I am partial to the philosophy that once a man admits that he is wrong, he is immediately forgiven for all wrong-doings, but fuck everyone who joined the Establishment holy wars against teh Clenis and teh Islamofascism and never apologized for it Fuck them all, whether they’re alive or dead. Atrios the other day:
The post-9/11 Iraq war runup era was completely fucked up in a way which will be hard to explain to anyone who didn’t live through it, but at least there was a degree of justification for insanity. Not how the insanity played out, but that people were insane. But in the 90s people were driven insane by a blowjob. Unless you can subject people to thousands of hours of cable news, showing both the bobbleheads and the politicians, there really is no way to communicate what happened in that era.
These assholes broke our country, and they did it purely for their own amusement. Remember the days of possibly paying off the national debt? And look at where we are now. It’s insane: run up a lot of debt on war and tax cuts, plunge the economy into a recession with financial deregulation, then use the debt as a pretext to end the social safety net.
They’ll break it even more if we let them. That’s what austerity is: the new Iraq War. And Politificat is one the many new Judy Millers. Fuck them too.
schrodinger's cat
Austerity is also breaking Europe, how is the media climate there?
DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
Good question, I don’t know. I think Europeans are by and large even more sheep-like than Americans.
ant
bubble. wasnt gonna happin
Villago Delenda Est
Before they were driven insane by a blowjob, they were set up by a “scandal” in which the principles actually lost money. Now think about that for a moment. The principles did not gain from the alleged malfeasance…they lost.
When it was discovered that there was no there there in Whitewater, the scandalmongers used the apparatus of the failed investigation to find something, anything, to pin on Bill Clinton, the usurper of the building and office that belongs to the Rethuglican Party, taken by a shitty grade Z movie star and the son of a Nazi collaborator for that party for all time.
THEN people went insane over a blowjob. At the same time, the Speaker of the House was schtupping the future wife #3 behind the back of wife #2. Which the morons of the media dutifully ignored to concentrate on the sins of the vile Usurper.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: More rightist gobinments ? Recent voters’ stupidity – Spain. The first thing the right winger who got elected says? More benefit cuts for you suckahs and tax cuts for bidness.
Egg Berry
@DougJ:
Tell that to the Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and others (including the Icelanders who told the banks to GTFO) who have been standing up against the austerity drive.
Also, the Spanish crash was presided over by the “left” party, and the vote was a protest vote, but there wasn’t anywhere else credible to channel that protest.
DougJ
@ant:
I think the national debt could realistically be half of what it is now if Gore had won. No Iraq, that’s a trillion off, not Bush tax cuts, that’s something like 3 trillion off. And I think the recession wouldn’t have hit as hard either.
Villago Delenda Est
@DougJ:
For one thing, the government would have been in a better position (and far more likely to take action) to engage in some Keynesian stimulus of the economy. I think the housing bubble still would have burst, but because the economy had not been so weakened by bullshit war and exempting the parasite overclass from paying for the apparatus of society that they suck off of, the impact would have been less. Also (too), a Gore administration would have been far more likely to have forseen the bursting of the bubble and taken preemptive action.
harlana
Atrios makes a good point. The brainwashing began in the 90’s. There is no other explanation for the rabid hatred of Dems, even by otherwise well-educated people (ask me how i know) who would normally have been moderates. My poor Dem friends, which I can count on one hand, try and try to understand, because they, like me, have to deal with these people all the time. Once I understood and accepted that it was pure, unadulterated brainwashing through years of media messaging,I stopped letting it frustrate me. There’s nothing, short of an intervention involving shock treatments, that you can do about it.
yeh, I lived it, I was there, I saw it all come down, Newt played a substantial role, which is why I reserve a special hatred for him in my heart and wanted him to be the nominee so bad I could taste it, so Obama could mop the floor with his sorry arse.
El Tiburon
To whom exactly are you referring? Who is the “They” in your quote here?
Who is it exactly we need to stop? Is it the Republicans? The Democrats? Obama?
Seems you have certain factions that are calling out the current leadership for this exact problem, then we are told to shut the fuck up because dontcha know Gingrich and boogeymen and Supreme Court picks and How It Could Be So Much Worse!!1!
So maybe someone can tell me who it is we are supposed to be fighting?
Napoleon
@DougJ:
You are easily right about that.
