Tag: republicans

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Newt Gangrene: America, America, America

“In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”

Never imagine that any kind of scurrilous, scumbag, divisive politics is beneath a Republican. Newt Gingrich has found Jesus. Just in time for 2012. Do even fellow Republicans buy this? Does anyone in the Republican Party ever acknowledge that the movement itself would be better off if it sounded a little less cynical and opportunistic?

Is there anything more that anyone needs to know about Newt Gingrich than that he is willing to stand in front of a crowd of Republicans and make the statement he made above, (at a gathering of the Ohio Right to Life) February 28, 2011?

Nobody can seriously believe that Newt actually believes this. If he does, America is far worse off than even I imagined. But it does magnify something that has become more apparent since 9/11: he doesn’t even care if you believe he believes it or not. It doesn’t matter.

How does one avoid being rude when observing what should be obvious but obviously isn’t? That New Gingrich, ready to make another run at the presidency, studied the polls and decided that Americans– actually, Republicans who vote in the primaries– want a leader with genuine religious convictions so, all right, we can do that. Here’s how: you say “In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.” You say this in front of “Ohio Right to Life”. Just drink in the applause. Ahhhh. Feels good. It’s so easy. And the money keeps rolling in. And James Dobson is already behind you, on his knees, lips puckered.

It’s like “fiscal responsibility” and “no new taxes” and “strong military” and anything with “America” in the title, on a book– not that anyone will actually read it. They just need to know that you, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and everyone else out there on the right, has not only read at least one book in your life but has also written one. Something like “Fighting for America”. Or “Finding the Real America”. Or, “America– the America of Americas”. Or “God and America”. Or “How Immigration is Ruining America” by Nancy McDougal and Sid Hofstetter.

Not that you could actually have ever been bothered to actually write the book. Gosh, that’s not time well-spent for God’s appointed leaders– that’s hack work, for what’s-his-name– the elite intellectual snob we hired just for this kind of work.

But conservatives don’t give a flying leap about whether you actually wrote a book you “authored”. That’s for those effeminate, liberal, snobbish eastern elites. People like Al Gore and Barack Obama. No, by God, a real leader just puts his name on it. Nor do they seem to give a damn about the rankest hypocrisy imaginable (see sidebar).

I suppose people should be reassured that Gingrich has discovered, thrillingly, if belatedly, that 2+2=4. We all look forward to the next miracle: how he will balance the budget, cut taxes for the rich, and increase military spending, without cutting any programs.

Aside from all that, isn’t Gingrich more or less openly saying that America should become a Christian Theocracy? If not, then what is he saying?

It’s really the Christians who have fallen down on this. Where are the church leaders who have any real religion? They would be standing up now, declaring that Christianity should not be exploited and tricked out in this way, and that politicians like Gingrich do more harm than good to real spirituality.

A lot of harm

Do Republicans ever hold any of themselves accountable for anything:

He [Newt Gingrich] also acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista Bisek, then a House staff member, while leading impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton for lying about his own sexual transgressions. NY Times, 2011-02-28

I don’t think they do hold themselves accountable. I think they believe they are special, touched by god, with wisdom so sublime and transcendent that mortal men cannot even begin to apprehend the audaciousness of their wisdom.

When you think you are so right that those who disagree with you are not mere political opponents but enemies of the state– nay, enemies of God!– foreigners, and subversives, consistency is truly the hobgoblin of little minds.

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The Dog Must be Walked; War Must be Paid For

Why oh why oh why did the Democrats not demand that the Republicans pay for their wars out of current tax revenues?

Would Americans have voted for a war that was going to cost each of them, man, woman, and child, $750 (over $2000 per household) so far? Or would they have demanded better proof, at least, of the actual existence of weapons of mass destruction?

The Republicans cut taxes while taking on the war and then borrowed to cover the deficit. Why did the Democrats allow the Republicans to bill the war to future generations? Did they not realize that once Bush had run up the deficit, the Republicans, having whipped the nation into a patriotic frenzy (with, among other things, those nauseating “God Bless America” interludes at ball games), could now use the deficit as an excuse to slash spending on programs that actually benefit most Americans?

Was this planned?

David Stockton appeared on “60 Minutes” last Sunday. The former Reagan budget director actually advocated higher taxes on the rich for the simple common sense reason that the country’s bills need to be paid.

