Get this man some nookie, chips and a vat of guacamole, STAT.

Before he turns himself into a human IED and does some real damage.

Not that Obama was ever seriously considering Hillary as his veep candidate but after this, he would have to be insane to name her. Big Bill would be unleashed in a big way in the general. I especially love the "slimy" reference. I militantly opposed his impeachment but noted back then that he had lied to his entire cabinet about the Lewinsky affair.

"After this," libref? After this? It's because of stuff like this that it has been obvious _all along_ that putting Hillary in the VP slot of any Democratic ticket was insane. This latest outburst is not a surprise, nor is it anything different from Bill's conduct in any given week since late January.

The only "after this" that applies is, "After this, even strong Bill Clinton supporters like me have to face up to the strong possibility that the man is simply batshit crazy."

You left out the most interesting part:

"It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do-- he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-- maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it."

Great, Bill.

Liberal reformer is right that this recent episode is like the last nail in the coffin of any thought--and it has been thought-- that Hillary would be considered for vice president. But Clinton is an outsized character whose greatness is adjacent to his his gargantuan flaws. He is a larger than life world eater and will come to be seen, I think, as having Shakespearean magnitude--I can't help thinking of Cleopatra--amazing and amazingly flawed--which will outstrip picayune notions of being "bat shit crazy" and so on tripping off the tongue of his more virtuous lessers, of whom I guess I count myself one.

Call Ritchie Cunningham and Potsie, Bill has jumped the shark.

Thank god she lost. Can you imagine another 4-8 years of this lunatic ranting and raving everytime he felt like his wife (read his legacy) was challenged or maligned?

But I'm conflicted about the original story: Yes, clearly Bill lacks self-control but can I guy that's made 100 million and is nailing that much strange be that pissed-off?

basman - I'm one of his lessers, though I'm not sure I'm more virtuous

basman - agreed, very much agreed!  I've always thought that both Clinton and Nixon would fit easily into some contemporary Shakespeare's cast of characters.  Or Euripides, maybe.  It doesn't make them great presidents -- although Clinton was pretty good -- just fascinating as individuals.

The Democratic Party saw on Saturday what selfish people the Clinton's are and what sore losers they are. For the last four months Bill, his young wife Hillary, and all their surrogates have thrown garbage at Obama, striving to slime him with petty, occasionally vile half-truths which they have dug up or contrived in the cesspools of their minds. So even if Obama was involved--wouldn't all of the Clinton people say his involvement was fair play.

Clearly Hillary does not want to close down her parade. She has won. She was going to continue her campaign on a "scaled down" basis through to the convention. Nothing wrong with that is there. Now its time to go into "Hillary will win anyways, because she's a fighter" mode. Fight a reguard battle while constantly looking for subtle little shivs to stick in Obama's back. At the church on Sunday praying for something, anything to happen to Obama. She should be the President. She will be the President. "Whatever it takes."  Even if it means Obama and the Dems losing.

Although many may think otherwise, I firmly believe Bill is the absolute worst thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party ever.  Hill is just more of the same.  The worst evidence is that he is marginally short of a pedophile (Monica was barely legal age) and she enables him.  There's literally tons of less disgusting things that could be tossed onto the pile, but I can't type that fast.

sigh. When will they stop? Hurry up Nancy, lay down the law!

Excellent, my dear basman. I think of Big Bill as Falstaff, the Appetite, as I called him the other day. I am not like the monomaniacs out here at all in their utter contempt for anything Clinton. Bill did have a pretty bad run this year, though and turned a lot of people against him.

WaltB: Sure, WaltB, Bill was a disaster. He brought the Democrats out of the wilderness into the White House for two terms. What we needed was another McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, fill-in-the blank.

...basman - I'm one of his lessers, though I'm not sure I'm more virtuous...

Why Teplukhin 2 me, you absolute devil!

What I love about all this is that Bill Clinton in this campaign is exposing Democrats to themselves.

