... when he wiped his ass with the perjury laws in testifying what he did with it. I don't cut him any slack for that just because he's pro-choice. And I suspect you weren't delighted when Libby got away with it.

His honorable choices were: 1) take the Fifth, 2) tell the truth [I know, not his strong suit], or 3) tell Ken Starr to fuck off and then resign. But being He Who Is Bill, he found another path.

Oh, right - it's Hillary running now. Forgot. Well, I do seem to recall her backing up his version of the story. So either she was duped or she knowingly supported his lie. [Is that possible?!] I'd say that damages her credibility either way.

Wait! Was that sniper fire?! ...

Phew, just a car backfiring. Where was I?

Oh, yeah. I was going to explain how sorry I feel for Chelsea having to field these mean-spirited questions. But then I remembered that she's not 12 years old any more. And she volunteered [as Dick Cheney might put it] to take time off from her six-figure position doing something or other to flack her mother's candidacy.

Comes with the territory, dear child.

"Mr. Lazio pledged to release his tax returns soon after entering the Senate race in May, but had not done so... his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized the delay, asking whether he was hiding something."

up so we can see what we are up against.

One candidate's followers have adopted CDS as their operating philosophy.

Do we really want to elect another leader of hate?

And yet I couldn't help but laugh. Damn it. Honestly, NBC "News" sounds more and more like The Onion every day (see: passport "scandal").

Those blasted Clintons will do anything--anything!--to avoid legitimate questions about how their sexual habits are destroying Western civilization itself! Who needs terrorists when you have such a depraved and wicked family?! They're pure evil, I tell you! Evil!

On a serious note: I cannot imagine what it's like for Chelsea to deal with such a question. To not only have to speak of your father's affair--explicitly known to all--in public but to somehow be asked to defend your mother at the same time is just too much. There's another clip which showed that it seemed to have hit her right in the gut since she took a bit of a long pause in replying to that asshat. God, I feel for her.

Thank you for commenting, ribonucleic. Your comment is important to us. Please do not hesitate to comment again. —CorrenteBot

So now the Republicans were right about Clinton's blow job. If this is unity, I miss the good old days of disharmony.

I got to spend my entire lunch looking at Fox News (thankfully the sound was turned down) and its caption "The Monica Question" or something like that. It's so nice to see what with the the failing cease fire in Iraq, the falling ice in Antarctica, and the collapsing financial markets here at home, the news media is covering the really important issues.

By the way, where's that national conversation on race that I was promised so very recently?

rna: You're doing a pretty good job melting down, all by your very own self.

So if we're going to bring up the sins of the fathers, I remind you that they shall be visited upon the sons. So not to be picky, by that faith-based reasoning Chelsea has a get out of hell free card coming to her in this here situation.

But if you'd rather not be nominated for MOTD by suddenly becoming an enlightened feminist upon realizing that is gender-bias, I wonder how sorry you'll feel for the Bush "girls" when they are baking a file cake for dear old dad in the Hague? You know, since we're talking about the sins of the fathers, n'all.

Now, I just came here to call the obvious Mr. Williams a slimy pig, but is that going over the Corrente line? I promise to do it again, if it's not.

... but he's no Vinny, I'll tell ya that.

I looks like someone knocked his nose and lips sideways.

But, seriously now, have you noticed that the same very people (pundits, bloggers) who always read the most evil intent into everything President Clinton ever says, such as calling him a racist over comments he made in South Carolina, are the same people who make hundreds of excuses for everything Obama says?

Bill Clinton mentions Jesse Jackson, proof he's a racist!

Barack Obama says "typical white person", oh he didn't mean nothing by it, and for you to insinuate that he did means you are a racist!

all the news reports characterize her response as:
angrily responded
bitterly responded
she bristles

Apparently they didn't watch the same video I did.

Seriously, the Clintons should be very proud, no matter their failings they seem to have raised a smart, well-adjusted woman and given that most of her childhood was spent in a Governor's Mansion or the White House that could not be easy for them or for her. It speaks volumes about their parenting abilities and, of course, for Chelsea herself.

Perjury has to be material. Clinton's untruth was not; one of the many reasons he has acquitted by the Senate.

Hey, weren't you they guys who were supposed to not refight the battles of the 90s?

Leah, you want to straighten them out on the history?

Or let the Clinton Hatred stay out in the sunlight, in the hope that it dries up and blows away?

