Clinton's Lying "Endearing," While Bush "Lies" In His Bubble

[Jolie Rouge]

Clinton's Lying "Endearing," While Bush "Lies" In His Bubble
Posted by Brad Wilmouth on January 27, 2006

Appearing on Keith Olbermann's Thursday January 26 Countdown show on MSNBC, while comparing President Bush's words on his NSA wiretapping program with Bill Clinton's "lying," New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd made known her view that she found Bill Clinton's lying "poignant and endearing" because "when Bill Clinton would deceive, he would throw in a semantic clue that let you know he was deceiving." She further added that "He would let you know he was lying, and then the right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him." Regarding Bush's citation of Iraq's liberation as a major justification for the war in the absence of WMD, Dowd pontificated that "you cannot do things that start with a lie, and they just lead to trouble down the road."

The segment started as Olbermann brought aboard Dowd to discuss Oprah Winfrey's apology for pushing discredited author James Frey's fraudulent book. The Countdown host drew parallels between Oprah's apology on her show earlier in the day and Bush's almost simultaneous news conference to answer critics of his controversial NSA spying program. When Olbermann turned his attention to Bush's news conference, he implied that Bush should perhaps apologize for the NSA program: "Maureen, right now, we want to look at a televised event in which nothing close to an apology was even hinted at."

After playing clips from the news conference, including Bush's awkward response to one question, Olbermann quipped that "the President will never know that he writes part of my newscast for me every night" and that "it sounded as if the burden of his version of what the definition of 'is' is got to be too much for him today, and he was ready to punt on that one."

Olbermann later mocked the administration's attempts to emphasize the international nature of the eavesdropping, posing the question: "Is not the whole idea of this definition, international versus domestic, is this not by itself a red herring? I mean, you could call it intergalactic spying, and the issue is the legality, not the name, right?" Dowd argued that the reason the administration is trying to expand presidential power is because Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld "felt emasculated" when, during their time in the Ford Administration, presidential powers were shrunk.

Olbermann then moved on to wonder if former President Clinton had somehow set a precedent for Bush's conduct: "Who has enabled this? I mean, in a perverse way, is it almost necessary to say that Bill Clinton paved the way for George Bush to conduct a kind of fingers-in-his-ears, shout la-la-la-la-la presidency?"

Dowd then got her chance to compliment Clinton's style of deception: "No, they're two entirely different things because when Bill Clinton would deceive, he would throw in a semantic clue that let you know he was deceiving. 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' We knew what he meant by that. You know, 'I did not,' about dope, 'I didn't break the laws of this country.' So it was sort of poignant and endearing. He would let you know he was lying, and then the right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him. And in the case of Bush, he's just in a completely different reality. You know, they call us the 'reality-based community,' and they create their own reality, and so Bush is just in a bubble. And when you're in the bubble, you don't know you're in the bubble."

Concluding her appearance, Dowd more directly accused Bush of lying as she contrasted Oprah's initial defense of the discredited Frey with Bush's defense of the Iraq invasion after the failure to find WMD: "When Oprah was clinging to supporting Frey, she was doing it for the reason of emotional truth, that millions of people could be helped by his story of redemption. And Bush, with Iraq, said that we, even if it turned out not to be true, the reasons we went to war, it was right because millions of Iraqis would be liberated. But you cannot, you know, do things that start with a lie, and they just lead to trouble down the road."

http://newsbusters.org/node/3773

[Jolie Rouge]

Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the January 26 Countdown show:

Olbermann, at about 8:06 PM EST: "And what happens to the two careers here? What happens now to Oprah Winfrey's credibility? What happens to what's left of James Frey's credibility?"

Maureen Dowd: "Well, Oprah Winfrey, who I think probably already had more credibility than the President, her credibility goes up because, unlike the President, she's willing to admit that, you know, she made a mistake and face up to it and, you know, she's the man. And Frey will do fine because I don't think anyone cares, including, you know, his publisher, whether it's truth or fiction."

