I USED TO like Bill Clinton

[proud2BlibKansan]

Then I read this:

GOOD EVENING. I know ... you're thinking somebody put the wrong video in the machine. It's kind of like the time somebody put the wrong State of the Union speech in my teleprompter. But it really is me, and I am really here to pay tribute to Roger Ailes!"

That's part of former President Clinton's videotaped message to be played tonight when the Jewish Community Relations Council honors Ailes at the Pierre Hotel. Ailes - like Clinton - has been a great supporter of the state of Israel and works to bring peace to the Middle East.

Clinton added: "I am especially grateful that Roger didn't work in the 1992 campaign. I mean, who knows how different history would have been if he had. I would have been spared all of his barbs in his later life as a media mogul, but I wouldn't have had the chance to be president."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.liz09jun09,1,1695022.story?coll=bal-artslife-today

[jobycom]

1. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Looks like Hillary is running in 2008.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. sorry bro, gotta take you to task on that statement

as it seems you are absolving him with "that's politics."

Clinton was on that stage honoring not only one of Nixon's dirty tricksters, but someone whose claim to fame was character assassination and treating him as though he was simply an accomplished man doing a legitimate job. Clinton GRANTED credibility to all the smut directed toward HIMSELF over the past 12 years in doing so.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Great call

My sentiments exactly. Ailes is more evil than Rove, IMO.

[jobycom]

39. and he undercut an enemy in doing so

Ailes and the Repubs treated the whole smear campaign as a righteous crusade against a wicked man. Clinton just reduced it to a campaign game played between adversaries. By graciously praising his rival, he undercuts the moral outrage Ailes pretended to feel, and makes it all just a game of tactics. Ailes is reduced, Clinton elevated. When you praise an enemy, you give the appearance of camaraderie, and everything that enemy does after that looks less significant.

You want Clinton to either ignore Ailes or rain fire and brimstone upon his head. That's never been Clinton's style, and it wouldn't stop Ailes or people like him, anyway. Clinton's revenge is winning. He would have made a good Sicilian.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

43. No, he really didn't. The next time Fox is taken to task for their bias

and complicity in things such as 8 years of investigating the Clintons and their pro war coverage void of facts along with their justifications of Watergate and what a treasonous bastard Mark Felt is, they will play Clinton's speech and say, "How bad can Ailes be? even Bill Clinton honored him!" When Hillary runs and Fox SKEWERS her, they will play this tape of Clinton pretending Ailes was only "doing his job" (no matter how unethical that job was) and say that even Clinton agrees with their tactics and condones them.
Now, if Ailes were to be found at the bottom of the Potomac, you might have good cause for claiming Clinton was a "good Sicilian."

[jobycom]

46. They won't play that tape

To do so what be to elevate Clinton, to give him respect, to show that they value his opinion. That would only help Hillary Clinton.

[proud2BlibKansan]

47. I think they WILL play it

Their agenda is more focused on making us liberals look bad than on promoting their own RW viewpoints. And they think Bill is our god.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

49. We shall see

;)

[David Zephyr]

44. I agree.

100%

[MADem]

16. I agree with your assessment

No sense pissing them off now--far better to lure them, lull them, and put them in a position where they will look like total jerks if they suddenly turn on him, or his missus. Let others take the heat, develop a strategy of triangulation, and that makes it THAT MUCH HARDER for the GOP to go for her throat...they'll look like mean a-holes!

[mazzarro]

29. I strongly beg to disagree with you!

This is another typical Bill Clinton selfishness and not caring much about the impact of his actions on the democratic party. When are we going to start calling on him to be far more thoughtful of the party than himself and his family?

[jobycom]

56. LOL You don't have to beg, just disagree!

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Clinton isn't being selfish, he's just not really a Democrat anymore. He's a former president. Even Nixon and Reagan avoided partisanship once they left the White House. Bush Daddy is an exception, but only when dealing with his son, and even there, he's shown incredible restraint. (I'm talking publicly--privately they're all pretty vicious.)

Former presidents are supposed to be above partisanship, only offering key endorsements and fundraising assistance during election time, but otherwise staying out of the fray and acting like statesmen.

That's Clinton's roll, now.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

2. How did you miss Barbara Bush ......

.... referring to Bill Clinton as her "son" recently?

I've lost all respect for him and for Hillary. A couple of pandering hypocrites, those two.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. He's done a lot of strange things lately

pandering to the Bushes, praising Karl Rove, etc. But this really pisses me off. He can praise Ailes if he wants, but doing a TRIBUTE to him - and this publicly - just takes me over the edge.

