quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: So because Clinton slept with an intern, you switched parties and supported Bush twice?
Man. There are some dead Iraqis who're probably very sorry that Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants.
Oh right, as if everyone who supported Bush can reasonably be argued to have known that a vote for Bush = a war in Iraq.
If we followed your logic,
There are some dead Iraqi's who are probably very sorry that Bush Sr made that promise about no new taxes.
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quote:Oh right, as if everyone who supported Bush can reasonably be argued to have known that a vote for Bush = a war in Iraq.
The second time around, I would argue that it was indisputable. The first election was simply unfortunate; the second time was pretty much a solid and obvious repudiation of American benevolence.
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quote:Oh right, as if everyone who supported Bush can reasonably be argued to have known that a vote for Bush = a war in Iraq.
The second time around, I would argue that it was indisputable. The first election was simply unfortunate; the second time was pretty much a solid and obvious repudiation of American benevolence.
Unless you were on the, "Well we are already there and the milk has spilled, it would be a bigger mistake to just pull out."
I call it the, "If you fired the barbed harpoon amiss, don't yank it out" defense.
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Or the fantastical fairy-tale notion of "our problems will be solved by the minds that created and support them!"
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"Yeah, we're killing kids. But we can't stop now, because if we stop before we achieve our objectives, we killed all those kids for nothing."
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Is it a sense of proportion that has caused some to compare this war to Vietnam pretty much from its inception?
P.S. My original point, before someone cried "Pirate!" was that sexual harassment should be as much of an affront to liberals as homosexuality is to conservatives.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: "Yeah, we're killing kids. But we can't stop now, because if we stop before we achieve our objectives, we killed all those kids [i]for nothing."
Actually, that reminds me of Madeleine Albright on CNN when she was asked if the sanctions were "worth it."
...that wasn't a deliberate allusion, was it?
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Well, the sense of proportion to which I was refering was that between sexual harassment and hundreds of thousands of dead people.
But, you are right, it isn't fair to compare Iraq to Vietnam. We got off to a much faster start to piling up the bodies in Iraq than we did in Vietnam.
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Comparing the sexual harrassment to Iraq and therefore winking at the sexual harassment because it doesn't involve dead bodies does an extreme disservice to...heck, centuries of exploitation of females and makes one complicit in abuses of power.
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I thought we were comparing reasons for not voting for someone? Some people didn't vote for Clinton because of his sexual activites (some harassment, some not); others people didn't vote for Bush because he was responsible for a lot of people dying.
That doesn't make either thing right. It does make it legitimate to compare them.
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That's what I mean - they are alike in that both arise from abuses of power. Perpetuating the myth that it's okay for people in places of power to use that power to coerce sex from their employees is what happens if you mock not voting for Clinton because of his sexual activities.
I really think that if he were sleeping with, say, the daughters of his friends (or his daughter's friends) as opposed to his employees, there would have been a very different reaction. That people would probably be more shocked by the former rather than less underlines the importance of making a big deal about what he did do - they shouldn't be.
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quote:I really think that if he were sleeping with, say, the daughters of his friends (or his daughter's friends) as opposed to his employees, there would have been a very different reaction.
quote:I thought we were comparing reasons for not voting for someone?
That's where Tom went. I was talking, foolishly, I'll grant, on the thread topic which was what offenses might have an ironic flavor given the party of the offender.
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I guess what I am "mocking" (if it really is that) is the notion that Clinton's abuse of power was worse than Bush's.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: That's what I mean - they are alike in that both arise from abuses of power. Perpetuating the myth that it's okay for people in places of power to use that power to coerce sex from their employees is what happens if you mock not voting for Clinton because of his sexual activities.
Granting the rest of your statement, the requirement should be twofold: "not voting for Clinton because of his sexual activities and voting for Bush in spite of the deaths he has caused." Suggesting that sexual abuse of power is -- or should be -- a less important voting criterion than thousands upon thousands of deaths doesn't inherently trivialize sexual abuse of power as a voting criterion.
Presumably, though, people who actually fit my quoted description consider the deaths to be justified in some way (e.g. support the war).
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quote:Presumably, though, people who actually fit my quoted description consider the deaths to be justified in some way (e.g. support the war).
It's because of this that I don't equate the two. I think the war is just complex enough that an argument could be made that it was necessary or right-in-the-end to perpetuate it.