One could be forgiven with coming away with the impression that there is indeed a class war going on in the U.S.: the rich are out to destroy the middle class.

Common sense: whether you were in favor or opposed to the Iraq War, it defies belief that the Republicans were able to get away with cutting taxes at a time when it was clear that the government needed additional revenues to defend itself against terrorism. Who benefits the most from the peace and security of the U.S.? The rich. So who pays the least to defend the peace and security of the U.S.? Proportionately, the rich.

By borrowing the money for his wars (and that is absolutely what he did), and then cutting taxes to the rich, George Bush stunningly shifted the burden of the cost of the wars to the middle-classes. The next step in the process is for the Republicans to scream bloody murder about the awful deficit they created and weep crocodile tears: “now we’ll have to cut Social Security and Medicare and other social programs! Alas!”

The Democrat’s biggest blunder? By allowing themselves to be cornered into supporting the war and terrified of being accused of raising taxes, the Democrats consented to screwing themselves. They should have demanded that Bush raise the revenue to pay for the war without borrowing! That would have been a Rove-like tactic that might have brilliantly positioned themselves as the more fiscally responsible party in 2010.

Instead, they are like the adults whose kids promised they would walk the dog every day, if they would only, please, please, please, get a dog. And now the Republicans sit on their fat asses watching “American Idol” on TV, ignoring the dog.

And now, well, the dog must be walked. And it’s raining, and it’s cold, and it’s dark. And the dog must be walked.

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3%

In a very recent poll, only 3% of American voters considered the war in Afghanistan the “most important” problem facing the country. Now, you may say, well, that doesn’t mean a lot of voters don’t consider it somewhat important. I would suggest that the fact that only 3% consider it the most important (consider that way more people think there really are witches), that it is a dead issue.

So, ten years after this war was considered so urgent, so important, so vital to the security interests of the United States that thousands of people would die for it, and billions of dollars of weapons would be deployed for it, it now doesn’t even register on the radar. Is there a lesson here?

Sure there is.

  • Americans have a very, very short attention span. If you can distract them for a few days, you too can be a Senator or Congressman or president. Do not worry your pretty little head about the consequences of your decisions five years down the road.
  • Number 1 explains why so many state and city pension funds are bankrupt. Apparently, American politicians are almost uniformly irresponsible or stupid or both. Don’t blame them: the same voters keep putting them back into office because they promise to be patriotic, religious, and heterosexual.
  • Americans can be fooled over and over and over again. We are about to see an entire new crop of idiots thrust into political office where, God help us, they may get their hands on Social Security, Medicare, and the Education system. God help us again.
  • Those large segments of America’s deeply religious communities who claim to be pro life? Shameless liars, all of them. Life is cheap. Life is shit. People are dying in a war no one cares about. These people never actually save anyone’s life, but they are more than happy to kill for cheap oil.
  • Those nations who sign on to America’s wars? Do you realize that your soldiers are also dying for a war that barely registers in the consciousness of the population of the country that talked you into this?
  • Obama, I guess, would love to walk away. The fact that Karzai is now talking to the Taliban about an accommodation of some sorts speaks volumes about where this is going. How lovely to be a Republican: you convince Americans it will be clean and simple and decisive, you start the war, you wage the war, you lose the war (make no mistake about it: it is lost), you borrow the money to finance the war, you reduce taxes on the rich so they don’t have to pay for it ever, then you walk away from the disaster. Then, in the next election, you run on a platform of a government that is less intrusive and more fiscally responsible.
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But You Wanted to Increase the Minimum Wage!

You have to hand it to the Republicans some days– clever. They have finally decided to allow an increase to the minimum wage, the first one in seven years, because they must have done some polling and the mid-term elections are coming up. Then they combined it with a permanent tax break affecting a tiny percentage of the richest Americans, but which will result in a huge increase in the federal deficit. The tax break applies to estates over $5 million. This tax break is so attractive to the rich that their twit lobbyists, who normally fight every attempt to increase the minimum wage, have announced that they support this bill in exchange for it.

When they were opposed to the bill, their logic was this: when you increase wages for the poor, you make it more costly to employ them. So less of them will find work. So increasing the minimum wage hurts the working poor.

Gosh. They might be right. In that case, Congress should also place caps on the amount of interest credit card companies can charge their card-holders, or people will stop using credit.

