CLINTON LIKE THE PRESIDENT...a vote for Bush is against yourself
(supposed to have been posted June 22, but computer was down)

Bill Clinton’s autobiography was released today to great fanfare. Even I fell prey to it and bought a copy of the book (along with paperbacks of “Rogue Nation” and “What Liberal Media"). I’ll probably never read the whole thing, but I did vote for Clinton in ‘92 and ‘96 and retain somewhat warm feelings toward him, even though I’m learning that some of the things he did contradicted the reasons that I voted for him. And I’m not talking about how Clinton didn’t “deal with the terrorist threat” either.

Rush Limbaugh had a substitute on today, and he was making that very point–how if only Clinton hadn’t let the terrorists get away, Bush wouldn’t have had to be so decisive and manly as to take us into an unnecessary war. If he got around to blaming Reagan and Bush for Clinton’s terror problems, I didn’t hear him. But he should have.

The conservatives are quick to give Reagan (undue) credit for the booming (for the rich) economy under Clinton–i.e., it was Reagan’s noble tax cuts that created the Clinton economy. But they never seem to bring up the Reagan and Bush policies of arming Iran and assisting Iraq and cozying up to Saudi Arabia. Might that not have had something to do with creating Clinton’s terror problem?

And might Clinton have been able to operate more freely and focus more intently on problems such as terrorism if the rightwing media and rightwing politicians not been hounding him from the second he announced his candidacy? One would think so. It’s really, really sick–the Republican media and politicians wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace and called into question every missile strike Clinton did order and now they all sit and criticize him for not doing more and try to make it look as though Bush is finally fixing what Clinton broke.

Well, any fair person knows that terrorists did not pop up out of nowhere during the Clinton administration and he was just too much of a puss to do anything about it. Which is how the Rush wannabe was explaining it today.


Lying

And as I was reading the intro to “What Liberal Media” just a few minutes ago, I noted how Ann Coulter regularly referred to Clinton as a “liar.” Uber-conservative pundit Ann Coulter called the President a “liar.” And pretty much everyone in the media speaks freely about how Clinton lied under oath to the Starr people.

But no uber-liberal pundits refer to Bush as a liar, at least not without lots of qualification. Liberal pundits will say that Bush traffics in “half-truths” or title books “The Lies of George W. Bush,” but they rarely come out and say “Bush is a liar.” There’s some sort of bizarre consensus and understanding that calling Bush a liar is somehow beyond the pale. Like, okay, maybe he lies, but he’s not a liar. Chris Matthews says this when it comes to Bush–something along the lines of “To know if someone’s lying, you have to know their heart, and I don’t know Bush’s heart” or some rubbish to that effect. NBC’s David Gregory said on the Imus program that he wasn’t qualified to brand Bush a liar (when Imus came out and asked Gregory whether or not he could agree with the statement that Bush and/or Cheney are liars).

Well, I just want to make it known that if what the President of the United States speaks on matters of policy in contradiction of the facts, everyone is authorized to say he is a liar. Why? Because he is the best-informed person in the entire country. He gets all the information. He hears (or should hear) from all sides and is privy to information the average citizen or even the average reporter is not. He should seek to speak the truth on all matters at all times, and he should be more careful than anyone else in the world about his words, because they can have enormous effect...

However, Bush has never admitted to lying. Clinton has. So it’s OK to call him a liar, according to the Washington consensus. You can call someone a liar if they admit to it. But, according to the bizarre Washington consensus, if you don’t admit to lying, you shouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being called a liar even if it is obvious to everyone that you are lying. Dick Cheney, we’re looking in your direction...

Music

Today I heard the awesome second album from Canada’s Atomic 7...their jazzabilly surfstrumentals are bite-size twangfests, like incidental music to an indie cult Western about cowpokes hangin’ ten...

And the cover of the debut (?) album by Chicago’s Fort Rile Dog sure gets one’s attention–it has a mold of a dog’s upper jaw pasted onto it...the music is mathy emo, but in a good way...sort of like Rumah Sakit meets Chavez...