You all loved him fine when his low life activities were aimed at the Republicans.

But, now that he's aiming his sleaze guns at you, suddenly you notice just how unworthy a man is Bill Clinton.  He ought never to have been president.  He ought never have controlled the Democratic Party, and would not have controlled the one that used to exist.

He's your boy, folks.  Maybe you're finally killing off the Clintons, but it going to drag on and it's going to be ugly.  Win or lose in November, you guys are getting everything you dearly deserve from the Clintons.  Although, you can never atone for making him president.

Not me, Chan.  Never voted for him.  (Just for the record.)  I was willing to give his wife a fair shake, but that died with...god, I can't even remember which of the various failures it took.  

Chan,

If he was so awful in the '90s, why did the GOP have to make up so many lies and distortions about him? You spent $40 million on the Whitewater "scandal," which was a big fat nothing, and then bounced that over to a (yes, sleazy and tawdry) extramarital affair that was no one's business but the Clintons' and Monica Lewinsky's. The GOP forever trivialized the impeachment process over something for which a more appropriate punishment would have been making him sleep on the couch for six months. And don't forget the lies about killing Vince Foster and others, and running drugs as Arkansas governor, and he fathered a prostitute's child, and Hillary is a lesbian (who had an affair with Foster - versatile lesbian!), and they didn't have the right to fire the travel office staff and hire their own people.

They were completely, unfairly trashed by the GOP in the '90s. Many Dems now are pissed at them over campaign tactics. What sleazy election or campaign tactics did Clinton use against the GOP in the '90s? I guess you could say that he didn't because he didn't have to -- the reason he won two elections then is because he was the best choice, two times. Blame the GOP for fielding the likes of GHW Bush and Bob Dole.

basman, I still have a bust of Bill on my desk, and contra Chan, I think he was the best president of my lifetime. Doesn't mean he's not batshit crazy. Most of what I've seen him saying on the stump since January has as much connection to reality as the ravings of your average drunken hobo.

OK Channy - you done beating us with a stick?  How about if we make a deal:  I'll atone for Bill Clinton (how, I'm not sure - they wouldn't have me on Air Fuck One, too old) if you atone for your uxorious, tea-tottler of a Country Destoyer.  

Deal?

I have really tried to hate Bill and I cannot. Part of being a Bill Clinton person is some combination of hating his guts, being disappointed in him and wanting to slap him across the face half time time anyway. The other half you are stopped dead in your tracks by his brilliance, energy and insight, his epic drive and  inspiring vision.  

In other words: utterly American.  

If you are American, there is a little bit of Bill in all of us.  

WoodyBombay: Excellent, crystal-precise commentary.

basman, yes, Shakespearean, but these days he seems more comic than tragic, as in:

Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will

do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar,

that I will make the duke say 'Let him roar again,

let him roar again.'

. . .

I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me;

to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir

from this place, do what they can: I will walk up

and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear

I am not afraid.

WoodyBombay:

You're right about the GOP's lies and distortions, and I'm with you on the Lewinsky scandal, but I don't share your estimation of Clinton the candidate, even though I preferred him to the alternatives. Remember Ross Perot, without whom Clinton likely would not have won. Remember, too, the midterms of 1994. Yes, he was reelected to his second term, but only by banishing Hillary from the national stage and running as a moderate Republican.

What you heard today maybe an example of the personality change that Purdum wrote about in his VF piece.  Clinton was always known to have a temper, but it seems to have gone off the rails in the past few months.  Apparently such changes can be a side effect of the heart-bypass surgery Bill had.  Enjoy the good times and the Big Macs and drop over dead swiftly.  To live long and healthy and grouchy is no life at all . . .

"Remember Ross Perot, without whom Clinton likely would not have won."

Not true. Perot's voters roughly broke down to one-third favoring Clinton, one-third favoring Bush, one-third not voting if Ross hadn't run. Clinton still would have won, although the electoral vote probably would have been a lot closer.