The same argument couldn't be made for Clinton's sexual harassments.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: "Yeah, we're killing kids. But we can't stop now, because if we stop before we achieve our objectives, we killed all those kids for nothing."
posted
pooka, the democrats aren't making a particularly big deal about the possibility that Senator Craig might be gay*. It is the Republicans who seem to be climbing over each other to distance themselves from him.
* Except that it somewhat undermines his anti-gay political stance.
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Does it? "Don't be gay or else you might end up a United States Republican senator soliciting in bathrooms like me!"
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Actually, most of the Dems who have spoken publicly have expressed sympathy for the stressful time Sen. Craig and his family are going through.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: "Yeah, we're killing kids. But we can't stop now, because if we stop before we achieve our objectives, we killed all those kids for nothing."
I didn't vote for Bush in 04, I'm just saying why I think you could have voted for him without being a baby killer.
Thing is as it stands I know the Republicans did not do the job I wanted them to do in the last 4 years, but I still have no confidence that the Democrats would have done better had they won.
So its basically reality vs my own judgment, either way I'm not happy.
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I'm going to assume the President is just very bad at jokes, instead of a liar (with the excuse).
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I think someone should have given him a breathalyzer. I didn't think even he was that stupid. And frankly I still don't think he's that stupid, I think, like a great many of his mistakes, he's just not really thinking about what he's saying, it just comes out. Obviously the President knows the difference between Austria and Australia, and god willing, between APEC and OPEC. I do find it surprising that seven years into his presidency, he still can't muster the brain power to check himself before those things escape his lips.
Generally when you hear attacks on Clinton, they are for having sex, and lying about sex. The complaints by and large I have ever heard against him have nothing to do with his conduct as a governor. That's just personal experience, with Republicans I've met and what I've seen on network tv. It's the sort of thing Republicans use to try and paint Democrats as bad on family values and themselves as saints. And I wouldn't be surprised to see the Craig thing even come back to haunt Democrats.
Like Chris said, Democrats are being pretty nice about the whole thing. They are focusing on Iraq, with the major reports out and more coming, they aren't talking about Craig. Republicans and the media are the only ones talking about it, and Craig himself keeps the story going because he won't shut up. Democratic leadership has already said they don't think he should have to leave the senate, and this must be a difficult time for his family. I wouldn't be surprised to see Republicans try and use that as evidence that Democrats aren't tough enough on offenders against the American family, but they might shoot themselves in the foot if they try.
Personally, I'd like to see the story go away. I would say that I don't care anymore, except I never cared to begin with. Democrats are already moving on, the Republicans need to as well. We've got bigger issues and they need to be focused on that, and not Craig's bathroom behavior. I think what he does, or doesn't do, is between him, his family and the good people of Idaho, not the rest of us.
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quote:Generally when you hear attacks on Clinton, they are for having sex, and lying about sex. The complaints by and large I have ever heard against him have nothing to do with his conduct as a governor. That's just personal experience, with Republicans I've met and what I've seen on network tv.
Then you really haven't been watching much network tv. There were (and to a much lesser extent due to him being out of office for almost 7 years now, are) a lot of criticisms of his policies and the way he governed.
Look, I agree that Clinton was criticized for some things unfairly and that some people who criticized him then have posed contradictory arguments. But this myth that the Lewinski scandal is generally the only thing he's criticized for has been becoming more popular recently, and it's not true.
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Article I Section 6 of the United States Constitution The Senators and Representatives...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same
Minnesota Statutes 2006 609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT. Subdivision 1. Crime. Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor: (1) Engages in brawling or fighting; or (2) Disturbs an assembly or meeting, not unlawful in its character; or (3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.
Even IF we accept the arresting officer's assertion that a "secret code" was being used, I still haven't read anything which indicates that Craig's conduct or language was offensive, obscene, abusive, or tending to reasonably arouse alarm, anger, or resentment.
