Let a man die, right away he's "good, old Claude". How was he *before* he bucked out?

One more observation on the death of President Ford.The headline in today's Big O reads "Ford again stirs unity, this time to grieve." This seems to be the prevailing public stance on the former President.

But I'm having a difficult time imagining that same sentiment will be extended by the press to former President Clinton when he passes. In fact - I can't imagine there will be a headline or article that doesn't lead with the Lewinsky matter and refer to the impeachment in one way or another.

The nose of the police dog, although long and efficient, points in only one direction at a time.

You'll have to admit this murder/ shooting of Clinton's neighbors looks a trifle suspicious. Obviously it should be front-page news now that the OJ deal has fallen by the wayside. What the press really needs now is former congressman Dan Burton "proving" the Clintons were involved by summoning them to watch him shooting a watermelon in his back yard. Those were good times.

I'm sure Larry Klayman can be talked into coming out of retirment to dig into this story and get to the bottom of the Clinton's guilt. Perhaps it involved a love triangle or swinging or something really sordid like that. Proof? Not necessary where the Clintons are involved. The burden of proof lies somewhere between innuendo and just-made-this-up-out-of-whole-cloth when it's Bill and Hillary.

Of course to really make this nostalgia come alive they'd have to bring in Richard Mellon Scaife to finance the investigation. I'm sure it wouldn't take much convincing. I'm sure he still hates the Clintons. He just didn't seem the forgiving type.

"Spokespeople for the Clintons did not immediately respond to requests for comment."

I don't doubt it for a second.

Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. C'mon in.

It's hard to believe but it's been just about fourteen years since William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the President of the United States. I keep track by gauging the age of my oldest daughter who just turned thirteen. Mrs. Wormer was pregnant with her when we went to Washington D.C. for the inauguration.

Mrs. Wormer and I had been very politically active - working to defeat a couple of horrendous anti-gay ballot measures - and she had purchased the trip to the inauguration as a surprise. The trip represented the fulfillment of a lifetime dream to see Washington with opportunity to be there live to see the Reagan era unceremoniously booted out the icing on the cake.

It was an incredible, one-in-a-lifetime experience. There were hundreds of thousands of like-minded progressives and Democrats strung throughout hundreds of tents on the mall and attending the various public inauguration ceremonies. Oddly enough the part that really sticks in my mind all these years later isn't the actual swearing in and Clinton's upbeat speech, but a public concert at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of days before.

Performing that night were Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan. But what sticks in my mind aren't those performances so much as an offhand question by emcee Whoopi Goldberg. At some point in the evening she asked the crowd "when's the last time you felt welcome in Washington?" We went nuts. It'd been a long damned time.

If you believe the polls and the chatterboxes on tv there's a pretty good chance we might be welcome in at least some parts of Washington again starting this January. I'm not as optimistic about our chances, having been burned pretty good the last couple of times out, but I really do hope they're right and the Democrats take congress. That feeling that D.C. actually belonged to the "we the people" and that it was okay to hope again was pretty wonderful.

I'd love to feel that again.

Lady, I may be a born fool, but you got ten absurd ideas to my one, an' don't you forget it!

Digby has exactly right:

The overarching reason for all this was that when the Bush admnistration took office they were determined to do everything differently than Clinton, Bush Sr even Reagan. The egomaniacs in charge (and the empty brand name in a suit out front) operated on a childish level that said nothing their predecesors did was correct, none of their priorities were right and they were determined to prove it.

Where Clinton and his appointees that held-over to the Bush administration were screaming that non-state actors engaged in terrorism were the biggest international threat to the United States the Bushies were certain that their cold war mentality of states-as-actors was the correct approach. Where Clinton felt the federal government should be balanced the Bushies didn't have a problem with running a deficit. Where Clinton believed in surrounding himself with competent, dedicated professionals Bush...

We didn't come here to fight monsters, we're not equipped for it.

Shortly after I started this blog I was told by a friend that he didn't enjoy reading it much because I can be "shrill."

I'm really not sure how to respond to that. A lot of people seemed to automatically tune-out of a political discussion when one of the parties becomes emotionally involved on any level. They aren't going to stick around to weigh the merits of the arguments at that point.

But in a larger sense I wonder why anyone with a functioning brain cell isn't shrill when they look at the state of our country and our government. I was upset when Bill Clinton lied to us, even though it was in response to a question he shouldn't have been asked. Today we have people at all levels of this administration who lie about everything. Repeatedly.