Olbermann, at about 8:09 PM EST: "Maureen, right now, we want to look at a televised event in which nothing close to an apology was even hinted at, so if you would stand by for a second, we'll get your reaction to this, but let me first give the headline. The President unexpectedly stepping up to the White House Press Room podium today in day four of the high-intensity push to tamp down the controversy over the warrantless domestic spying or, as the White House calls it, the 'international spying,' on phone calls and e-mails that either began or finished inside this country. 'The program is legal,' the President said. 'It's designed to protect civil liberties, and it's not domestic. Not, not, not.'"

Unidentified female reporter: "Members of your administration have said that the secret eavesdropping program might have prevented the September 11th attacks, but the people who hijacked the planes on September 11th had been in this country for years, having domestic phone calls and e-mails. So how specifically can you say that?"

George W. Bush: "Well, Michael Hayden said that because he believes that had we had the capacity to listen to the phone calls from those from San Diego and elsewhere, we might have gotten information necessary to prevent the attack, and that's what he was referring to."

Unidentified woman: "But they were domestic calls."

Bush: "No, domestic, outside. We will not listen inside this country. It is a call from al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda affiliates either from inside the country out or outside the country in, but not domestically."

Olbermann: "And we will analyze the President's entire news conference at length later in the hour. But first, again, Maureen Dowd, the President will never know that he writes part of my newscast for me every night, but right there, it sounded as if the burden of his version of what the definition of 'is' is got to be too much for him today, and he was ready to punt on that one."

Dowd: "Well, it's simply already been proven not to be true. The Times did a fantastic story where they interviewed, you know, FBI agents involved in the case, and already there have been a lot of domestic domestic calls and innocent Americans swept up. And, you know, I know a reporter who the FBI showed up at his door and went in to interview his son, and it turned out that in connection with his work, he had called Al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar, and he was being swept up. And the FBI didn't even know that the name of the person they were looking for was an official of Al-Jazeera. So you're dealing with the FBI and CIA who have bumbled so badly in everything in the last six years. We want to give them more unlimited powers? I don't think so."

Olbermann: "On several occasions in the last few years, this White House has seemingly defied this idea that a lot of societies have been held together by that no man can hold back the tide. They're going to stand there, they're going to try to do exactly that. If it doesn't really work, they'll say, well, yeah, it did work, you're wrong. And if you question them about that, they'll get you into a semantical discussion. Is not the whole idea of this definition, international versus domestic, is this not by itself a red herring? I mean, you could call it intergalactic spying, and the issue is the legality, not the name, right?"

Dowd, laughing: "Don't give Cheney and Rummy ideas. They're going to be doing intergalactic spying. It's all a red herring. What this is about, Dick Cheney wants to throw off all of these rules. He wants to go to war without permission, he wants to torture without permission, he wants to snoop without permission because he and Rummy were Ford officials at a time when presidential power shrank. They felt emasculated. They did not like it. They stewed about it for 30 years. Now they are trying to do everything they can to expand presidential power. So they're doing exactly what they want to."

Olbermann: "Who has enabled this? I mean, in a perverse way, is it almost necessary to say that Bill Clinton paved the way for George Bush to conduct a kind of fingers-in-his-ears, shout la-la-la-la-la presidency?"

Dowd: "No, they're two entirely different things because when Bill Clinton would deceive, he would throw in a semantic clue that let you know he was deceiving. 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' We knew what he meant by that. You know, 'I did not,' about dope, 'I didn't break the laws of this country.' So it was sort of poignant and endearing. He would let you know he was lying, and then the right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him. And in the case of Bush, he's just in a completely different reality. You know, they call us the 'reality-based community,' and they create their own reality, and so Bush is just in a bubble. And when you're in the bubble, you don't know you're in the bubble."

Olbermann: "If you would be so kind, wrap this up, tie this story of Mr. Bush's current conundrum with the Oprah Winfrey-James Frey thing. Is there something the President could learn from Ms. Winfrey or even from James Frey?"

Dowd: "Well, Tom Scocca did a brilliant piece in the New York Observer when he said when Oprah was clinging to supporting Frey, she was doing it for the reason of emotional truth, that millions of people could be helped by his story of redemption. And Bush, with Iraq, said that we, even if it turned out not to be true, the reasons we went to war, it was right because millions of Iraqis would be liberated. But you cannot, you know, do things that start with a lie, and they just lead to trouble down the road."