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

So if Chelsea has to publicly atone for the adultery of her father, what about Obama's father's well-documented bigamy? Goose and gander and all that...

About damn time somebody said it.

Chelsea for President - 2028

Envious?

Wrong on the law, wrong on the history, and dully obscene.

I imagine you must think you represent Obama well. Have at it!

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

For your information, committing perjury is not the same as not telling the whole truth under oath. Perjury is a very specific crime, and the only way to determine whether perjury has been committed is through a trial. That's sort of how our legal system works, so your high dudgeon about someone challenging you about throwing around that highly charged but legally quite specific term isn't as silly as you seem to imagine.

And I'm not splitting hairs.

The reason our legal code makes this distinction is that the law itself is rather a crude instrument, and unless the information that is lied about or not fully answered is relevant to the matter at hand, it is not considered perjury.

There is no doubt that in his deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit, Bill Clinton was quite a bit less than forthcoming. But neither were his interlocutors.

Has it ever occurred to you, riboneucleic, to ask yourself why the lawyers for Paula Jones didn't just tell Bill Clinton that they had tapes which indicated he'd had a relationship with a young woman named Monica Lewinsky and that they wanted to ask him some questions about it?

Well, I'll tell you why.

Because there was a good chance that Clinton's testimony and the entire line of questioning would never reach the courtroom or become public knowledge the minute the Judge determined it was an entirely voluntary relationship, with no indications that Clinton had approached Lewinsky in any manner that would have suggested that Paula Jones story was true because of evidence that Clinton had done something similar in the past. And those lawyers were never genuinely interested in pursuing a court case, all they were ever interested in doing was taking down the Clinton administration, from which effort they figured they could squeeze out something for their client.

Your concerned about the rule of law, are you? Have you noticed anything at all about what has been going on for the past seven years? These are the same people, in the administration and in the Republican congress which has held not anyone in that administration accountable for anything, who couldn't stop running their mouths about the rule of law when a Democrat was in the White House, and you want to tell me that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was justified?

Do you understand why impeachment has been off the table for this gang of crooks, liars, and destroyers of constitution governance Bush has surrounded himself with, and which our moral betters, like Colin Powell and Condi Rice, at least according to the SCLM, have enabled in ways neither Clinton could even imagine doing? Not because Pelosi said it was. Because the Clinton impeachment made it impossible for another impeachment to happen for at least another decade. And they knew that and acted accordingly.

Let me give you another piece of information I would bet you know nothing about. Are you aware that President Clinton made the following offer to the Republican-dominated House committee that insisted on proceeding with the impeachment, an offer communicated to the committee during the final hearing as communicated in a letter read by Charles Ruff from the Presidents OLC: to wit, that if the committee had become convinced that he, Bill Clinton had committed perjury, that Ken Starr be allowed to draw up a sealed indictment of Clinton, to be opened the day after he leaves office, which Clinton would defend himself against in whatever venue Starr chose, and that for his part, Clinton would pledge to make a public promise to the legislators and to the American people not to grant a pardon to himself, or to accept a pardon from any future president? The Republicans turned down the offer without a second thought, and the offer got almost no press.

People at this website respect both Clintons. That doesn't mean that we have no criticisms of them. But don't come here and lay down the same snide snark the SCLM never tires of feasting on about Clinton being a liar. He's no more a liar than Obama is, and will be, if he makes it into the White House. No human being who has to make so many public statements in so many different contexts can escape the charge of lying at least some of the time. But there is lying, and then there is LYING.

Whether its Bush himself or Condi Rice, or, even Colin Powell, is there anyone in this administration that can ever tell the truth? That's what Democrats ought to be talking about.

I had started about 12 posts on materiality and history, etc., but was too tired to finish them. Thanks for saying what I wanted to and so much better than I would've.

I swear, I'm so tired of defending the Clintons from the same 90s bullshit, only this time coming from democrats (Unity, Baby), that I'm not going to have the energy to defend Obama when he gets the same treatment if he's the nominee. Whatever. The OFB loves this shit so much, let them fight it.

Can anyone offer an explanation as to why, after what is now months of requests, Senator Clinton has still not made public her 2000-2006 tax returns?

I have it on no less an authority than the candidate herself that such delays are "frankly disturbing".

Take your time. I'll go make a sandwich.

"Mr. Lazio pledged to release his tax returns soon after entering the Senate race in May, but had not done so... his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized the delay, asking whether he was hiding something."

and the concept of irony, ribo attempts to hijack the discussion to the latest Obama talking point.