Your point about the '94 midterms is a good one, and I hold him and Hillary equally culpable for that. Maybe him a little more, because he didn't have the guts to rein her in on health care. And he did tack to the right in '96, but I still far preferred that to Bob Dole. That fellow was so bereft of ideas that there was actually a black hole in his brain, visible on a CAT scan, where a normal person has ideas.

But again, if anyone can tell me of any despicable things Clinton did or said in the '92 or '96 campaigns, I'd love it if you would refresh my memory. I honestly don't remember him outright smearing Bush or Dole - he didn't have to, for one. And if memory serves, in '92 he went out of his way to do the "different kind of politics" thing, and in '96 he stayed above the fray and counted on the electorate to want him in the White House as a counter to the new wild-eyed GOP Congress. The worst thing I remember him doing during the campaigns was rushing home to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a convicted murderer who was mentally ill. That, frankly, was the worst thing I can remember Bill Clinton doing. And somehow I get the feeling Chan doesn't care much about that.

Woody,

I stand corrected about Perot. Thank you.

Wandrey

A little bit of Bill has certainly been in many americans.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Wandrey, I wonder if this will change your opinion.  Michael Crowley's post about Bill's tirade in South Dakota left out the most noteworthy part of the tirade.  After hitting Vanity Fair and Todd Purdum (justifiably in my opinion, since Purdum's piece was poorly sourced), Clinton then went into his most harsh and least justifiable slander yet against Obama.  Click Michael's link and you will see that Clinton accused Obama of "get[ting] Pfleger to "slime Hillary as a white racist," and added that Obama did not condemn Pfleger on the first day, but just said "Aaah. Aaah.   So Bill made [1] a completely baseless charge:  that Obama or his campaign actually encouraged Pfleger's rant against Hillary, and [2] a completely false charge, which is that Obama did not condemn Pfleger on the first day, when he so plainly did.

Here's the full quote from Bill today in S. Dakota:

"They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do-- he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-- maybe I better quit the church."

Bill, the best? Well, I certainly am (or was) a supporter, but lets remember that while winning the white house, he lost the House and Senate. Utter failure at some things (health care, eg), some good progress on others (welfare), but ultimately a disappointment in what could have been were it not for his shortcomings. And they become more apparent in Vanity Fair and in HRCs campaign.

Was he good for the Dem Party? Well, he dragged them kicking and screaming to the center. But his tepid support for Gore and Kerry may have had an unfortunate impact. And ultimately, when he could just have simply said "none of your business" about 'that woman", he CHOSE to lie. Among everything else, that set up the GOP to win across the board simply on the banner of I'm more honest that Bill. Rove exploited that brilliantly.

So a mixed record I believe.

While you are busy trashing and disparaging Bill Clinton, you might want to remember that he is the only Democrat to win two terms as President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt--that goes back almost three-quarters of a century. There are four two-term Republicans in the same period. Seems odd that some are so anxious to run him out of the party. Must mean something.

Eos,

I am not trying to pick a fight or even a nit, but I would respectfully point out--and I say this as someone who voted for Clinton twice--that although your reminder is technically accurate, Lee Harvey Oswald made it so. LBJ won JFK's second term.

This is for my money, the main reason why Hilary shouldn't be on the ticket.  Say what you will about the Obama campaign, but they have been very successful at keeping their campaign  message (with a few exceptions).  When they learned that a group of Obama supporters were planning a counter-protest at the RBC meeting Saturday, they sent out e-mails and press releases asking them to stand down, and they did. From all accounts, there were just as many Obama supporters at that meeting, but they were obviously more well-behaved.  It was the Clinton protestors who came off looking crazy.

Now here's Bill agian.  How can the Obama campaign be expected to control there message with the possibiltiy that Bill Clinton will spontaneously combust at inopportune times.  When ihe was on point, he was a great asset for Hilary, but when wasn't, he was really a dead weight for her campaign.

If I were Obama, I would't let Bill anywhere near my adminstration.

