The babyjesuschristsuperstar on Board: filling the moral void of Clinton’s legacy

[Spanky]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I'll believe this if Scooter and Turd Blossom pack up their rolodexes before the indictments come down.

If a sitting Republican president had a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him and he had a deposition where he lied under oath about sex in the oval office he would be gone.

The Democrats would scream bloody hell because they would assume the sexual harassment claim was true (like they did with Clarence Thomas) and would claim that he had taken advantage of a young intern. It would drive the womens movement into a frenzy.

The Republicans would never defend a man who cheated on his wife and got a blow job in the oval office (look at Livingston, Gingrish and Tower).

No Republican president would have ever survived what Clinton did.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky
If a sitting Republican president had a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him and he had a deposition where he lied under oath about sex in the oval office he would be gone.

The Democrats would scream bloody hell because they would assume the sexual harassment claim was true (like they did with Clarence Thomas) and would claim that he had taken advantage of a young intern. It would drive the womens movement into a frenzy.

The Republicans would never defend a man who cheated on his wife and got a blow job in the oval office (look at Livingston, Gingrish and Tower).

No Republican president would have ever survived what Clinton did.

But outing CIA agents is okay. Got it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
But outing CIA agents is okay. Got it.

Who did that? didn't they have an investigation and struck out?

[Spanky]

BUSH DID NOT LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT WMD

So who is getting the best of the argument? Mr Bush starts with one big advantage: the charge that he knew all along that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction seems to be a farrago of nonsense. Nobody has yet produced any solid evidence for this. Sure, Mr Bush made mistakes, but they seem to have been honest ones made for defensible reasons. He genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—as did most of the world's security services. And he was not alone in thinking that, after September 11th, America should never again err on the side of complacency. More than 100 Democrats in Congress voted to authorise the war.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Who did that? didn't they have an investigation and struck out?

No, no, no. The line, Hank, is "no, that pussy Russert told me first!"

[Spanky]

France v America (contd)

Hyphenating beats segregating
Nov 17th 2005 | DEARBORN, MICHIGAN
From The Economist print edition

Why Arab immigrants assimilate better in the United States


HE WOULD rather talk about the new Arab-American museum in Dearborn, the first of its kind in the country. But Ismael Ahmed patiently indulges questions on another topic—whether America does a better job than France of integrating Arab immigrants—even though he thinks the answers are obvious.

Mr Ahmed, the executive director of ACCESS, a social-services agency for Arab immigrants, reckons there are clear reasons why the sorts of immigrant-driven riots that have recently shocked and shamed France seem hard to imagine in Dearborn, or in other ethnic Arab communities across America. In contrast to the situation in France and in many other European countries, he points out, the children and grandchildren of Arab immigrants to America, both Muslim and Christian, climb the same ladder of education, income and advancement that other immigrant groups have scaled successfully, from Asians to the Irish.


That does not mean that most Arab-Americans, even in well-integrated third- or fourth-generation families, feel at ease these days. The new museum in Dearborn highlights many of their worries and frustrations. Its main exhibits—which look at how Arab immigrants come to America, and how they and their descendants have contributed to American life—make strenuous efforts to dispel stereotypes and point out discrimination, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. One exhibit contains a letter that was sent out to thousands of Arab immigrants after the attacks, urging them to show up for a friendly chat with the FBI.

Yet in the wake of those attacks, Dearborn's Arab-American leaders were also able to fall back on countless ties—social, educational, commercial, political—with the wider community, to defuse tensions and put nervous Arab-Americans at ease. Many of those ties had developed naturally as people in Dearborn and other Detroit suburbs went to school and did business together. Arab-American workers and businessmen are woven into the wider economy: making car parts, running petrol stations, and trying, like the rest of the rustbelt, to branch out into new white-collar professions. In September 2001, both the chief executive of Ford, Jacques Nasser, and the president of the United Auto Workers, Stephen Yokich, were of Arab descent.

Assimilating does not always mean dispersing. As with other immigrant groups, Arab-Americans tend to live in clusters. Indeed, the 300,000 living in the Detroit metropolitan area comprise the largest concentrated Arab community outside North Africa and the Middle East. But given America's economic opportunities, such neighbourhoods—in Dearborn, Flint, Chicago, New York and elsewhere—have little in common with the French banlieues that have erupted in recent weeks.

Immigrants from Lebanon or Iraq may head for Dearborn or the Arab section of Chicago because they have relatives there; or, when they arrive in a big city, they may gravitate towards an area with familiar foods and festivities. But that sort of clustering reflects immigrants' choices. Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, contrasts this with France, where North African immigrants gravitate to the grim high-rises of the banlieues because there is nowhere else for them to go. Perhaps grumpy Americans should be careful what they wish for: while they whinge about the jobs that immigrants are “stealing”, France is feeling the wrath of immigrants who cannot find jobs.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Spanky
BUSH DID NOT LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT WMD

So who is getting the best of the argument? Mr Bush starts with one big advantage: the charge that he knew all along that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction seems to be a farrago of nonsense. Nobody has yet produced any solid evidence for this. Sure, Mr Bush made mistakes, but they seem to have been honest ones made for defensible reasons. He genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—as did most of the world's security services. And he was not alone in thinking that, after September 11th, America should never again err on the side of complacency. More than 100 Democrats in Congress voted to authorise the war.