Yawn.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

ribo:

Just as a tip to enhance your effectiveness as a commenter even further --

The "I'll wait" riff isn't working for you. We all do this for free; none of us are rich; and most of us have real life duties we sacrifice to write here.

So, unlikely or unjust as this may seem to you, sometimes you just will have to wait. See?

Oh, and we try to develop talking points here; not always, but we try. We don't simply reproduce them. We're old school -- like the blogosphere used to be.

So, if there's a demand to answer a particularly stale or uninteresting talking point -- sweet Jeebus, is the call to release tax returns a hoary old chestnut, or what? -- that demand just might not get met.

But please do not confuse a complete lack of interest in the content of the latest Axelrod blast fax or conference call with acceptance of same. Enjoy your sandwich.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Re: "The thread starter made what were, to my mind, ludicrous claims for Chelsea’s victimization at this meeting."

So, it's ludicrous to think it's unfair to expect a daughter to answer for her mother's guilty burden... of having been cheated on.

I couldn't be more proud to have you as a fellow Democrat.

Thank you for commenting, ribo. Your comment is important to us. Please do not hesitate to comment again.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Wasabi @ 16:33, I noticed the same thing. Plus, Chelsea did not "quickly" say or retort anything. The first time I watched it it seemed agonizingly slow -- not in a bad way, just that she was staying incontrol.

Good reponse on her part.

But, MSNBC, per a commenter I read elsewhere, said she was "bitter" in her reply!!!

But, under CSD, all things said by any Clinton in angry, out of control, etc.

What a lousy press we have.

And I'd better spend some time organizing, but thank goodness the real deadline isn't when ribo seems to think it is. Or I'd be late already....

Well, you know how women are....

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Both Fox (didn't catch the specific show) and Dan Abrams (MSNBC) actually had the idiot who asked the question on as a guest. Didn't stick around to watch the interview. Sadly, this shit is not surprising. There's always room in the news for sex.

For your intelligent posts. Don't worry about the hit squad. They do not like to hear dissenting points of view. I too am wondering why Clinton is not getting more pressure put on her to release the returns? I don't know what is more disturbing, why she feels she does not have to follow the rules that everybody else plays by or where she is getting her income since it seems to be something she is hiding. I am sure she has some large holdings in some companies she supposedly fights against. That would be my guess.

Raising dishonest and off-topic smears is the issue.

Let me fill troll ribo in on the significance of Clinton's penis, since he seems to have come in late. I'm not going to bother to add links; maybe Leah can fill in the detail on this, since she's more a subject matter expert than I am.

As soon as Bill Clinton, the last elected Democrat to be inaugurated President, took office, he was subjected to a relentless and very well-funded series of right wing attacks on quite literally anything the Republicans could gin up, aided and abetted by our famously free press, which disgraced itself in these matters quite as much as they did in Iraq. The object of the attacks was to delegitimize his Presidency and hound him from office; in both objectives, it failed, although, as Leah points out, the Constitutional remedy of impeachment was weakened, which greatly aided George Bush.

The main thread began with a non-scandal scandal called WhiteWater, an Arkansas land deal, where all, all, all the charges against both Clintons, despite the rumors and innuendo relentlessly propagated by a Special Prosecutor through leaks to the press, proved false. (Remember Steno Sue Schmift? Jeff Gerth? Good times. There were actually two Special Prosecutors; the first, Robert Fisk, was replaced by the Republicans when he determined there was no there there; the second, Ken Starr, was less principled.)

In the fullness of time, and after spending many millions of dollars, the original WhiteWater thread turned into an investigation of an affair that Bill Clinton turned out to have had with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky (interestingly, they met cute when she brought him a pizza he'd ordered on the night Newt Gingrich had shut down the government. But I digress.)

Clinton, of course, was acquitted when impeached, and rightly so; the whole episode was shameful, and Republican's use of the criminal justice system to achieve political ends foreshadowed the complete corruption of the Justice Department under the Bush regime. And while the Lewinsky Matter was going on, the married Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, was also carrying on an affair with the secretary that he would later divorce his wife to marry, when the Republican leader, Henry Hyde, had to confess to "youthful indiscretions" -- a four-year adulterous affair when he was the same age as Clinton -- and Robert Livingston, a candidate for Republican leader resigned, also for adultery.