The real sin of this contrivance is that the Republicans– the party of high principles and integrity, remember– have tucked the estate tax break into the minimum wage bill instead of letting each piece of legislation stand on it’s own as they should. This is sneaky, devious, deceitful, and immoral. When you hear people like Bill Frist explain why they are doing this, it sounds a lot like, “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

If the Democrats oppose the bill, the Republicans campaign as the friends of the working man, who tried so hard to raise the minimum wage but those damn Democrats– friends of those privileged, snobbish, educated, Eastern elitists– sabotaged it. If the Democrats vote in favor of it– even better. The Republicans can claim it was all their idea. In the meantime, their most ardent supporters get another massive tax break.

Watch the media the next few days. You will see numerous Republicans and their toadies popping up on the talk shows and newscasts using identical phrases and ideas to argue for the bill. This will be highly coordinated. It might work, if the Democrats don’t have the guts to trust the voters to spot a scam when they see one.

Oh joy — now we can turn Cuba into… Haiti. Those who celebrate Castro’s recent illness leave me with mixed feelings. Yes, he is a dictator and Cuba is essentially a one-party state, and yes he has jailed or executed some dissidents (though not as many as, say, Pinochet did in his prime). But if you compare Cuba to other similar nations in the region, it’s hard to argue that life for more Cubans would have been better if the CIA had deposed Castro in the 1960’s. It almost certainly would have been better if the U.S. had not imposed it’s embargo.

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After John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court and George Bush appointed Priscilla Owens in his place, the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade. …

Be careful what you wish for. I have to credit an article in the Atlantic Monthly from May 2006 for this insight: a Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe vs. Wade means that every State will then be able to write its own legislation on abortion, which means that the Republicans, while proclaiming their wholesale devotion to the right to life position, will suddenly actually be in a position to impose their views on the country. Is this something the smart Republican really wants?

The core of the Republican coalition is the Christian Right. Have you ever heard these people discuss abortion? Have you ever heard them discuss possible exemptions for rape or incest? This is a very uncompromising bunch. They will not be happy to vote for a Republican who promises to allow those exemptions. But if a Republican proposes a law without those exemptions, he will risk the wrath of up to 70% of the electorate who believe there should be reasonable limits– but not a wholesale ban– on abortion. In that sense, the true-believer Republicans will suddenly fall into the category of “extremist”.

Any Republican who realizes this and decides to take a moderate position risks being turfed by his own party in the primaries, which are dominated by the true believers.

It is quite possible that, in many states, a Republican candidate for state government, or even for congress, could not get nominated without support from the die-hard Christian right.

The Democrats might or might not be wise enough to propose “moderate” legislation, either limiting abortion to the first three months, or even to cases of incest or rape.

It is possible that such developments could alter the political landscape in the U.S. for a good 20 years.

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Alito’s Joke

The Judicial Committee Hearings on Judge Alito are the funniest in years. The Democrats ask him what his view on abortion is and he says he has no views and even if he did, it would be unethical for the Senate to approve of a candidate to the Supreme Court who could actually explain what he thinks about the law.

The Republicans crawl on the floor and kiss his wounded knee. His wife bursts into tears and flees the room. Oh, those nasty, nasty, vicious, oppressing, liberals!

George Bush admits that he nominated a man with no views at all. He would like Alito to approach each case that comes before the Supreme Court the way a good chef approaches brain surgery.

Is anybody really confused? The Bush Administration knows that it could never nominate the candidate it really wants– James Dobson– to the Supreme Court, so they find a low-profile candidate and tell him to hide his views and then try to pass him off as a moderate and attack the Democrats for being obstructionist and for supporting “activist” judges.

It’s not an activist judge that locks up people without trial? Or has evidence destroyed so DNA testing can’t prove innocent people have been executed?

If abortion ever comes before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito promises to approach the issue with an open mind. I repeat: with an open mind. George Bush did not put him on the Supreme Court to please the Christian Right. How could he have, when clearly Alito has no beliefs about the issue of abortion. None at all. If you have a book on abortion that you could send him, he would appreciate it, because he has never, ever given the slightest thought to the issue of abortion. In fact, if you could send him a doctor who could, in plain English, explain to Judge Alito what abortion is, that would be wonderful and he would be ever so grateful.

I can just imagine him jumping out of his chair after a presentation, “by golly– I was wrong! I think a woman does have the right to terminate a pregnancy.”