Eos,

I know you're not talking about me, because I spent a lot of typing defending Clinton in this thread, but honestly: Aren't you troubled and/or surprised by Bill's frequent nasty outbursts in this season?

Eos, since you bring it up, Bill was greatly aided by Ross Perot in both elections, and under his reign and that of his handpicked choice to run the DNC between 2000 and 2002, the Democratic Party hemorrhaged house members, Senators, governors, and state legislatures.

The Clintons did not save the Democratic party; they were decent caretakers of centrism between 1992 and 2000 but they did not build a party or a movement -- except the Republican party and the conservative movement.  

And even if we stipulate that Bill was just fantabulous as a President, there is no excuse whatsoever for any significant personage in a political party -- much less a former President -- to state without a sliver of proof and without even any common sense intuition behind it, that another leader in the party deliberately got some crazy priest to call someone a white racist.  It's reckless, irresponsible, and indefensible.

Nippers,

Possibly so--but Kennedy was not very popular at the time of his assassination, and he had been elected by the narrowest margin in modern political history. It is not at all clear that he would have gotten re-elected. And then Johnson himself failed to get his own second term. The Dems, apart from Bill Clinton, have not done well with the presidency.

Woody,

I am honestly not. I do think it is outrageous that Hillary could be denounced as a racist from the church of her opponent and that the opponent would say so little about her personally to defend her. I admire Bill's anger and willingness to buck the conventional. And his eight years as president are the only eight years of my adult life that I had a president I could really support. But I don't want to get into arguing all this stuff now.

As I noted over the weekend, I think it's pretty clear that the Clintons are like abused children who themselves go on to become abusers. They're so trapped by the Red/Blue dynamic, the Washington power games, the gotcha politics and the win-at-all costs ethos that they're incapable of functioning any other way. These are two bright individuals who probably do care about helping people. But I think their primary objective now is to help themselves, and they don't care what rules they have to break or who they have to step on to do it.

I frankly can't think of a more fitting end to a campaign that was erratic, nasty and full of itself than Bill's embarrassing tirade.

BHLnye: As a former Hillary supporter, I do not disagree with anything you say.

Thanks, Eos. That's quite a window into your thinking.

ACtually, Chan, AF1 and Bill "Appetite" (tip: libref) C. strike me as both quintessentially American. We are the children of Appetite: Babe Ruth, his booze and hot dogs. Elvis swilling his drug cocktails in Graceland. Hugh Hefner on the circular bed. Madonna, Trump, Snoop, Britney and a cast of thousands. American fast food and American porn, the latter accounting for more than 25% of Hollywood's output and growing. Land of the Fat, Home of the Id.

Hey, even those nicely nicely Goo-goo boys, the "don't be evil" greeniacs, have their own version of AF1. Only in America (well, maybe also Saudi Arabia, but no one ever sees or hears about it-- outside Marbella, anyway).

As Wandrey pointed out, it's not priapic Bill but chicken-lipped, teetotalling, pinched and parched and uxorious George W who's the un-American one here.

Eos, you always write with a reasonable tone, but sometimes I think there is some cognitive dissonance going on.  How can you say Obama did little in response to Pfleger.  The very first day this rant was reported, Obama -- within hours -- issued a harsh rebuke, calling the rant offensive and divisive. You are now saying that what Obama did wasn't enough?  It appears that you would have preferred for Obama to have repeated the charge and then disagreed with it, by saying, "I do not think Hillary Clinton is upset because she is losing to a black man."  How would that have helped?

You may recall that it took days for Clinton to say anything about Ferraro's remark that Obama was winning only because he's black, and when she did say something about Ferraro, she did not use the formula of repeating the charge and saying she disagreed with it.

One last point.  It makes no sense to say that Obama was behind the Pfleger remraks.   Those remarks did nothing to help Obama with anyone on a political level or on any other level.  They hurt him badly.  Pfleger is a jerk who was trying to pander to the black audience at Trinity; does anyone think Obama is not going to get 99% of those votes?  Plainly it was reckless for Bill to say Obama was behind these remarks.