Xecky Gilchrist
in the 90s people were driven insane by a blowjob.
That was just the excuse. They were already insane with a bone-deep NEED to get the Democrat out of office by any means necessary.
Arrik
@DougJ:
Gore did win.
Southern Beale
.. and they did it purely for their own amusement…
Bullshit. They did it for money and power. The same reasons people have done douchey crap forever.
This is why humanity sucks. But you know it’s the species that’s running the world right now so, until the cockroaches take over ….
Raven
“once a man admits that he is wrong”
And when a woman does the same?
Southern Beale
Speaking of “them” … Bloomberg reporter Max Abelson talks to some rich bankers who probably should have kept their fat yaps shut.
harlana
yes, you can brainwash an entire population – see 9/11 and the Iraq war
johnsmith1882
vincent vega was partial to that philosophy too, doug, and you know where that got him. the problem is, none of the ratfluckers who got us into this mess have admitted anything, let alone being wrong.
Palli
@Villago Delenda Est:
sting operation blowjob
BGinCHI
No one had their legs in the air like Judith Miller.
srv
Fat Al Gore would have blown all our money on crazy environmental projects and regulations and turned the country into California where you have to get an EPA permit to mow your lawn.
I don’t know if he would have been smart enough, and would have avoided occupying Afghanistan. He would have had the same CIA folks selling the same plan. And it would have looked like a failure in 2004 except for a side-show in Iraq. Progressives and conservatives would have been ranting about war-mongering Gore and OBL still being alive and all that.
Tom Hilton
And in the late zero-zeros/early teens, people were driven insane by the color of the President’s skin.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Tiburon: You know, El, if you act like that then I’ll make it simple for you, cause it seems your ability to think as suddenly disappeared: The Republicans have fucked things up, keep them out of office. They have been doing it continuously since the Civil Rights Act was signed. All your both sides shit is buying is a…I’m not even going to go there.
Tom Hilton
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t forget Hillary murdering Vince Foster.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@srv:
The CIA guy who told George Bush about ‘chatter’ from Al Qaida in August, 2001 would have said the same thing to Al Gore? I suspect the response would not have been a shrug and “Okay, you’ve covered your ass? And I kind of doubt Al Gore would have had Condi Rice as NSC chair and put Dick Cheney in charge of reviewing the threat from Al Qaida in January of 2001.
jwb
@Southern Beale: I’m trying to decide if those rich bankers actually believe this shit or they think that rubes will believe it. Also, where’s our Dickens?
ornery
Yet we are to believe these people are stupid and made mistakes that happened to make them incredible amounts of easy money.
The question you never see is the one that matters: How much IS this debt we must pay and pay? Simple question. How much?
We are to assume it is the spendthrift liberal’s debt from the silly ‘Great Society’ waste … and that is what justifies austerity. Because if govt spending is the debt, then cutting it will reduce the debt.
But austerity is not solving the problem, so we have to wonder if this is not the people’s debt at all … so we need to know: HOW MUCH is the debt? And if no answers are given, the banks must go BANKRUPT.
Otherwise we will watch out society recede like a tide running out. We should not wait until we are flopping fish on the sand.
amk
@El Tiburon: Nice false equivalence there. The bane of this decade.
Remember this ?
http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/b/N/4/Guide-to-GOP-Governance.jpg
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@srv: So, he would have blown all of our money by creating projects that put money into the economy?
Villago Delenda Est
@Tom Hilton:
The lesbian Hillary Clinton murdering her lover, Vince Foster.
Gotta include all the cognitive dissonance elements to properly relay the degree of insanity surrounding the event.
johnsmith1882
@srv: fine, let’s say gore would have bit on afghanistan and that we’d still be there ten years later. we wouldn’t have operation piss away billions in the sands of iraq, tax cuts for our overlords, and probably not the medicare giveaway. we’d be living in a comparable paradise, and that’s just monetarily.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
“suddenly”?
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yup, this.
Al Gore would not have dismissed, out of hand, and out of petulance, the advice of the transition team that told him that terrorism from Middle Eastern agents would be his greatest national security challenge. Al Gore would not have been attempting to provoke China into becoming the new boogieman. He would not have been scheming to find some way to one up his old man in the Persian Gulf. As shitty a person as Joe Looserman is, Looserman would not be manipulating events for his personal profit, and the profit of his old private sector cronies the way the Dark Lord of the Sith was.