That, at least, is the possibility he asks us to imagine. Is this a lie? Would Jesus lie?

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Republican Deficits

Some critics of the George W. Bush Jr. tax cut don’t understand one simple but important thing about Republican economics. They allege that this $1.2 trillion tax cut, which primarily benefits the very rich, will drive the government back into a deficit within ten years. They think that Bush Jr. and his cronies don’t know this.

They know it very well. The cronies know it, absolutely. Bush Jr. himself may only be dimly aware of it, because he really isn’t all that bright.

The purpose of the tax cut is to accomplish exactly what the critics say it will: restore the budget to a deficit position. Why? Because the budget deficit was quite simply the best tool the conservatives had for transferring as much wealth from the poor to the rich as possible. Jimmy Carter left the presidency with most social programs intact and a relatively modest $45 billion deficit. President Reagan, unable politically to slash the social programs he wanted to slash, simply ran up the deficit by cutting taxes without cutting spending. He was the most fiscally irresponsible president in the history of the United States and left, as his legacy to the nation, a $450 billion deficit.

Mr. Do-Nothing Senior, George Bush, did nothing. The deficit suited Republicans just fine. Military spending continued at its usual hysterical pace, squandered left, right, and centre on madcap schemes, over-priced hammers, obsolete aircraft, and bizarre futuristic technologies that never worked. But even George Bush Sr. realized that he couldn’t let the deficit spiral too far out of control: he raised taxes. That is why, some think, he lost the next election to Bill Clinton.

Enter President Clinton. Clinton cut spending and left most existing taxes intact. Within five years, he had eliminated the annual deficit. The economy, spurred by low interest rates (caused by the fact that the government was no longer competing as heartily for loaned money), grew spectacularly.

The Republicans lost the election to Al Gore, but were awarded the Oval Office by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. Bush’s first significant act is to set the government on the path towards deficits again. His trillion dollar tax cut, combined with the downturn in the economy, (which will lower projected tax revenues) will almost guarantee that the government will once again be in a deficit position within ten years.

And then, once again, the Republicans will raise a hue and cry: we must cut spending!

Is it really all that subtle?

As you will know when you read this, all of the predictions here came true: Trump entered office January 2017 and by January 2018 the projected annual deficit of the United States will be about 4 times the size of Obama’s largest deficit (it was declining, slowly, before Trump).

[2018-05-08]

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Republicans of Virtue

Who are these noble men who seek to purify the government by removing that festering pustule of delinquency, Bill Jefferson Clinton, from the sacred repository of all that is noble and good? Let’s meet some of them:

Bob Barr – when he is not busy addressing the John Birch Society or White Supremacist rallies, Bob likes to commit a little adultery himself. In all fairness, Bob claims that he doesn’t really understand what those white hoods are for.

Sonny Bono – died, before he could win a single Grammy for song-writing. But that’s okay: in democratic, freedom-loving America, his wife can have his job, ruling the country and impeaching presidents.

Zach Wamp of Tennessee opposes all government spending, unless it goes to his district.

Henry Hyde had a little fling on the side himself back he was Clinton’s age, but don’t let that fool you: he believes in something, not like those atheist, pagan Democrats!

Helen Chenoweth thinks all people who commit adultery and lie about it should be removed from office. Oops. Seems she committed adultery. I guess she didn’t lie about it. “Hi there. I’m Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth and I’m having sex with your husband.”

Steve Stockman of Texas likes to hang around with those militia groups that stockpile arms for the day of reckoning, when blacks and Jews try to take over America.

Enid Green Waldholtz, Utah, got elected with a little help from her father: $2 million worth of illegal campaign contributions. Oops. Let’s not investigate that.

Wes Cooley slightly exaggerated his war record. Seems he wasn’t part of that patriotic special operations unit in Korea after all.

Newt Gingrich. Aside from a few dozen ethics violations, such as trying to hide the income from his best-selling books, and the fact that he, like Dan Quayle, avoided military service, and the fact that he is the most ego-centric and unpopular politician in the country…. oh yes. Don’t forget that he engineered a complete shutdown of the federal government in November 1995, one of the most colossal political blunders of all time, because he was still in a snit over not being invited to exit the front door of Air Force One when it arrived in Israel for the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.

