winner soon. Wonder who it will be?
I must admit amusement at the fact that George W. Bush most assuredly is about to be Stoidela and elucidator’s president. They can hold their breath till their faces turn blue and it won’t change that fact a whit.
Now you know how those Religious Right-ers in South Carolina or somewhere have felt for the past eight years. You know, Stoid, the unintelligent people.
No, it isn’t right. It’s not a “coup.” Christ, take the blinders off, just for a few seconds.
Bush won the election. Yes, the system for counting votes in Florida was horrible. Yes, the butterfly ballots may have confused old people. Yes, it would be nice if we could divine the true intent of all the voters without any error whatsoever. But according to the law of the land -the most important thin in a civilized country - Bush won. All the votes were counted; the Democrats wanted them counted differently, and when you boil it down, that’s why they couldn’t pull it off.
Moore isn’t always wrong, a la Manhattan’s comment, but he IS strident, hysterical, and remarkably dishonest.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Ptahlis **
The argument I’ve heard put forward is that the oldest and most error-prone tabulation machines are all in the poorest, Democratic counties. Therefore, so they say, the Republican counties had fewer undervotes and would pick up fewer votes on a recount than would the Dems.**
[QUOTE]
So all the backwoods rural white-dominated counties had the latest, expensive voting machines?
I know this is drifting even further off topic, but…in Florida, once you punched, dimpled, or otherwise intended your ballot, did it just get sucked into the machine or did voters handle it further? In my primordial state, each voter removed his punched ballot from its slot in the booth and hand-carried it over to the ballot box. I remember glancing at mine and noting the holes were all punched out (I didn’t do this because I was psychic, but as a reflection of paranoia from years of obsessing over whether my SAT-type answer sheets were filled out properly). You’d think Florida voters would have noticed all them dimples, mucked-up chads etc.
Dunno myself. I’m merely presenting the argument they made, and truth to tell, we’ll never know now. At least not to everyone’s satisfaction at this point. I think though that they would counter that poor, backwoods Republican districts are far less populous than the urban democratic districts. That would still mean that statisitically they would be likeliest to pick up votes.
How so? for example?
Then I suggest you and Michael “Why Use Facts When You Can Use Rhetoric?” Moore look the word “coup” or, rather “coup d’etat” up in a dictionary. In the political world, a “coup” is a sudden, illegitimate, political move carried out by force. Sorry to disappoint you, but a five-week process that’s involved two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court and the application of the law – albeit disputed – is neither sudden nor illegitimate, much less being carried out by force.
I wonder if those grapes get any less sour if you chew on them repeatedly? Well, heck, Stoidela, you must be on the what? twelveth or fourteenth serving? So why don’t you tell us.
bill h
and those crimes were…? (aside from lying under oath about the oral sex. yes, i acknowledge perjury is a crime and may none of us ever be asked about extra-relationship infidelities under oath. what were grown men doing asking him about blowjobs under oath anyway?)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by JDM *
[Like Lee Hamilton and his continuous “let’s get anything we can on Clinton” hearings?
OOPS- I of course meant Dan Burton. I’m from Indiana- thirty miles down the road from Dan Quayle’s old home town-you’d think I could keep those Hoosier congressman straight.
As far as Clinton goes, he didn’t even commit perjury. Perjury, as I understand it from Court TV discussions about Mark Fuhrman, has to be material to the outcome of the case. The Judge that threw out the Paula Jones case did not question whether the event, “boorishly” asking for oral sex, had happened. She said that the case was groundless because Jones showed no damage to herself stemming from her refusal. If the truth of Jones’ claim was not the issue in the case, then any testimony that would try to prove the claim, through “pattern of behavior,” was not material to the case. No materiality, no perjury. The Judge’s error, in my view, was that she let that area of testimony in in the first place, if she was even considering throwing the case out for the reason she did.
IIRC, the House charges against Clinton did not include perjury. I find it difficult to understand how he could be charged with trying to cover up something which wasn’t a crime. If the case had been about overdue library books (people get thrown in jail for them in Jeb Bush’s state) and Clinton had done exactly the same “coverup,” no one would have ever heard of it.
As far as cites go for Gingrich et. al., I’ll work on it. I read about the Dole statement in an article, perhaps by Ronald Dworkin, in the New York Review of Books. I’ve seen it mentioned once or twice since in the news. The Gingrich statements were commonly mentioned during his time in the spotlight- I’ll see if I can find the specific speech. Helms’ statement was a “joke” made in an interview to a North Carolina newspaper. I guess it was like Trent Lott’s “joke” about Hillary Clinton being struck by lightning. The Burton hearings (Vince Foster, etc. etc. etc.) are a matter of public record, as are the Thompson hearings, where Fred Thompson was going to prove how Clinton sold the USA to the Red Chinese, and use that as a launchpad to the White House (according to John McGlaughlin), but ended up simply going away. Like I said- over 40 million, and Monica’s blue dress was all they could come up with.
Now of course we mustn’t forget Bush Sr. saying atheists weren’t Americans. I’ll always treasure that one.
RS: “Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?”