First of all, the reporter asked him about the Vanity Fair article. I have no problem with him defending himself against the Vanity Fair article, but the reporter did not ask Bill Clinton about his thoughts on Barack Obama.  It was just a spontaneous, unprovoked, and inopportune rant that was not initiated by the reporter's question.  So let's stop making excuses for what he said, but on why he felt he needed to said it at all when he was not asked about Obama.  

This is especially bad timing since his wife may want to be VP.  You do not go on crazy mostly unprovoked purely subjective rants about the Presidential nominee and expect to be treatly kindly.

That's my problem

Eos, I don't agree with you re JFK.  He was no FDR, but he was reasonably popular by 1963.  He had problems in Texas-- that's why he went to Fort Worth and Dallas that day.

But, if the Republicans had nominated Goldwater-- as I'm pretty sure they would have-- Kennedy would have beat him soundly enough.  Although maybe not by the LBJ landslide, which was fueled to a great extent by sympathy for Jack's assassination.

Re American "appetites," yep, we no doubt all have them.  Though I'm not certain that they're bigger than European appetites-- it's just that we've got more cash to indulge ours.

In the case of presidents, however, out of a decent respect for their office, we have a tradition, honored by most American's who occupied the White House, to indulge such hunger with great discretion so as not to dishonor the trust the people had given them.

Bill Clinton found a way to dishonor himself and his office every other day.  As Jack Kennedy said of Nixon, "no class".

lamh31 writes, "...This is especially bad timing since his wife may want to be VP."

lam, unless Obama is suicidal, there's no way in hell he was before this or will after, choose her for veep.  Having two Clintons in the Naval Observatory might be worse, in its way, than having two Clintons in the White House.  Either way you'd have more intrigue than the Czarist court.

I read the Todd Purdum. Character assassination. Lots of anonymous sources. Now Purdum has come to say he's not saying that Clinton "sees" a lot of women on the road, nooooo. Instead, he reports that some unnamed aide is concerned. And so is for most of what he says.

Quite clear, there are a dozen of contributors  here for which no lie is not bad and no dishonesty too big, no technique too dirty of it comes to hitting the Clintons. How classy these people are! No dirty job is ugly enough for them if it puts filth on the Clintons. And this is a man who was twice president and the US had a pretty good time during his presidency. No matter, better a pure soul of the McGovern kind.

But even the most grotesque people here are the others, the right-wingers that can't have enough of Monica Lewinsky. They don't care about their own catastrophic and lying president, who brought the US to recession, inflation and war. But I guess when you like voting for sex-obsessed airport-cruising senators, your mind inevitably goes to Lewinsky. If you're a right-winger, it's much better to lie about Iraq having nuclear bombs than about Lewinsky and Clinton having sex.

The funniest part is remembering the presidential campaign of 2000, when Bush kept saying how would he bring dignity to the White House. Oh yeah, he brought dignity alright!  

I don't care what he did with Lewinsky. I care what he did with the Clean Air Act. He doesn't belong to me because I am not a Democrat. Well, I am this time, so I could caucus for Obama, but all I ever am is someone who votes for a person, not a party. Ever. So I don't have to worry about anybody making Democrats look bad, because I don't belong to that gang. Except officially, Feb 9 - November 4.

LDuncan - I hadn't heard that part, very sad.  He has made me sad so many times in this campaign.  I miss the gracious, sunny Bill who seemed to be having so much fun even when he was getting his rump kicked and the weasals were closing in (hattip: Hunters S. Thompson).  I knew Bad Bill was always right there out of camera range, but I did love Sunny Bill anyway.  Lke I said, I identity with Bill and I'm afraid many of us did.  (Most of us aren't sexual predators though, thank God).  

I want to say that I am incapable of being shocked anymore at the depravity of some of the Clinton remarks and stratagies in this campaign, but it scares me to do so.  My sincere apologies to any Clinton folks, that must sound enraging to you.  I truly am sorry for that.  