Olbermann: "Well, maybe he can get a book out of it."

http://newsbusters.org/node/3773

[Jolie Rouge]

So, the "right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him," eh, Maureen? Sort of like this:


The President was asked before the Starr grand jury about Robert Bennett's assertion during the deposition for the Paula Jones case that "there is absolutely no sex of any kind" between the President and Monica Lewinsky.

Mr. Bennett was right, Mr. Clinton said, because he was using the present tense. "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," the President explained helpfully.

The same footnote offers three other Clintonian gems before the grand jury: "I have not had sex with her as I defined it." "It depends on how you define alone." And, "There were a lot of times when we were alone, but I never really thought we were."

Mr. Clinton's double-talk had a contagious effect on Betty Currie. "I don't want the impression of sneaking," the secretary said, about Monica, "but it's just that I brought her in without anyone seeing her." And, "The President, for all intents and purposes, is never alone."

Mr. Clinton's greatest sin is not sex or dissembling about sex, as the heavy-breathing Kenneth Starr believes. His greatest sin is swindling and perverting the American language. He is like the cursed girl in the fairy tale: Every time he opens his mouth, a toad jumps out.

His problems stem from his instinct, when he runs into trouble, to shroud rather than illuminate.

He tries to make words subjective, insisting they mean only what he wants them to. Just as he made the Democratic Party about himself, and the Democratic Conventions about himself, and the Presidency about himself, he tries to make the language about himself.

But he can't. Laws are composed of words. The President is in charge of our laws. When he drains meaning from words, he jeopardizes his ability to govern. He has made Washington Orwellian. His corrupt language corrupts thought.

Oh, wait. That was Maureen Dowd's September 16, 1998 NYTimes column - http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/commentary/works/091698dowd.html - one of 10 columns about Clinton's language-perverting lies that won her the Pulitzer Prize for her "fresh and insightful" commentary.

Hmmm. What does that make her commentary now?

http://michellemalkin.com/

[Jolie Rouge]

no witty remarks ??

[Jolie Rouge]

::crickets::

[stresseater]

You'll have to excuse then Jolie they are torn between playing I'm smarter than you with katgirl(i think it is) and scrambeling to figure out where they stand now that Duhbi World said they will lease our ports back to a USA company. The look ion the Dem's faces when it was announced was priceless. They didn't kow whether to &h*^ or go blind. :D ;) Give em a few days to get their ducks back in a row and maybe they will answer.

[Jolie Rouge]

My dinner with a Bush-hater
Rudeness plagues America
by Larry Elder

early 70 percent of Americans, according to a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, consider people more rude than 20 or 30 years ago. Over the last 20 years, according to two prominent Democratic strategists, Americans engaged in a kind of "great sorting-out" -- staking out hard, well-defined, even intolerant, ideological political camps.

Now it all makes sense -- only one side seems a tad more intolerant than the other.

Take last Friday. After work, I drove to a local watering hole for my customary vodka and cran. A couple of anti-war Democrats and I began talking politics. While I disagreed with their positions, they made sensible, if unpersuasive, arguments. You know the drill: Bush built a case for war on bad intelligence; the cultural complexity of Iraq makes America's "imposition" of a democracy unlikely; the Iraq War now serves as a breeding ground for terrorists; other enemies like Iran and North Korea pose even greater threats to America; etc. But then another man, eavesdropping, decided to join in. Within five seconds, he called the president "an idiot." I let it go. Moments later, however, he changed it to "moron." All right, enough.

"Sir, you don't know me, and I don't know you. You barged into a conversation, not a wrestling match. He gave his view," I said, pointing to another man, "and gave reasons. Calling the president 'an idiot' is not a reason. It is childish and shows your lack of ability to make a sensible argument."

He said, "Well, I'm entitled to my opinion."

"That's not an opinion. It's an attack. And in any case, you're not entitled to have me listen to it. So I suggest you move on and enlighten somebody else."

He glared, but walked away.