Benjamin Franklin
It’s a simple, but effective strategy; Starve the Beast (social programs)
The erosion began with Reagan’s voodoo, then Dubya’s hoodoo picked it up.
El Cid
@amk: Yeah, but the Soshullists were in for a long time and, stupid or not, people think it’s time to vote the bums out, so, it’s Mariano Rajoy and the PP to the rescue, and now you can all be happy with less, Spain.
amk
CNN Poll today: Obama’s approval nearing 50%
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/20/cnn-poll-presidents-approval-nearing-50/
jwb
@srv: We would certainly have been in Afghanistan. But we might have done a better job and so not ended up with the mess we have now. It’s hard to say what would have have happened with all the other stuff, given that Gore would have faced the same shit storm of media-fueled GOP intransigence that Clinton and Obama have faced.
DougJ
@Raven:
It is a quote from Pulp Fiction.
srv
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The CIA was covering their asses. They had two known AQ contacts running around SoCal and were preventing the FBI agents working in “Alec Station” from telling their peers about it.
Gore would not have stopped 9/11 without a lot of luck.
amk
@El Cid: yup, fucking self-flagellating bleeding nosers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Benjamin Franklin:
I think Rick Perlstein said in Nixonland, and he wasn’t the first or last to say something like it, that Watergate and Vietnam made Reagan’s “government is the problem, not the solution” nonsense a winning slogan, and we’re still dealing with the fall-out.
srv
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It would have been a Solyndra-palooza.
/snark
El Tiburon
@amk:
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Whoa Nellie – I am in no way drawing any false equivalencies anywhere. The Republicans hold a special place in Hell. But let’s not forget who enabled a lot of this:
Was the Iraq War not possible without the Democrats? Were there not more than a few democrats also calling for Clinton’s head (the one on top of his neck?)
And speaking of Clinton, was it not his financial team that helped get us into a lot of this mess? Now the same team Obama is leading?
And who is calling the charge for austerity? Who was for the Grand Bargain?
Don’t you fucking piss down my back and tell me it’s raining. You know I was brought to tears in 2008 when Obama was declared the winner. I thought the nightmare was over. Now I see it continues.
False equivalencies my ass.
PeakVT
@harlana: It’s worse than that: they brainwashed a country where the people were free to find the truth, but too lazy to do so. (Actually, it was only 20% or so of the people who live here, but that was enough to win an election.)
Judas Escargot
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This.
If Gore had won FL in 2000 (or, for that matter, had McCain been able to fend off Bush in the SC primary*), 9/11 probably would not have happened.
(*) Yes, I think McCain would have beat Gore in a 2000 match-up. I also think that, for all his flaws, McCain is still a patriot at heart who would have taken the threat much more seriously than GWB’s cronies did.
Egg Berry
@El Cid: To be honest, Spain would have gotten less either way, because the creditors haz to be made whole, dammit! (/snark)
Davis X. Machina
Given a choice, straight up, between good governance and a morally edifying spectacle, the edifying spectacle wins every time.
Blowjobs are bad. Debt is sin. Austerity is virtuous.
Look, there are 200 million Americans of voting age, give or take, and 60-70% of them have the mental apparatus of a 14th c. Flemish peasant.
Raven
@DougJ :)@DougJ: The muthafucka said that shit never had to pick up itty bitty pieces of skull on the account of your dumb ass.
p mac
I think of this article all too often.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/
El Tiburon
@srv:
Let’s be very clear about this: if Al Gore would have become President in 2000, he would have either been impeached, hung, or castrated on 9-12-11.
If any of you are delusional enough to think Al Gore would have survived 9-11 you are smoking crack while injecting heroin while sniffing glue.
You think the Republicans would have rallied around him like the Democrats did to Bush? You think the media would have given him a pass like they did to Bush? I can think of one impressionable dude in his early 30s who just voted for Bush who would have believed the spin that Gore was to blame.
amk
@El Tiburon: Doubling down does make it true not. If in doubt, go see that toon again and again till you get it.
Tired of pissing/raining meme. It’s gone stale long time back.
And you can shove your poutrage where it doesn’t shine.