Governor George Bush Jr. Well, let’s just hope Kenneth Starr isn’t still looking into lifestyles of the rich and elected by 2000…. but then again, Starr doesn’t investigate Republicans. That’s what we mean by “independent”. Let’s just say that George enjoyed his youth and leave it at that, shall we?

Fred Heineman of North Carolina thinks most middle class families earn around $700K.

Dan Burton… oh dear… that adultery thing again. He also raised the art of political discourse to a new high with his formal description of the president as “a scumbag”. Can you spell “statesmanship”?

Bob Dole. Let’s not speculate too much here about Mr. Family Values, but merely note, with dignity and restraint, that Mr. Dole’s first wife’s name is not Elizabeth.

Dan Quayle. War record, Dan? You weren’t one of those despicable draft dodgers were you? Chicken-hawk. Indiana National Guard? Oooo. Did you get a chance to lob a few grenades at Birch Bayh?

Robert Livingston. A good decent man who happened to have committed adultery too. What a shame. Good, decent men like Bob Barr forced him to resign.

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Pants on Fire: Analysis of a Scandal

Pants on Fire

After six months of debate, personal attacks, screaming, hollering, and fits of hysteria, there’s really nothing new to add the Clinton debate. The biggest, most flatulent paradox of the whole thing is when all these Republicans line up with their phony serious faces and insist that this is “painful” for them and they didn’t really want to do it but they have to impeach the leader of the free world for lying. They even claim– and this is an outrage– that Nixon had similarly high approval ratings on the day he was impeached.

Let’s get this straight. On the day of the Watergate break-in, Nixon’s approval ratings were, in fact, decent– around 60%. But as the Watergate scandal unfolded, and as testimony revealed more and more about the criminal activities (not merely immoral: criminal) of the White House, Nixon’s approval ratings plummeted, down to a low of 27% on the day he resigned.

So those Republicans who claim that Nixon’s approval ratings were the same as Clinton’s are, of course lying. They are also lying when they claim that they are paying a political price for their “principled” stand. Almost all of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee face no serious opposition for re-election in their own ridings. The truth is, they could go around wearing a dress and throwing custard pies at Vernon Jordan and still be re-elected in their solidly Republican districts. The truth is that they receive so much money from the corporations that benefit from their corrupt legislative agendas that they will be re-elected until, like Strom Thurmond, they are pretty well senile.

They give all these interviews where they say they have to see the evidence first, and they haven’t made up their minds. Then every last single one of them votes “guilty”, like we all thought they would.

There has never been so much lying in any single repository of political deliberation since the Nixon White House.

The bottom line is very simple. If Clinton had clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”, as Nixon did, there would have been at least five or six Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voting for impeachment, and at least 30-45 Democrats in the House voting for impeachment. That’s all it would take to establish that there really are objective criteria at work here and that they are really being applied fairly, and that this is not a partisan political attack. Unless you seriously believe that every single member of the Democratic Party is a lying weasel.

Well, the Republicans want you to believe that every single Republican Representative is voting their conscience.. That is what they are saying. They ask you to believe this. Do you believe they believe it themselves? If they don’t believe it themselves, they are lying. If they do believe it themselves, they either fanatic or clinically insane or both. If they believed itself, there would be no backroom dealing, no arm-twisting, no secret meetings, no closed-door caucuses….. Come on… do you believe it?

What does this remind you of? The old Soviet Union? The Communist government would declare that this writer or that dissident was a threat to the state and must be expelled or imprisoned or whatever. And every single member of the government would vote for this measure. The vote would be something like 350-10. Just as the Republicans now vote 220-5 in favour of impeachment. Nobody doubted then that the vote was farce, just as no one should doubt it now.

The Republicans keep insisting that it’s up to the Democrats to break the partisan logjam. In other words, we can be bipartisan as long as you vote the way I tell you to.

That is the prosecution–and they clearly are the prosecution– insisting that the defense prove that their client is innocent. “If he really didn’t do it, prove it.” No such burden in law exists. It is the Republicans who want to impeach. It is their job to convince at least some Democrats and the majority of Americans that Clinton should be impeached. They have utterly failed. And if they had any respect for the democratic system of government, they would admit that they simply cannot carry out an impeachment along purely partisan lines, and therefore must stop.