Now on to the next day, Saturday. A friend, a decorated Vietnam vet, celebrated his 60th birthday with about 50 festive partygoers. I sat at a table of eight, and someone said something about the president's recent defense of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, calling the battle for her confirmation "uphill." To this, the 60-something woman sitting next to me, with whom, up until this point, I had exchanged pleasantries, suddenly blurted, "Well, I'm from Seattle, and we hate Bush up there --"

I let it go.

" -- and the thing that we hate the most about Bush is that he claims people shouldn't pay taxes."

All right, enough.

"Excuse me," I said, "can you tell me when the president said, 'People shouldn't pay taxes'?"

"He says it all the time," she replied.

"So then it should be fairly easy for you to tell me when, or perhaps where, he said it."

"Well, it's in his budget."

"Do you mean the most recently passed budget," I asked, "the one that calls for spending something like two-and-a-half trillion dollars?"

"Yes."

"If the budget calls for that much in spending, where do you suppose the government gets the money?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, you say the president says 'people ought not pay taxes.' If people don't pay taxes, how does the government get the two-and-a-half trillion?"

"Oh," she said, "I see what you're saying. Let me clarify. Bush says, 'Rich people should not pay taxes.'"

"Oh, really? And when did he say that?"

"Well, he implies it -- he's always seeking to cut taxes on the rich."

"Well," I responded, "as a member of the so-called rich, I welcome you to take a look at my 1040. I pay a substantial amount in taxes. And if there's some program or provision that allows 'the rich' to avoid taxes, perhaps I should consider firing my accountant." At this, the others at the table laughed, but not, of course, my debating opponent.

"Well, it's obvious," she said. "We see things differently."

"We most certainly do, and I think it's pretty much fruitless for us to continue the conversation. But, if you don't mind, I have a brief question for you."

"OK," she said.

"Of the top 1 percent of taxpayers, what percentage do they pay of federal income tax revenues?"

"What do you mean?"

"Assume this is a pie," I said, cupping my hands in a circle. "The top 1 percent contributes what size slice -- by percentage -- of that pie?"

"Oh, I see," she said. "Virtually nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Maybe 1 percent, maybe 2 percent."

Later, during the party, several people told her that I hosted a nationally syndicated radio show, and informed her of my "conservative" politics.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to anger you."

"No, I wasn't angry. I was disappointed that someone could go through the world so incredibly ill-informed."

She walked away.

For the record, since my table companion doesn't know or doesn't care, the top 1 percent -- the taxpayers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) over $295,495 -- paid, for 2003, 34.27 percent of federal income tax revenues. The top 10 percent (with an AGI over $94,891) paid 65.84 percent, the top half (AGI over $29,019) paid 96.54 percent. The bottom half? They paid 3.46 percent.

People should know this. Even if you live in Seattle.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/larryelder/2005/10/20/172024.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Any comments on how Obama's lies measure up to previous administrations. One of my dear liberal friends now falls back on "All Politicians Lie" ... as if that makes it okay??

[Jolie Rouge]

FLASHBACK 2008: Obama Vows to Never Go Around Congress
February 13, 2014 By Jennifer Burke

One thing Barack Obama has demonstrated time and time again is that his speeches are meaningless. They are simply words. From his promise to be the most transparent administration in history to his spoken resolve to get to the bottom of the Benghazi terrorist attack, Obama has demonstrated more than just a tendency to mislead the American people. He has a habit of doing so. The words spoken are done so for political expediency. Nowhere is that more apparent than in a 2008 speech that he delivered during a town hall event in Pennsylvania as he was campaigning for President the first time.


“You know I taught constitutional law for 10 years, I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now had to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

Obama, who has made it abundantly clear that he has a pen and he has phone and will use both to go around Congress via executive orders, lambasted his predecessor George W. Bush for the use of executive orders. However, today Obama is continuously abusing the executive order privilege to create and change laws, a power not granted to him by the Constitution.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3IWq3CXHyc&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3IWq3CXHyc&feature=player_embedded

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/02/13/flashback-2008-obama-vows-to-never-go-around-congress/

[Jolie Rouge]

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http://liberallogic101.com/?p=7392

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