And all these Republicans, and their allies in our famously free press, and their right wing funders organized a discourse whose salient feature of discourse was the Mighty Member of Bill Clinton:

The shape of that member, its size when erect and when not, its "distinctive markings," and, in general, where it had been, and what it had done (as ribo has it, "what he did with it.") There seemed hardly a Conservative pundit who, no matter where he began, could not finish but by dilating on Bill Clinton's penis. There seemed hardly a shouting head on the teebee who did not resort the riposte "Yeah, but what about Bill Clinton's penis?" There seemed hardly a dull-witted freeper who didn't have the weapon of Bill Clinton's penis in his pitifully small and Cheetohs-stained arsenal.

The discourse of the time was voyeuristic, sanctimonious, snickering, prurient, and filled with hate--and all orchestrated by the Republican's "Mighty Wurlitzer." (Atrios's original tagline, "Middle C on the Mighty Casio," was a play on this.) Hatred for Bill Clinton. Hatred for Hillary. Hatred of Hillary for staying with Bill. Hate, hate, hate, hate.

And it went on for years. It just never failed. For any Conservative, Bill Clinton's penis was always the trump card, the discussion ender, the snicker-inducing punchline. This primary is child's play by comparison. The "partisan attacks"? Love taps.

Kids, this is nothing. Anyone who lived through the time when the Republicans impeached Clinton knows. We know raw hate when we see it. And we know raw hate for The Clintons when we see it. We know the tropes, we know the talking points, we know the moves, we've seen them all. Because we lived them.

We just never expected to have to live them again, and from fellow Democrats, too.

In fact, the monomanaical focus of the Conservative Movement on Bill Clinton's penis, their obsession with its mighty, wonderworking power, their attribution to it of all manner of evil, caused the blogosphere to invent a name for it, back in the light-hearted, innocent days when we had a media critique:

The Clenis.

With that as background, let's do a little close reading of the relevant texts:

1. VL's text:
Sneaky Chelsea dodges questions about her dad's blow job
Sad, isn’t it, to think of all the substantive journalism we’re deprived of when a candidate’s daughter ruins reporters’ chances to inquire about her father’s cock.

In the headline, VL is using a rhetorical tool called irony, with which some seem to be unfamiliar. In fact, the question is grossly inappropriate and deeply bogus -- as was the entire Clinton impeachment and the Conservative Movement's obsession with the Clenis.

And when VL says "... her father's cock" he's underlining the grossly inappropriate nature of the question (as well as the inappropriateness of the announcer's response). You'd think that was pretty simple to see.

But no. ribo misses, or ignores, the irony completely. Certainly, he doesn't respond in kind. He ups what he must see as the ante, gleefully:

2. ribo's riposte
Snarky! But Bill's cock became a legitimate subject when he wiped his ass with the perjury laws in testifying what he did with it.

That's an almost clinical example of obsession with The Clenis, wouldn't you say? Especially when the added "value" is additional body parts, and the facts on the law are wrong.

3. lambert's response

Envious?

Wrong on the law, wrong on the history, and dully obscene

4. ribo's reponse

Yes, "cock" was the thread starter's choice of words

If you find the word “dully obscene”, please take it up with them.

Er, no. See, ribo, it's not a matter of key words, as if writing prose was the same as writing a spam filter, or Junior High kids giggling "He used the word 'cock'." VL's using irony, as writers often do to distance themselves from pain while conveying it, and is neither dull nor obscene. Ribo is both dull and obscene in that:

(a) He uses no irony that I can see [Cue: W.R.R.M ;-)]

(b) "wiped his ass with" is a cliche, therefore dull, though not, oddly, or not, to ribo

(c) I'll leave it to reader's to determine whether "But Bill's cock ... when he wiped his ass ... what he did with it" is obscene or not.

What I do find obscene is:

(a) The use of a Conservative hate trigger, The Clenis, by a putative Democrat against another Democrat;

(b) the ignorance of the history of his own putative party and its struggles that ribo exhibits

I call bullshit on ribo's use of a favorite trope of Clinton Haters.

I call bullshit on the Clinton Hate.

I call bullshit on how some Obama supporters online leverage Clinton Hate to get their guy elected.

And I call bullshit on the other Obama supporters won't call bullshit themselves, and prefer to let the whole thing pass, or say "it's just as bad coming from the other direction." It isn't. See the history above.