The Jason-like qualties in both of them make me know they will need a stake to the heart, nothing less (one man's Jason is another man's Lazaruth, like it or not they are both). Even knowing this, I still love Bill Clinton and will give his foundation big chunks of change every year.  He is yin/yang personified.  

I am one of those people who firmly believe the heart surgery affected his emotional health profoundly, he's not the most mature of men.  I think that's where the Ron Burkle/chicks thing comes in - denial of death.  I'm also one of those people who believes firmly that the Clinton marriage is a real one - lust and all.

If you think about it, what would we do without them?  (Pile on begin).

I admire that psantilliana!!!  Teach me that!

At every opportune moment Bill Clinton pulls the rug out from under his wife.

Just as Obama and HRC are inching towards each other, Bill throws another one of his grenades.

Every Democrat I talk w/ doesn't want him back in the White House. He's the single biggest reason she lost, and he would be the single biggest obstacle to her getting on the ticket. And if somehow she does get on the ticket, Bill Clinton will be the single biggest reason the Democrats lose to McCain.

Can you imagine the GOP campaign, the endless references to womanizing and post-presidency deal-making?

The "Vanity Fair" piece was a puff piece compared to what the GOP has on this guy since he moved his office to Harlem and began hanging around with guys like Steve Bing.

Liberals on this chain may not care "what he did with Lewinsky". But certainly more than 50% of the people who vote care quite a bit.

The Clintons have become radioactive. What should Obama do? He needs the people who voted for her...what should he do?

Dont his various reactions to the article PROVE many of the points of the article?  Chips and guacamole, yes thats what he needs.  And a hummer.

Bill is 100% right.  The media's behavior during this campaign has been revolting - not that that's surprising in the least.  I'm not anti-Obama but he's absolutely benefited from the press' longstanding desire to twist everything the Clintons do or say into nastiness.  You all think you know what they're like - but all you know is what the high-school clique we call a national press decides to tell  you.  Seriously, following the coverage of this election has been like watching a bunch of middle school kids getting riled up about how "uncool" some other poor kid is - they just make shit up.  

"He's the single biggest reason she lost ..."

Which is actually kind of fair, since he's also the single _only_ reason she was able to run in the first place.  Take away his network of influence, fundraising, and favors owed -- which network, by the way, is the glass ceiling facing other women in politics -- and she doesn't get near the Senate, much less the presidency. Legacy candidates have no right to complain when their benefactors become a liability.

Which is why I want to amend the Constitution to require spouses and children of presidents to wait 18 years to run for president themselves. Such an amendment would help us to distinguish the John Q. Adamses of the world from the George W. Bushes and Hillary Clintons.

tep,

As a "try hard not to be evil" greeniac and a lush, I dream of a brighter tomorrow in which we will have developed the technology for recycling post-consumer gin. I could also use a non-carcinogenic cigarette.

We can solve it.

Newdex,

On balance, the coverage has been quite fair to Hillary. For all the complaints that she's had a tougher press, it's worth pointing out that there were scandals from her husband's administration that barely got mentioned. It seems to me that if Hillary was resting on her First Lady "experience," that stuff was all fair game. But the impeachment seemed to be entirely off limits, as were the pardons and the Lincoln Bedroom stuff, and when the Lewinsky matter was raised with Chelsea, the press pounced on the questioner. Even Bill's active Kazakh ties (aka Boratgate; that's for you, VAcentrist) got only one day in the NY Times and barely a word after that.

Also, it's worth remembering that Hillary enjoyed very favorable press for the full year leading up to Iowa. That's what allowed her to be viewed all during 2007 as the "inevitable" nominee and gave her the ability to lock up key endorsements, raise big money and poll better than two to one against her closest competitor.

It's also worth noting that if Obama got better press, it might also just be because he talked to the nation like an adult. When was the last time that happened?