JPL
OT..Yesterday I mentioned the local news covered the payroll tax as both sides are bickering. A commenter said wait a few days and see what happens.. Well today they showed exactly what would happen to wage earners if the bill was not passed by the repub. house of rep. After their w-2 example they gave the repub excuse. The excuse seemed weak after seeing the numbers though.
Mino
@DougJ: I’d give blood to see Americans half as passive as all those European sheep. Jeezus.
catclub
@Raven: “And when a woman does the same?”
I _think_ you slap an A on her dress and ostracize her and her innocent child. Sounds fair.
gnomedad
@Xecky Gilchrist:
But it was a very useful excuse, and Clinton handed it to them. Shithead. And, yeah, I know about Kennedy and the rest. This was post-Donna Rice.
Bitter Scribe
The one and only talent of conservatives is getting themselves listened to and taken seriously despite being disastrously wrong about everything.
KG
@jwb: for thousands of years Afghanistan has been where Empires went to die. It has been ungovernable since Alexander the Great tried to march through. What makes you think that we would have done any better with a different president?
KG
@Judas Escargot: I hate all the attention paid to Florida in 2000. The fact is, if Gore had won his home state of Tennessee or Clinton’s home state of Arkansas or any other fucking state, Florida would have been a footnote just like New Mexico was.
Judas Escargot
@KG:
Fair enough. I only say ‘FL’ because that’s where the trouble started on election night.
BTW, Gore’s loss in those other states are a big part of why I think McCain would have beat him in 2000. But Rove’s ‘secret Black baby’ antics in SC made sure that history happened as it did.
Zach
“but at least there was a degree of justification for insanity”
I disagree. There was no rational reason to ignore Hans Blitz’s repeated statements that (1) he had access to whatever WMD intelligence he wanted and (2) he’d found zero evidence of WMD. The canned, false response that “France says Saddam’s got WMD too!” was simply wrong and totally unjustified. Yet Bush’s million-percent favorability rating scared virtually everyone important who commented on the issue into conceding that Saddam probably did have some WMDs.
EconWatcher
I was shocked to see opinion poll results yesterday (I’ve forgotten where, but I think the source was reliable, and involved a poll of polls) showing that the public is now evenly divided as to whether it was a good idea to use military force in Iraq. The poll showed opposition peaking in about ’08, and waning ever since, to about 50/50 now.
How can this possibly be? How can half of us think that the war was, on balance, an OK idea, at least?
I’m not sure you can blame the MSM on this one, because I don’t remember a lot of positive coverage on the war in the last several years (maybe I’m wrong). In fact, I thought the Village consensus now was a very quiet recognition that the whole thing was probably a boo-boo (but of course they bear no responsiblity).
It appears that many non-wingnuts are back on board with the war. Again, what gives? I’m baffled.
El Tiburon
@amk:
Doubling down does not make what true? That I’m drawing false equivalencies?
Please correct my statements.
Are you saying Obama is not for austerity and the Grand Bargain?
Are you saying that many Democrats did not vote for war in Iraq?
Are you saying Clinton’s financial team did not have a lot to do with our current situation? The same path Obama is following?
Because that is what I’m doubling down on – all items I consider part of the Conventional Wisdom. Or am I wrong on these points?
Also, is Obama not continuing many of Bush’s policies regarding war and expansion of executive power?
Cermet
When war criminals like cheney and sock puppet bush as well as their cohorts in crime are free to walk around what else can anyone believe? Accounting? Please. History will mark Obama for two accomplishments – first Black President elected and his total failure to prosecute those war criminals. He may get a pass on the bank robbery of the US public … maybe.
Citizen Alan
@srv:
Luck is found at the intersection preparation and opportunity. Vice-President Gore was the Clinton administration’s strongest advocate for assassinating Bin Laden. President Gore might well have ratcheted up the attention on Al-Qaeda to the point that it was not capable of organizing 9/11.
El Tiburon
@EconWatcher:
In case you haven’t noticed, we are the #1 war-mongering nation in the world. Fuck, we even go to war with dudes who ride camels and have box cutters and live in caves.
We will go to war with you even if you were just minding our own business. We export war and import it as well.
Do you watch TV? Have you seen the latest ads for the army or marines? Looks like a goddamn video game. I even get pumped up. Oh also – our war is NOW a videogame. Remote-contolled drones? Awesome!