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quote:This clause is practically obsolete. It applies only to arrests in civil suits, which were still common in this country at the time the Constitution was adopted. 376 It does not apply to service of process in either civil 377 or criminal cases. 378 Nor does it apply to arrest in any criminal case. The phrase ''treason, felony or breach of the peace'' is interpreted to withdraw all criminal offenses from the operation of the privilege. 379
In the case establishing the rule in the last sentence above, the Court accepted this argument as valid:
quote:the words 'breach of the peace' should not be narrowly construed, but should be held to embrace substantially all crimes, and therefore as in effect confining the parliamentary privilege exclusively to arrests in civil cases. And this is based not merely upon the ordinary acceptation of the meaning of the words, but upon the contention that the words 'treason, felony, and breach of the peace,' as applied to parliamentary privilege, were commonly used in England prior to the Revolution, and were there well understood as excluding from the parliamentary privilege all arrests and prosecutions for criminal offenses; in other words, as confining the privilege alone to arrests in civil cases, the deduction being that when the framers of the Constitution adopted the phrase in question they necessarily must be held to have intended that it should receive its well-understood and accepted meaning.
quote:Generally when you hear attacks on Clinton, they are for having sex, and lying about sex. The complaints by and large I have ever heard against him have nothing to do with his conduct as a governor. That's just personal experience, with Republicans I've met and what I've seen on network tv.
Then you really haven't been watching much network tv. There were (and to a much lesser extent due to him being out of office for almost 7 years now, are) a lot of criticisms of his policies and the way he governed.
Look, I agree that Clinton was criticized for some things unfairly and that some people who criticized him then have posed contradictory arguments. But this myth that the Lewinski scandal is generally the only thing he's criticized for has been becoming more popular recently, and it's not true.
To be fair then, if the majority of those arguments came before seven years ago, I probably didn't hear them. When he was elected in 1992, I was eight, and wasn't watching a ton of CNN. When he left office is about when I started really paying attention to politics, when I was 16. So a lot of that probably happened when I wasn't looking. But today, right now, that's not what I hear.
But then I don't watch much Fox News, where you're probably more likely to hear that. I don't know where you've seen it.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: "Yeah, we're killing kids. But we can't stop now, because if we stop before we achieve our objectives, we killed all those kids for nothing."
posted
I see that Craig is in the news AGAIN, blaming his guilty plea on anything from a newspaper investigating him to the police officer suggesting it was the easy way out.
From everything I have read about Hillary, I don't see any damning evidence. The issue with Hsu is that he may have spread around a bunch of money and those donors gave to Hillary. Hillary gave the money she was sure was illegally given to a charity, but they are still checking to see whether the other claims have merit or not. How do you believe she should have handled the situation? And the claim in 2000 was thrown out because of her first amendment rights.
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quote:Sgt. Karsna ...pointed toward the exit, at which time the defendant (Larry Craig) exclaimed NO!!!!
It's official. Despite a withering judgment denying his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea, Sen Craig has announced he's not resigning. As noted in my second link, he violates 2 promises here:
quote: Craig's decision today goes counter to not one, but two previous promises: First, his announced intention to resign by Sept. 30; and second, his office's assertion that if his request to withdraw the plea were denied, he'd step down.
I tried to think of another case in which a high official promised to resign by a certain date and then didn't, but I'm stumped.
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Oh...to be honest, if I were a Senator, I wouldn't resign. They'd have to throw me out kicking and screaming.
Why would he resign? Retain goodwill? He already knows who his friends are and who has abandoned him. Resigning won't change that.
He'll be gone next election regardless. I certainly hope. I can't imagine Idaho voting for him again.
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Sen. Craig said in his most recent statement he'd retire at the end of his term in 2008, not seeking reelection.
That's all true, Javert, but in that case, why promise to resign? It looks like Craig was pressured into pleading guilty, and also pressured into promising to resign. Both decisions he soon regretted and later reneged on. How did this guy ever get elected as a decision-maker?
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It was stupid to ever make that promise to begin with. He's just giving more fuel to a fire that could have been out by August if he had just fessed up to begin with and defused the situation.
It's ALWAYS worse when it comes out via the a surprise press story.
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quote: How did this guy ever get elected as a decision-maker?
Well I hate to rag on the poor ol' republicans but it's sort of the personality that their power structure has most aptly involved and retained.
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Oh please. You have an examples of that, and then counter examples to illustrate it is only the Republicans?
Any time someone begins a lame insult with "I hate to..." you know at least first part of that sentence is baloney.
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I'd say the mere fact a senator is such a wimp that he blames a police officer for bamboozling him into pleading guilty as ground enough to chase him out of office. Talk about being easily swayed. What other crazy legislation has Craig backed because zealous compatriot senators tricked him into backing it?
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk ^^ My new kitten had that to say about senator Craig.
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