2. You're like the marines and I'm the Iraqui police. If it's up to me to fight these liberals, I lose a lot. But if you're here, our side always wins.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky
BUSH DID NOT LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT WMD

So who is getting the best of the argument? Mr Bush starts with one big advantage: the charge that he knew all along that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction seems to be a farrago of nonsense. Nobody has yet produced any solid evidence for this. Sure, Mr Bush made mistakes, but they seem to have been honest ones made for defensible reasons. He genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—as did most of the world's security services. And he was not alone in thinking that, after September 11th, America should never again err on the side of complacency. More than 100 Democrats in Congress voted to authorise the war.

"Everybody was not, in fact ,working from the same misleading information. The Administration's line on WMD these days is: OK, we may have been wrong, but everybody was wrong, and everybody came to the same conclusion that we did. The foreigners came to that conclusion through their intelligence services, and the Democrats (especially that weasely Kerry and that ambitious Hillary) did it when they voted for the war resolution.

But at the time, Administration sources were most emphatically NOT saying, "hey, we're all working in the dark here." The implied message in every briefing for reporters, every speech to the public, and every background session with legislators was: If you knew what we knew, you'd be as alarmed as we are. ... The argument over Iraq's capabilities was by definition one-sided, because the Administration's presumed insider knowledge trumped what anyone else could say. To pretend that this was just a widely shared confusion is dishonest and wrong."


-- James Fallows

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Gattigap
"Everybody was not, in fact ,working from the same misleading information. The Administration's line on WMD these days is: OK, we may have been wrong, but everybody was wrong, and everybody came to the same conclusion that we did. The foreigners came to that conclusion through their intelligence services, and the Democrats (especially that weasely Kerry and that ambitious Hillary) did it when they voted for the war resolution.

But at the time, Administration sources were most emphatically NOT saying, "hey, we're all working in the dark here." The implied message in every briefing for reporters, every speech to the public, and every background session with legislators was: If you knew what we knew, you'd be as alarmed as we are. ... The argument over Iraq's capabilities was by definition one-sided, because the Administration's presumed insider knowledge trumped what anyone else could say. To pretend that this was just a widely shared confusion is dishonest and wrong."


-- James Fallows

All this babble does not change the fact that the Bush administration did not lie. It really thought Iraq had WMDs and any statements to the contrary are: LIES.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Bottom line with respect to WMD: I think that the administration pushed for what they honestly thought was the case (that Iraq had WMD), and exaggerated the stuff supporting that belief ("we found the mobile chemical labs") while ignoring or minimizing contrary information, and used this to persuade the country to support an invasion.

To wit, they had already decided to take out Hussein, and simply marshaled the data points which supported that end. To make Hank happy, I'll point y'all to a post by Mark Schmitt that seems very well put.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Fair and Equitable
Wrong again:
"House leaders dropped from a transportation measure the designation of $442 million for projects in Alaska, including one dubbed a ``bridge to nowhere,'' in an effort to gain support for the budget-cutting plan. "

At the risk of failing to STP, the Washington Post (among others) has reported that Alaska is still getting the same amount of money, and the ability to spend it on the bridge to nowhere -- all that's happened is that because GOP congressmen were hearing complaints from constituents about the bridge, they took the specific designation out of the bill.

eta: stp; what bilmore said (I like being able to say that)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Why Arab immigrants assimilate better in the United States

There is a long history of rioting in France. Hell, every July 14 they celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Looks to me like Arab immigrants there are fitting in just fine.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by bilmore
Um, I think if you go back and read it, you'll find that the quislings in the House merely removed the name of the bridge to nowhere from the bill, so that they could claim some nobility, but (sneakily enough!) left the money in, and told Alaska "spend it as you see fit."

Effing snakes. All PR, no substance.

What bizarre about all the earmarks is that it's the same way for all of them. They divvy up a pot, and different congressmen specify projects. The state would get the money either way. For some reason, they feel this is more effective than having it go into general transportation funds, which the state government could spend as it sees fit. I suppose the reason is that it's a lot more impressive to cut a ribbon on a big bridge than to point out how smoothly the Town Car rolls down the freshly paved highway.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
To wit, they had already decided to take out Hussein, and simply marshaled the data points which supported that end. To make Hank happy, I'll point y'all to a post by Mark Schmitt that seems very well put.

So we can all agree:

1) Clinton lied under oath
2) Bush did not lie about the existence of WMDs in Iraq.

From now on these two statements will be considered accepted fact.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
So we can all agree:

1) Clinton lied under oath
2) Bush did not lie about the existence of WMDs in Iraq.

From now on these two statements will be considered accepted fact.

Of course Clinton lied under oath.

As for whether Bush lied, why don't we just say that we don't know enough about his state of mind yet. (You didn't read the Schmitt thing, did you?)

Suppose someone said that there was "no doubt" that there were WMD in Iraq, or that "we know where the WMD are." Given that the intelligence was ambiguous, and that we did not in fact know where the WMD were, would not those be lies?