I mentioned it the other day: dollars to donuts we have a reality TV-show based on drone video within a year or two.
Killing women and kids is totally acceptable.
Cermet
@KG: The fact that Gore won Fl is a big deal and that the Inferior’s court’s Junta is beyond belief. This country was robbed of free and fair elections because a few inferior court lap dogs stole the election is not a big deal is like saying WWII was a minor police action that mattered little relative to its outcome. Our country’s government and constitution was overthrown and an illegal leader was installed into the highest office (in ass wipes bush case, became a minor office in the land, below dog cather) – we becoming a banana republic is a big deal.
Scott P.
Tora Bora. Kill Bin Laden in 2002, and things look a lot better.
carpeduum
You are blaming the wrong people Doug.
Blame voters like John Cole who voted for the texas dummy twice. Then these voters went and voted in a Republican majority in the house even as Obama is fixing the previous Republican mess. It’s hard for even me to understand that now. Thinking back it had to do with how GOPers, through thousands of hours of cable news, managed to convince/scare teabaggers that the current problems are a timewarp moved forward because of Obama and how he is the one running up the debts bailing out Wall Street and GM. It makes absolutely no sense to anyone with half a brain but Cable news can convince people of just about anything.
taylormattd
This, this right here, is exactly why I am driven crazy by alleged “progressives” on blogs who have nothing but a hardon for weak democratic politicians.
It is an utter waste of time to be perpetually outraged only at democratic weakness and betrayal, when those democratic politicians face on a daily basis a non-stop stream of propaganda that is rigged to make them look like liars, cowards, and true-American haters.
Nothing will ever change until the media in this country is fixed.
Emma
@Cermet: Careful there. History has an interesting way of screwing over predictions and the people that make them.
handsmile
FlipYrWhig
If Gore had prevailed, I see the outcome along the lines El Tiburon sketched: 9/11 still happens, Republicans blame Gore, the media follows suit, there’s talk of impeachment, and Gore resigns to spare the country the divisive spectacle. Then we have President Lieberman… who does most things the way Bush did them, only with a few more rhetorical nods towards “liberal interventionism” a la Kenneth Pollack and Michael Hanlon.
But IMHO El Tiburon is totally wrong about Obama and “austerity,” but we’ve been around that block before. Short term stimulus, long term savings isn’t austerity. Austerity is cutting because cutting is virtuous and good in its own right, because generosity makes its recipient soft and lazy. Obama clearly doesn’t think that or act on it. At worst he uses rhetoric about belt-tightening to make a case for cutting inefficient, ineffective spending that goes into all the wrong pockets (like medical providers).
In essence, there ought to be a distinction between cutting spending and “austerity” that allows us — you know, liberals and progressives — to talk about ways to spend intelligently such that savings happen over the long run. Unleash the wonks and re-route the spending that doesn’t work or goes into lining fancy pockets into areas that improve lives. And realize that there are entities sufficiently entrenched that taming them will be extremely difficult — like insurance companies and medical device manufacturers.
Paul in KY
@gnomedad: Yup. If I ever see the ole Pres. I’m gonna let him have it for being so fucking stupid/immature.
He just teed it up for them…
Paul in KY
@KG: The Mongols & Tamerlane conquered it (for awhile).
They used methods though that just wouldn’t fly today.
gnomedad
@FlipYrWhig:
Shit, that’s plausible. Shit, shit, shit.
gnomedad
@Davis X. Machina:
And if they can’t share nicely he wants it back.
Suffern ACE
@EconWatcher: Lots of reasons. But mainly because in the past 18 months there have not been a lot of US casualties there that get much reporting. So we are left with the impression that everybody in Iraq loves their newly reformed country and we’re leaving because we aren’t needed anymore. Republicans aren’t likely to go on TV and talk about the failings of the war (only that we need to stay-and for goodness sake – the war is still popular with 72% of that voter base). Democrats in office voted for the damn authorization and most aren’t walking that back. It would be odd for a president to talk about losing, and we know the press was very complicit in promoting it all along. So what are they going to say now?
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I think y’all woefully underestimate the (alternate universe) Pres. Gore’s willingness & enthusiasm for owning Afganistan & having OBL’s head on a pike.