Bye bye Willy Boy. It was nice while it lasted.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

15. Sucking up to the Israeli lobby, no doubt

His whoring is embarrassing.

[misanthrope]

22. Wow. You're just now...

...figuring that one out? Don't meant to sound condescending, but I saw that handwriting on the wall about 12 years ago. He's just too, well, slick for my tastes. He proved it by kowtowing to the same masters that rule most of our elected leaders.

I kept hearing all this hoopla about Obama leading up to his moment in the sun at last year's convention. When I saw his speech, I got the willies listening to him, the "slick willies" to be exact. He strikes me as being cut from the same over-polished cloth as Clinton. Like the former POTUS, he can certainly deliver a speech but time will tell what kind of substance lies beneath the shiny veneer. Jury's still out on him now, but I'm skeptical.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

27. What makes you think.......

........I'm "just figuring that one out"?

[misanthrope]

30. It's just an expression...

...used to underscore his transparency.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

34. No, it's not

You just read far too much into what I wrote so as to use it as a platform for your remarks. That's all.

[misanthrope]

40. Kreskin? That you? n/t**

*

[OldLeftieLawyer]

42. Woo hoooooo

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[LSdemocrat]

53. Clinton likes everyone. Get over it.

Clinton likes everyone and wants to be friends with everyone. He doesn't take politics personally.

[AX10]

28. As sick as that was, I can understand why Barbara might admire...

Clinton. Remember, Clinton is very well accomplished and won the Presidency TWICE on his own abilities. George is a theif, who relied upon his daddy to get him through life. I know pro-Bush Repubs who bash Clinton, but admired him for his strength and ability to accomplish so much in his life.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

31. She doesn't admire him,

and she didn't say that. She owns him.

She likes owning him, and Clinton's sold himself to Those People.

Believe me, they don't admire him at all, except that he was able to fight dirtier than Poppy to beat him. That's all. He's another of their lapdogs.

Soon, he'll be a Carlyle Group guy.

[Frederik]

36. Not Carlyle

Clinton wants to be UN Sec Gen, that is if there's anything left of the UN after Dubya and Bolton are finished with it.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

37. Naw, he won't get that

He won't become a Carlyle guy, either. That was just me amusing myself.

They own Clinton, but they're not about to give him anything, let alone a platform upon which he might outshine any Republican.

[RBHam]

3. No surprise.

Bill Clinton has been tied in with the BFEE since the CIA was running part of their Iran/Contra scam through an airport in Arkansas...

I mean, come on.

[CubsFan1982]

6. LOL

You tinfoilers crack me up! :tinfoilhat:

:freak:

[RBHam]

11. oops! too late!

Nothing like a smear to avoid research or debate.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. Prove she is wrong then

and good luck.

[Frederik]

32. Why don't you ask John Kerry about it

I doubt Clinton had much to do with, but Mena was used by the CIA to smuggle cocaine into America as a part of the Iran-Contra affair. A very sordid affair it was, Iran-Contra. And Poppy was the spider in the web.

[RBHam]

Yes, I know. I'm a loony conspiracy theorist.

No need to unwrap the tin foil references.

[Al-CIAda]

12. Mena, Ark. Tons of cocaine...TONS. GHWB n/t

[RBHam]

17. But it's all "Tin foil" hat stuff, don'tch know?

Cocaine Import Agency

http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/

In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published a three-part investigation by Gary Webb into the U.S. government's links to the trade in crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. Webb's investigation uncovered links between the Central Intelligence Agency's covert war against Nicaragua and convicted Los Angeles drug dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross, whom the Los Angeles Times in 1994 had dubbed the "one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine." (20 December 1994 p. A20)

The (admittedly sensationalized, but basically accurate) story generated much controversy, and heated denials from the mainstream media (in particular the local paper of record, whose editor Shelby Coffey III couldn't bear the thought of someone else beating his paper out on a major story in his own backyard). This vehement denegration, however, is largely inconsistent with the historical record (some of which has been, and continues to be, reported in these same papers).

This web site is part of a long-standing research project of mine. As a scholar working at the interstices of speech communication and cultural studies, I have been investigating the public discourse surrounding the "war on drugs" as an exercise in disciplinary social control. This site is a database of information, evidence, and other resources that have helped guide me in this research project, and will hopefully help others working along the same lines.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

18. Really?

I wish I had had more time to spend on conspiracy theories during my productive years, but I was busy with other things. Silly me.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

23. Clinton administration that set the tone for Bush admins invasion of Iraq

2003 Democracy Now!
http://www.pacifica.org/programs/dn/040730.html

"Some veteran Iraq observers say that it was the Clinton administration that set the tone for the Bush administration"s invasion of Iraq. It was Clinton who began the most sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, when, in 1998, he began almost daily attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zones. And in 1998, Clinton"s administration made so-called regime change in Iraq official US policy.