But they don’t care. The most frightening thing about this debacle is the way it has laid bare the Republicans bald contempt for democratic values whenever it stands in the way of their partisan agenda. They literally do not care what anyone thinks. They have the muscle– just barely– to impeach, and a legal technicality to hang it on, and so they will. It is very troubling that so very few Republicans–about five–have the integrity to admit that, no matter what they believe personally, they simply cannot carry out such a momentous process without some bipartisan support. You simply can’t do it, without doing serious damage to the institution of government. No matter how convinced you are that you are right, if you have any integrity or respect for democracy, you can’t go forward. You admit that you failed. You say, “well, if the American people really want him, and we can’t persuade anybody else that he’s guilty, so be it.” Instead, the Republicans say, “what do we care what the voters want or whether the process is credible. Look at CNN? Analysis is about as deep as Tupperware. Everyone will forget this within six months.”

The moment of truth in this debate was the moment that Henry Hyde said, “You may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something.” In other words, this is really a religious battle. We are God’s chosen, and you are the apostates. We know we are right, because God told us the truth, and it is our duty to enlighten you. Why should we consider other points of view, when we’re right? Debate is utterly useless. This, spoken by a man who, when he was Clinton’s age, also had an adulterous affair.

Reagan got off very lightly with the Iran-Contra scandal, largely because most Democrats, as much as they disagreed with Reagan, respected the fact that he had commanding support (almost as good as Bill Clinton’s) from the voters. And they didn’t think it would be worth turning the government upside down just to shove their own views down the throat of the body politic. Unlike the Republicans, they realized they could not proceed without wide public consensus that the offenses committed were serious enough to warrant impeachment. The Republicans have no such compunction.

The extremism of the Republicans has forced moderates too far to the right. Not only were Clinton’s offenses not worthy of impeachment, they are not even worthy of censure. They are not worthy of a hiccup. Unlike Watergate and Iran-Contra, they had nothing to do with the exercise of power. The real question to ask yourself– and most American voters appear to have asked it– is what harm was done. The affair was consensual. Paula Jones’ case, by all credible accounts, would have died in any court room (she could never prove that she had suffered any harm, even if the incident in the hotel room really happened). The initial Paula Jones lawsuit, and the now-repudiated testimony of the state troopers, has well-documented links to multi-millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, an arch-foe of President Clinton. Jerry Falwell has links to the film company “Jerimiah Productions” which created “The Clinton Chronicles”, a farcical video that alleges murder and mayhem in the Clinton White House and gives new meaning to the word “paranoid”. Several “witnesses” who provided derogatory stories to the Financial Post and other newspapers were paid by “Citizens for Honest Government”, an anti-Clinton organization with links, again, to Falwell.

On the other hand, Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully traded weapons to an enemy of the U.S. (Iran) in return for the release of hostages in Lebanon. He broke the law. He showed poor judgement. And to any but the most gullible, he lied about it.

It looks like a big mess now. The country has been tied up for months with this insane investigation. Character assassination and invasion of privacy is now accepted as political stratagems. Perhaps the most cynical development in the whole scandal is the party line of the Republicans: “See what Bill Clinton hath wrought!” This is, without a doubt, what Kenneth Starr and the Republicans have wrought. It is only due to their incredibly stubborn and devious machinations that this affair continues to dominate the headlines.

The media have performed about as badly as Republicans, and continue to make the insane assertion that Clinton’s presidency is now permanently “tainted” with this scandal. CNN is the 24-hour Impeachment channel, with music and graphics that make it seem like a great sporting event, complete with colour commentators and sponsors.

I firmly believe that within five years, this scandal will be rightly regarded as one of the ugliest examples of partisan political muckraking in the history of the U.S., and the blame will be squarely laid on the shoulders of Newt Gingrich, Kenneth Starr, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, and their fellow raving hypocrites.

Finally, I have to express my utter astonishment at the resilient good sense of the average American voter. I did not believe that public opinion would withstand the onslaught of six months of raving lunacy, by the Republicans, by CNN, by NBC, ABC, and CBS (who recalled Dan Rather from Cuba to cover the stained dress), and even so-called “liberal” papers, like the New York Times.

Why did the media treat the story the way they did, if Clinton’s actions did not justify impeachment? There are three basic reasons. (1) it was a cheap story: all talking heads and free interviews. Very few mobile-cams, travel expenses, research, or paid experts. The profit margin is enormous. (2) The Republicans made it a story by releasing all the scandalous details from Grand Jury testimony when they should not have, and holding press conferences, and calling for Clinton to resign. (3) because sex sells.