Wouldn't that make you a bit shrill? It did Bill Clinton during his Fox interview with Chris Wallace.

In response to Clinton's impassioned take-down of his critics within and without the administration they responded in the only way they know how: they lied.

Condoleeza Rice met with reporters yesterday and dropped this gem:

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

No?

On January 21st, 2001 Richard Clarke sent a memo to Rice begging her to convene a principals meeting on terrorism attached to which was this Clinton administration document entitled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: status and prospects." It was declassified during the 911 hearings.

The last two paragraphs of the opening summary read:

The United States' goal is to reduce the al Qida network to a point where it no longer poses a serious threat to our security or that of other governments. That goal can be achieved over a three to five year period, if adequate resources and policy attention are devoted to it.

Towardthat end, the United States has developed a comprehensive and coordinated strategy that employs a variety of tools including: diplomacy, covert action, public information and media, law enforcement, intelligence collection, foreign assistance, financial regulation enforcement, and military means to affect al Qida to its core."

I encourage you at least skim the document and ask yourself if you find it "comprehensive."

Then consider yourself shrill.

He passed away two weeks ago and one week ago he bought the land. That's unusual.

The "Path to 911" has been pretty much done to death around the blogsphere. I share much of the blogsphere's concern about the film's accuracy and the Scholastic tie-ins.

This Washington Post article from this morning on the backlash driven by former Clinton aides is interesting, especially this quote from Producer Mark Platt:

If individuals feel they're wrongly portrayed, that's obviously of concern. We've portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view."

Ah, the "essence of the truth." I believe Stephen Colbert has coined a word for that.

But what really gets me isn't so much the fictional stuff they've left out of the "docudrama" as the real stuff they've left out. Bush's lack of action in the moments of the actual attack and his running-and-hiding act immediately following are notably missing.

Luckily, we at Farber College have a crack film studies department who were able to put together a segment to include in the ABC docudrama. If I can only convince the network to make the change...

(Disclaimer: this docudrama is fictional but it is based on fact. It is intended to convey the actual truth about the past by making stuff up about the past. Please see our educational supplement if you or your kids have questions. )

I want friend like me.

It's not hypocritical for the Big Dog to go to Connecticut to campaign for Lieberman. Among Clinton's many sins holding a grudge isn't one of them.

But what does it say about Lieberman's principles that he is now utilizing the support of a former President of which he said this during the height of the Lewinski debacle?

In choosing this path, I fear that the President has undercut the efforts of millions of American parents who are naturally trying to instill in our children the value of honesty. As most any mother or father knows, kids have a singular ability to detect double standards. So we can safely assume that it will be that much more difficult to convince our sons and daughters of the importance of telling the truth when the most powerful man in the nation evades it. Many parents I have spoken with in Connecticut confirm this unfortunate consequence.

The President's intentional and consistent misstatements may also undercut the trust that the American people have in his word, which would have substantial ramifications for his presidency. Under the Constitution, as presidential scholar Richard Neustadt has noted, the President's ultimate source of authority, particularly his moral authority, is the power to persuade, to mobilize public opinion and build consensus behind a common agenda, and at this the President has been extraordinarily effective. But that power hinges on the President's support among the American people and their faith and confidence in his motivations, his agenda, and ultimately his personal integrity. As Teddy Roosevelt once explained, "My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens who are straight and honest cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest; that is all the strength I have."

Sadly, with his deception, President Clinton may have weakened the great power and strength of which President Roosevelt spoke. I know this is a concern that many of my colleagues share, that the President has hurt his credibility and therefore, perhaps, his chances of moving his agenda forward. But I believe that the harm the President's actions have caused extend beyond the political arena. I am afraid that the misconduct the President has admitted may be reinforcing one of the most destructive messages being delivered by our popular culture --namely that values are essentially fungible. And I am afraid that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most important bright lines of right and wrong left in our society.

Thank goodness values aren't fungible. Otherwise we might be faced with the spectacle of watching "principled" politicians like Lieberman blithely tossing aside the principles they've professed to believe for years in a desperate attempt to hold onto their seat.

That would be horrible.

Madness! Madness!

Via Gilliard we have this quote from a Q&A with Bill Clinton yesterday-

I mean look, there are a few Democrats, and Senator Lieberman – my friend – is one, who genuinely believed what the President believed, and Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld believed, and apparently what Senator McCain believes, and a number of other people, which was "we should just get rid of Saddam whether he's got any weapons or not, and it doesn't matter if we let the U.N. inspectors finish."