Occasionally, despite his awful demeanor, I have felt Billy Boy has been somewhat correct, But here is a thought: his demeanor, red-faced ranting, short-temprer and sightedness, and rather eratic paranoid delusions.... Could this be the beginning of the tertiary state of syphilis. The redddening would be the result of body wide inflammation of the skin, which is not entirely infrequent. Meanwhile, Bill used to be congenial, if firm in his affect, whereas for few year of more he has adopted a plematic then (more recently) a plain angry demeanor. Personality changes are common in tertiary, and the irritability could be aided by the common loss of sleep occuring at this stage of the disease. Psychosis and delusions of grandeur are common as well.

How long before Bill casts himself onto a horse and declares himself "The Accused" or "The Anti-Christ?"

Wandrey - "want to say that I am incapable of being shocked anymore at the depravity of some of the Clinton remarks and stratagies in this campaign"

He's depraved on account o' he's deprived. Get this man some nookie, now

[chorus] "Officer Krupke, she's down on her... " --oh, never mind

Nippers - sign me up. The whiskey I recycle has a very high peat content, and peat's well-known in Hibernia as an excellent alternative home heating fuel

The fall of the Clintons is not Shakespearean, it's Faulknerian. This man is Flem Snopes.

findarticles.com/.../ai_21239828

A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars: I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan

BHLnyc "It's also worth noting that if Obama got better press, it might also just be because he talked to the nation like an adult. When was the last time that happened? "

It's true, you're right. But that adult has terrorist friends and has had racist as a mentor for the past twenty years. He chose that mentor. The press favored him on that. They said nothing. After YouTube started to have excerpts of the racist Jeremiah Wright's thinking, they started to write - overwhelmingly to excuse Obama.

"Pillbug said:

Occasionally, despite his awful demeanor, I have felt Billy Boy has been somewhat correct, But here is a thought: his demeanor, red-faced ranting, short-temprer and sightedness, and rather eratic paranoid delusions.... Could this be the beginning of the tertiary state of syphilis."

Pillbug are you a physician? We already have a charlatan who diagnoses on this thread,

with abandon.

Rhubarbs writes, re Clinton "...I think he was the best president of my lifetime."

Well, maybe you have had a very short lifetime.  In any event, Bill Clinton's accomplishments were historically about equal to Coolidge's, and his legacy about like Harding's.  Thirty years or so from now, he'll be seen as a national figure like Mayor Jimmy walker.  Charming, widely liked, got into trouble a lot.

He will be seen as an outsized personality, but not a particularly great man or president.  For starters, he did not face or deal with any great crisies like the currently reviled Mr. Bush has had to do.  And actually will ultimately be seen to have done very well.

Of course, if we get Obama for president, he may unravel in a year what has taken five years to accomplish.  Democrats of our era reveling as they do in defeat.

What exactly do you see as having been "accomplished" in the last five years?  The defeat of Al Queda?  The solving of the immigration issue?  The breakthrough on health care?  The serious confronting of the energy crisis?  Increased regional stability in the ME?  The problem of nonproliferation?  The nurturing of America's claim to global leadership?  Iran?  North Korea?  Russia?  Infrastructure renewal?  A new dedication to science?  What?

irony, no "breakthrough on health care" is going to come out of Washington, no matter who is president.

The beginning of the decline of American health care was when Lyndon Johnson put the Federal government into it.

And yes, there is much evidence that our presence in the Middle East, both Iraq and Afghanistan is defeating Al Qaeda.  As even the editorial page of the Washington Post admitted this past sunday.

Energy has been mishandled since 1974 when we got a big heads up.  But, why have advanced nations that have zero energy resources of their own-- like Japan-- done so little about the problem?  And the Left has exacerbated the domestic problem by opposing coal, nukes, gasoline refineries, drilling in new promising areas, converting oil shale to oil, etc.

What did either Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter (nuclear propulsion scientist) do about energy independence in their 12 years?  What did the Democratic Congress, which has controlled the legislature for 2/3rds of the time since 1974 do?