Consider, as an alternative, the cost of providing in-depth coverage of the Kosovo crisis: you have reporters travelling and staying in hotels. You have research into the history of the area and its peoples and culture. You have related developments at the U.N. and Moscow and European capitals. It takes longer than five seconds to explain.

But if people didn’t buy the story why did they tune in to CNN to watch it unfold? The outrage effect. Even people who hated the story probably tuned in regularly to see just how outrageous and contemptible it had become. It was, indeed, spectacular. It was ridiculous to the degree of absurdity. It was, at times, insane. But it was always a spectacle, and people will watch a spectacle, no matter how horrifying.

Have the Republicans done permanent damage to their party? Do the voters realize how utterly cynical and contemptuous of them this party is? The Republicans seriously believe that the voters will either change their minds about Clinton, eventually, or they will completely forget, in two years or less, that they did everything they could to obstruct, marginalize, and remove a popular president.

They may be right. Maybe not. The Republicans may have underestimated the effect that this debacle has had on the people who really do shape opinion. Once the vampires in the media have sucked all the blood out of this story, they will need a new one. The reporters and editors who help shape public opinion are always looking for an “angle” to a story. The primary angle of the Lewinsky scandal is Clinton’s immorality. The secondary angle is the intolerance and puritanical zeal of the Republicans.

Clinton will be gone in two years, at the latest. But the Republicans running for re-election in two years, are going to have the same pinched faces, and editors and reporters are going to remember the fanatic intolerance and hypocrisy they introduced into political discourse. Reporters may remember how immune the Republicans were to common sense, decency, and public will. They may be inclined to colour their coverage of Republican candidates with those factors. For example, if future presidential candidate (God help us) Dan Quayle attacks sex education programs for promoting promiscuity, reporters and editors may add a sly comment or two about how Republicans always seem concerned about personal sexual ethics.

Future generations will not remember this scandal for the disgrace it brought upon Bill Clinton. They know that Kennedy fooled around, and Rooseveldt fooled around, and Reagan was divorced and remarried (which means he probably fooled around), and even Dole and Gingrich were not faithful to their first wives. What’s the big deal? What was so different about this case?

They will remember that a fanatic corps of self-righteous Republicans use the flimsiest of pretexts to embark on a holy jihad to remove a popular president from office, and that they never succeeded in convincing anyone other than themselves that there was any reason for it.

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Karacter and Politics

Karacter

What is character? The Republican’s keep trotting out the word “character” because they think it’s something they have and Clinton doesn’t. Someone with “character” doesn’t cheat on his wife. Oops. Bob Dole left his first wife to shack up with Elizabeth at the Watergate hotel. Where’s your first wife, Newt? The one that had cancer?

How about that fling of yours, Henry Hyde? Well, a “character” has principles. Oops. Gingrich has been charged with more than 60 violations of various ethics rules for House members. George Bush refused to intervene to prevent slaughter in Bosnia because he was afraid he would lose the next election.

Well, a “character” doesn’t give in to cheap temptations. Oops. The Republicans, eager for campaign money, keep granting all the wishes of corporate America so the money keeps pouring into those PACS. Oops, oops, oops.

Well, a “character” doesn’t sneak around recording conversations illegally, doesn’t cheat in order to get his way, doesn’t blow things out of proportion or sensationalize, and knows the value of discretion and honor. Kenneth Starr, anyone? Linda Tripp? A “character” doesn’t preach one thing and practice another. Henry Hyde, are you there?

It’s weird how this group of self-serving, conniving, dishonest hypocrites seems to have succeeded in hi-jacking the term “character”. Most people know pretty well what is meant by “character”. Honesty and integrity. Above all else, a willingness to put principles ahead of expediency. Clinton failed in regard to Monica Lewinsky, but he hasn’t done all that badly in almost every other area of government. Henry Hyde and his fellow leaders of the holy jihad, currently conducting show-trials in Congress, have demonstrated over and over again a willingness to sell their votes to whichever corporate lobbyist carries the fattest check.

This isn’t mere hypocrisy. You have to understand that while this show trial continues, Congress has been writing laws that take money away from middle-class and poor voters and hands it over to the rich as quickly as possible. Disney and Citibank are only two of the beneficiaries. Archer Daniels Midland. Microsoft. RCA. Boeing. Line up boys: the pork barrel’s full and nobody’s looking!