When it comes to Iraq the fact that Lieberman believed we should oust Sadaam is only the lesser of Joe's sins.

The real problem is that he thought George W. Bush was the right man to do it.

The former sin is minor, the latter sin is mortal.

I HAVE THE POWER!!!!!

If there's a line of reasoning that I could do without hearing ever again from our side of the political spectrum it would the lefty version of the butclintonism. Butclintonism, if you'll recall, is a Pavlovian response bred into Republicans from an early age and suffices as a get-out-of-jail-free card for conservatives who've painted themselves into a rhetorical corner in a political catfight. As conservatives, by definition, aren't the brightest of bulbs when it comes to presenting a reasonable argument butclintonism winds up getting more than it's fair share of use.

In the left's version of butclintonism the butclinton is usually thrown out as a counter to some or other mindless righty defense of President Bush's abuse of executive power. Generally it sounds something like this: "Sure the idea of the President being able to wiretap our phones without a warrant may sound fine, but would you trust the same power in the hands of a President Hillary?"

This would have been a perfectly logical approach to debate twenty years ago but it's pretty darn meaningless under today's rules of arguing politics. Ask a wingnut what they would do in the event of a Democratic President utilizing some of the authority Bush has seized during his tenure as President and they're probably telling themselves "Yeah, right, like THAT will happen. A Democratic President? Pshaw. Silly liberal." Or something along those lines.

The strange thing is that if you stop and think about it there are a lot of us here on the left that would agree. Because of voting irregularities and Diebold we'd join our conservative friend in rating the chances of another Democratic President getting elected up there with the chances of an alien invasion dropping down on Kansas City, or the discovery that Sasquatch is alive and well and selling auto insurance in Seattle, or that Governor Schwarzenegger has finally learned the correct pronunciation of the word "California."

But let's assume for the sake of argument that Hillary wins the Democratic nomination (itself an improbability as she supported the Iraq war-resolution but that's another issue) and beats John McCain and is sworn to office in January of 2009 facing a Republican controlled House and Senate. Could anyone seriously argue that the Republican Party wouldn't immediately have a very public epiphany along the lines of "Oh THAT constitution and rule of law. We thought you were saying 'rule of slaw' which didn't make sense because who wants to bow down to cabbage and mayonnaise?"

The reality is they'd pull all of the power Bush has accumulated faster than the time it takes K-Fed to knock up Brittany. They'd say NSA wiretapping was suddenly illegal and unconstitutional and a grave threat to the republic. They'd suddenly become proponents of congressional oversight of the executive. They'd actually hold hearings to investigate White House errors on intelligence or personal indiscretions. They'd advocate that the Senate may have a constitutional role in advice and consent on judicial nominations afterall. They'd do a complete philosophical 180 without batting an eye.

And if you tried to call them on it they butclinton you upside the head.

...and monkeys might come flying out of my butt!

Andrew Sullivan brings a radical solution on Iraq to the table. In fact it's SO radical some may call him crazy.

I'd be one of those people.

So here's a thought: why not send Bill Clinton? For some reason that eludes my own judgment, Clinton has a great deal of cachet in the Middle East, and could defuse the anti-Bush and thereby anti-American obstacles to success. He was, by all accounts, superb at the Doha/Brookings/Saban summit in 2003. He would bring the Democratic party into a much more constructive role in trying to bring about a serious step forward for Iraq, and help unite the country at home.

Does Sullivan read his own stuff? I mean, seriously. George W. Bush would never ask Bill Clinton to help save his bacon in Iraq precisely because it would help the Democratic party and unite the country. Those have never been goals of this administration. Ever. This is the administration who saw the worst terrorist attacks in the history of this country as a great way to gain electoral advantage and played cynical politics with things like the formation of the DHS, originally a Democratic initiative. They have no interest in uniting the country and they certainly have no interest in doing anything that would help Democrats, even collaterally.

Need I remind Andy that the "anti-Bush obstacles to success" were obstactles of his own making? It wasn't some other administration that thumbed it's nose at the world and told the U.N. to take a hike. The U.S. is practically alone in trying to rebuild Iraq by choice. Bush created these obstacles, they didn't appear in a vaccum.

The sad reality is that Bush IS the obstacle to success.

Nothing will begin to change for the better in Iraq until in and around January, 2009. That's when the biggest obstacle for success will be removed.

Until that time neither Bill Clinton nor the cloned and re-animated body of Gandhi could bring some semblance of normality to Iraq. No amount of wishing will make it so.