I think we could have stopped those fuckers to begin with (the FBI agent who had seen they were trying to fly airliners, but didn’t care about landing, etc.). Pres. Gore would be considered by the villagers as ‘one of us’ due to his father’s time in office & Gore living in DC for years. They didn’t like his personality & lack of fluffing, but they would consider him a legitimate president (IMO).
If they had done 9/11, I think Pres. Gore would have wrapped himself in the flag (as Bush did) & proceeded with a sound plan to KILL Bin Laden, etc.
bemused
Americans have gotten fed misinformation by media for a long time.
If you get sunday newspapers, you may read the Parade magazine insert. The latest one had a column by Joe Kita, “This Year’s Burning Questions. One question, “How could the U.S Postal Service-which is practically a monopoly-have lost more than $5 billions this year?’
The answer is according to Kita who said “we asked experts to weigh in” is this,
“There is a simple answer: email”. Kita said nothing about the burden the 2006 act has saddled the Postal Service with.
I doubt many people normally comment on the Parade magazine website but people did notice Kita’s glaring oversight and are commenting, explaining the issue to Mr. Kita.
This is the kind of crapola journalism goes on, day after day.
Davis X. Machina
Team spirit. Team USA, the R-Team, or, probably, both.
What you and I think of as a nation-state for tens of millions of us is just a franchise, and the home team to boot
Rafer Janders
@Judas Escargot:
I also think that, for all his flaws, McCain is still a patriot at heart who would have taken the threat much more seriously than GWB’s cronies did.
A patriot at heart would not have wanted to put Sarah Palin one of those heartbeats away from the presidency.
El Cid
__
I’ve said this a lot.
There would have been pitchforks and torches outside the White House and the media would have continued their fascination with the rightist anti-Clinton movement — not to mention how much they genuinely would have resented Gore being in office, recall they thought it was time for Clinton et al to go — by fluffing all those rightists screaming about how weak America-hating Gore allowed the biggest ever foreign terrorist attack on our soil.
It would forever have been, if not entirely seen as, then a perpetual “many will always see 9/11 as”, a Democrat-caused tragedy.
Chris
@EconWatcher:
Here’s the Gallup poll on the subject: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq.aspx – see the second graph. It’s not the most recent, the data only goes to about a year ago, but it gives you the trends going all the way back to the beginning of the war.
My take on it – it was a lot harder for people to deny that Iraq had been a disaster when the war was actually going on. Now that the war’s over and the disaster isn’t smacking us in the face every day anymore, time’s right for a new revisionist, Lost Cause narrative to start forming, with carefully cherry-picked memories and selective amnesia. The conservative base will believe it heart and soul and a fuckton of mushy moderates will buy into it too.
ETA: or what Suffern said.
Mino
I think you might be shocked at how many rightwingers avoid media at all costs. All media. Their fingers are in their ears and they don’t want to hear anything. My sister is such. She gets her talking points from e-mail chains.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: I was often surprised to the extent that people couldn’t see the Iraq war decision as a huge, profound event, one with enormous and longlasting consequences — they were pretty sure now that wars were quick things which looked vaguely like videogames and we’d kick ass, maybe even lose lots of troops in the invasion, but, even for many not in favor, it didn’t seem like the life-affecting thing I saw it as.
That said, there were a lot more people I knew who assumed — and it was hard to disagree — that no one gave a shit what they thought about it and it was going to happen if it was whether they liked it or not.
And at the time when the establishment begins gearing up for war, and the Administration is moving in that direction, the major billion dollar media all fall into place and the local media fall in behind them, by that point, I think they’re mostly correct.
Calouste
@Davis X. Machina:
This country would look very different if 60-70% of the population had the mentality (if not the mental apparatus) of a 14th century Flemish peasant.
Thoughtcrime
@El Cid:
Remember the Maine!
Suffern ACE
@Thoughtcrime: And forget about the Philippine–American War that followed as we tried to take over our gains! They’ll treat us like liberators!
AA+ Bonds
Blinded by the Right by David Brock does a very good job of explaining everything behind Clinton’s impeachment.
In fact, if you haven’t read that book, you don’t understand politics in the 1990s.
Xecky Gilchrist
@gnomedad: But it was a very useful excuse, and Clinton handed it to them.
No argument there. It was a stupid move on Clinton’s part.