During his presidency, Bill Clinton presided over the most devestating regime of economic sanctions in history that the UN estimated took the lives of as many as a million Iraqis, the vast majority of them children. In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeline Albright, who at the time was Clinton"s UN Ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that"s more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?"

[RBHam]

35. Not to mention his blind support of "The War On Drugs".

Creep.

[Toots]

50. Wasn't that on the tape Jerry Falwall was selling?

Didn't he also bring in all the cocaine in America and have thirty or was it fifty people killed? That tape was filled with "evidence" of the millions of crimes Clinton committed. :shrug:

[blm]

4. AILES IS A FASCIST HATCHET-MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am incredibly disappointed in Clinton for this.

[FreedomAngel82]

7. I am too

*sigh* :(

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. I am beyond disappointment. n/t

[Kelvin Mace]

9. I have never cared for Bill Clinton because of this kind of crap

He is a politican and always angling for what must be done to get re-elected. He was NEVER a liberal, despite what the Right claimed. At best, he was a moderate Republican in the 70's sense of the term.

[montanacowboy]

10. Join the Crowd

the Clintons have been sucking up to the Bush's and the Jewish community for a long time now, all in preparation for Hillary's run. Remember Hillary was a Republican long before she was a Democrat and Bill was always right of center. These two are out for themselves in any way they can promote it.

These two are not friends of Progressives.

[MADem]

19. Yeah, but those were good years

Peace and prosperity...seems like a dream....

[AX10]

21. We might have to join the right wing in their campaign to ruin her then.

Seriously, do we really want someone who is this close to the enemy. I mean, Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch are freinds behind the scenes but there was NEVER this type of overt love-fest between them. Clinton should be ashamed. God Bless Howard Dean.

[Ksec]

24. Clinton better be real careful

Hes treading on really thin ice here. If he keeps giving these evil fuks praise hes gonna lose his base. Me included. Ive been teetering on a dislike of him since he agreed with Bushs illegal bogus war.

He just better be reaaaaal careful.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. I never did like Clinton. But, as Republicans go he wasn't all that bad.

Smooth talker though. Fooled a lot of Democrats into thinking he was a progressive.

[jonnyblitz]

38. nor did I. I agree with your post. he was a smooth talker and

he has quite the little "cult of personality" following as does his wife.

[BigBearJohn]

26. I will always love Bill Clinton. Always.

[Zhade]

33. ROGER FUCKING AILES?

Clinton really has gone to the Dark Side. All this talk of "keeping one's enemies closer" doesn't apply when they apparently aren't your enemies anymore.

I mean, I got pissed at Clinton for promising worker protections in NAFTA during his run and then gutting those protections to get NAFTA passed, but this is just insane.

Has he really forgotten the utter evil of Ailes' actions?

[fujiyama]

41. Isn't this the same Roger Ailes

whose company Newscorp (which owns Fox News) led the way during the impeachment of Clinton?

I'm finding it harder to even feel sorry for Clinton over even the impeachment, because he seems to be on such good terms with those that led the witch-hunt.

Clinton is a very charismatic guy, but I always thought that either Gore or Kerry would have made much better presidents. As an ex-president, Carter has been a much more consistant moral voice. Clinton and his wife always seemed like they had their own interests above those of the party or anyone else for that matter.

That's why by the time he left, the party had lost control of the House, the Senate, and a majority of governorships.

[AX10]

48. Gore and Kerry are more worthy of the White House than Clinton.

That I agree with. I'd hate to see Hillary in 08'.

[Catherine Vincent]

45. Sigh!

I still love you President Clinton.

[proud2BlibKansan]

51. He's all yours now

I defended him through Monicagate and have greatly admired him for years. But this ONE THING - paying tribute to Ailes - just sends me over the proverbial edge.

[Disturbed]

52. The Clintons are smooth Con Artists.

Repub Lites love 'em. Rethugs hate 'em because they aren't RW extreme but have the charm to infiltrate the upper crust of the World Elite.

This was amusing: "they'll look like mean a-holes!" Refering to the Rethugs. Anybody think they aren't?

[cap]

54. all in all ... the world was better with Bill in charge than GW

eom

[proud2BlibKansan]

55. true

n/t