GB: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
That’s from here, among other places: http://www.cyberdespot.com/jesustricks/bush.html
JDM
Likewise, I’ll always treasure Lieberman saying essentially the same thing. Anyone who believes that all Democratic candidates are staunchly behind freedom of (and from) religion is, well, fool wouldn’t be GDish, so let’s just say disillusioned.
Go here:
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~mayer/SocCult/c-nelson.htm
for the NYRB article in which Lars-Erik Nelson (RIP) mentions Dole’s 1992 election night pledge to filibuster all major Clinton legislation. It’s a good article in general. And no, it wasn’t Ronald Dworkin like I thought it might have been. O well
By the by, when did Lieberman say atheists weren’t Americans? JDM
:rolleyes: Hyperbole much, Manny? On what do you base this staggering chunk of character assassination? Ignorance fighter, heal thyself…
Just out of curiousity, what are Michael Moore’s credentials that make him credible on this issue? Movie Director? TV show host? Native of Flint, MI? Rabid Liberal?
Just wondering.
Jesse Jackson is the worst possible choice for fronting the post-election count. He has too much association with rhetorical extremity. Some news organization, some university, something like that. I still believe an effort will be made to prevent it from happening.
And Manhattan, by the way, I’m still waiting for those cites that show that everything Mr. Moore says is a lie. Hell, even “Orca” Limbaugh tells the truth once in a while! Besides, he’s an awful mild fellow to attract such livid rage. Sure, he ain’t no Mark Twain, but who is?
JDM:
Bob Dole: Thanks for the cite. (I’m aware of the others, including Gingrich’s boneheaded remarks) Dole may have made a stupid remark or two on election night (he does have a temper), but you can’t seriously be suggesting that he spent the subsequent four years questioning the legitimacy of the President of the United States.
Lee Hamilton and Bob Barr: Those are my couple of exceptions. You can throw in B-1 Bob Dornan if you want to go back further. I freely admit there are others.
Gingrich: Is an idiot, and if anything is less attached to his ideology than Clinton. He will probably be a “reformed reformed neo-liberal conservative” the next time we see him (who else remembers “let’s buy laptops for the poor?”). People who model their lives on Toffler can’t be taken seriously, whatever their party.
Fred Thompson’s hearings were entirely legit, if without real effect.
$40 million spent on Whitewater was $39.5 MM more than would have been spent had the president and his advisers not repeatedly obstructed the probe.
The probe did not reveal a blowjob, it revealed perjury. The president perjured himself to avoid answering a question that should have been irrelevant, but was. It was relevant because of a law the he, personally, signed. As a person who has historically voted Democrat, I’m ashamed that the party was unable to find even one Senator to break ranks and say that perjury is a removable offense.
Jesse Helms: I have a deep, visceral, personal hatred of Jesse Helms. How deep, and how personal? I once turned down a job that would have been 5X my salary largely to avoid moving to North Carolina and having to claim him as my representitive in the Senate – and that’s from someone who had to claim D’Amato for umteen years! That said, to interpret his flip comment about how much the military hated him as a “threat on the president’s life” is, quite simply, a lie. Whoever put together that bogus Secret Service “investigation” should go to jail. You should really stop repeating it.
Elucidator: First of all, please accept my deep and heartfelt apology that I am unable to spend 24 hours a day on this site, and that I am unable to spend all of my time that I am on the site tracking this thread.
I do not claim that everything Moore says is a lie, just that it is not true. Sure, GM closed a plant in Flint. To tell the truth, Moore would have had to explain that GM’s market share had dropped markedly, that the Flint plant was high-cost, and that the North American Auto Operations lost money year after year after year, threatening the entire corporation’s existence. Candidly, if Smith and GM were the profit-at-all-cost ogres he made them out to be, they should have shut down all the North American plants save the Linden truck facility and maybe one or two others. (Disclaimer: I or my affiliates may, in the past, now, or in the future, have held or hold long or short positions in debt or equity securities of General Motors or of affiliates, competitors, suppliers or customers of General Motors to whom General Motor’s success or failure would be material).
There’s no question (to me, anyway) that Moore is sometimes amusing. Sending the Brownies and the models into Tosco was hilarious, even if he failed properly to characterize the accident and lawsuit that led him to want to talk to Tosco’s management. (Disclaimer: I or my affiliates may, in the past, now, or in the future, have held or hold long or short positions in debt or equity securities of Tosco or of affiliates, competitors, suppliers or customers of Tosco to whom Tosco’s success or failure would be material).
But that doesn’t mean that he tells the truth. Heck, comedians are amusing, but not because they tell the truth. Just to cite one example, “union man” Michael Moore tried to dissuade the writers of TV Nation from joining the Writer’s Guild, which to me means that when he says he supports unions, that is not the truth. When Salon repeated the tale, he threatened to sue them, and specifically said that the comments were libelous. He has not sued Salon, which means that his promise to do so was also not the truth. And of course, the reason he did not sue is that his denial is probably not the truth. http://www.salon.com/june97/media/media970606.html and http://www.salon.com/july97/moore970703.html
And sure, he and Cecil both have roots in the alternative press. The difference is that Cecil fights ignorance, and therefore toils away for peanuts in a thankless role, whilst Moore prostitutes himself and has no dedication to the truth, and therefore rakes in the big bucks.
And tighten that sphincter! There are already too many people crapping on this forum! 