And I call bullshit on the sanctimonious asshole from our famously free press in the clip. If Chelsea doesn't want to take questions from the press that serviced the Conservative Movement by trying to bring the Democratic President who happened to be her father down, then good for her and fuck them.

NOTE I should also say that many of us admire the Clintons, all of them, for their ability to courageously persist in the face of a vile campaign to drive them from public life altogether. That woman is tough as nails. A good reason to elect her, I'd say.

NOTE And I'm with VL:

Re: “The thread starter made what were, to my mind, ludicrous claims for Chelsea’s victimization at this meeting.”

So, it’s ludicrous to think it’s unfair to expect a daughter to answer for her mother’s guilty burden… of having been cheated on.

I couldn’t be more proud to have you as a fellow Democrat.

That last sentence was irony, ribo. Just in case you need help with that.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

the question. She thought the question impertinent and told the gentleman that it was none of his business. The question had nothing to do with this campaign. Kudos to Chelsea!

To crisply explain the should-be-obvious to the shouldn't-be-oblivious.

Seriously, thanks.

and it was well deserved by its target.

I periodically find I have to pound out the reminder that Clinton was never convicted of perjury - because he didn't do it.

More liberal media at The Sideshow.

is the root cause of all ClintonHate.

Perjury has to be material.

Clinton lied about Monica during the Paula Jones case, which was a workplace discrimination suit, for pity's sake. The theory of the Jones team -- who were a cabal of Federalist Society elves -- was that they wanted to show a pattern of sexual harassment. That theory, IIRC, was rejected by the court. So it's even worse: Clinton was not convicted of perjury because he could not have been: he didn't commit it. [Making troll ribo's comments above even more wrong and/or disingenuous.] And the deposition in which Clinton lied was also the source of "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is," where Clinton, as a lawyer, was mocking a poorly phrased question by his interrogator. (Again, IIRC, the interrogators phrased the questions so badly that blowjobs wouldn't have been defined as sex....) And "perjury" and "it depends" both promptly became lying right wing talking points (sorry for the redundancy).

So, to those of us who lived through that time or were paying attention, the constant repetition by the ______ ers of these and the many other tropes of Clinton Hate developed by the right to bring Clinton down is insulting and vile and degrading, and not because "ooh, they attacked Hillary again" but because:

1. They are false.

2. They were invented and propagated by the right wing for the purpose of driving a Democrat from public life

3. A great deal of effort was expended preserving the record and fighting for the truth, which is now being pissed away, and by Democrats, too, and for short term political gain.

4. The media critique from which so many A Listers are now profiting in their consultancies and small businesses was developed by watching what the hell happened during the Clinton years. Judy "Kneepads" Miller and "Steno Sue" Schmidt are sisters under the skin. Yet, no bullshit is called. Odd, that.

For reasons I hope I've made clear, the Clinton Hate is different in kind from the sharp elbows throw in the course of this campaign.

And what especially hurts is that the rational Obama supporters, who are sensitive and wounded at being confused with the ______ ers, stand by silently and don't clean up the threads, making such confusion very easy indeed. I, for example, was very unhappy with the use made of Wright, and called bullshit on a Fellow, too ("I don't give two shits..."). And yet, during my sojourn in the fever swamps at Kos, I can't recall a single example of an Obama supporter calling bullshit on Clinton Hate. And our "leaders" on the A list*? Don't get me started.

In my mind, the whole Unity enterprise was a crock from the start, analytically. But leveraging Clinton Hatred turns it from a crock of shit into a humongous steaming load of it. I'd like to see a way to getting the Clinton Hate unsaid, but I'm not sure that's possible at that point, though I'm willing to listen to anyone who's got a way forward on it.

NOTE It would be nice, I have to say, to see Lord Eschaton weigh in on this as he did with Obama's dog whistle on Social Security. Or any other "intact blogger".

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

"to expect a daughter to answer for her mother"
new
Submitted by ribonucleic on Thu, 2008-03-27 09:27.

Correction: a campaign stumper to answer for her candidate

See the difference?

One must be impressed by Ribo's unabashed ability to not see...

1. The rotted political and media culture that made a feeding frenzy out of Bill Clinton's private indiscretions, propelled by an $80 million taxpayer-funded witch hunt and money-stuffed conservative meme tanks

2. The toxic blend of slime and irrationality that suggests that not only does Ms. Clinton have to publicly "answer for" her husband's private indiscretions but that her daughter must, as well