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11-07-01
bill clinton prefers biting lips to beating with sticks

At the end of his speech, Mr. Clinton -- who was impeached for lying under oath about a sexual relationship with a 21-year-old White House intern -- said the entire issue revolves around "the nature of truth."
"This battle fundamentally is about what you think about the nature of truth," he said, noting that God has imposed on us the inability to ever know "the whole truth."
He also championed women's rights in Afghanistan, saying the reason "you see all those sanctimonious guys beating those women with sticks" is because the country's rulers demand strict adherence to the rules.
Clinton calls terror a U.S. debt to past
Just look around this chamber. We have members from virtually every racial, ethnic, and religious background. And America is stronger for it. But as we have seen, these differences all too often spark hatred and division, even here at home. . . This is not the American way. We must draw the line. Without delay, we must pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

bill clinton, State of Union Speech, January 27, 2000

"I'm sorry, but the president is one of the crudest men I have ever encountered in government service," says one female agent. "He has no respect for women."
Among the comments clinton made in presence of Secret Service agents:

. Frequent speculation on the oral sex skills of women

the president saw or met in receiving lines;

. References to the size of a woman's breasts, legs or figure;
. Sexual jokes.

After the Monica Lewinsky story broke, however, clinton toned down his rhetoric and behavior in front of his Secret Service agents, but those who guarded the president say enough of them saw and heard things which could be damaging to clinton.

"It depends on who Ken Starr calls," says one ex-agent. "The people who are on the job today are not necessarily the ones who know the most."

Turnover In clinton's Secret Service Detail 'Highest That Anyone Can Remember'

In the months that follow, reporters drop the issue. Feminists say little or nothing. Rape crisis center workers acknowledge that Broaddrick's case, including her reluctance to come forward, is typical of victims of sexual assault. But they decline to speak against clinton. Some cite the federal funding they receive as a result of the Violence Against Women Act, which was signed into law by clinton.

Why does the press continue to ignore the Juanita Broaddrick story?

The Placebo President:
How a Rapist can be a Policy Feminist

placebo effect n.

A beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment
that arises from the patient's expectations concerning
the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

----Sylvia Plath

The placebo effect immediately came to mind
as I listened to Shelby Steele,
a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,
debunk the following pernicious spin intended to save clinton.
To wit:
A proven felon and utter reprobate can remain president;
clinton can be a failed human being but a good president.

The error in these statements arises, says Steele,
from the belief that
virtuousness is separate from personal responsibility
so that one's virtuousness as an individual is determined by
one's political positions on issues rather than on
whether or not in one's personal life there is a
consistency and a responsibility.

Steele's contention is that this compartmentalization,
rather than being the amazing advantage
the clintons would have us believe,
in fact, spills toxicity into, corrupts, the culture.

If mere identification with good policies is what makes one virtuous
then those policies become, what Steele calls, iconographic,
that is to say they just represent virtuousness.
They don't necessarily do virtuous things.

If clinton's semantic parsing strips meaning from our words,
clinton's iconographic policies strip meaning from our society,
systematically deconstructing our society as a democracy. . .

I would take Shelby Steele's thesis one step further.
I maintain that iconographic policy functions like a placebo,
producing a real, physiological and social effects.

The placebo effect is, after all, the brain's triumph over reality.
Expectation alone can produce powerful physiological results.
The placebo effect was, at one time, an evolutionary advantage:
act now, think later

bill clinton is the paradigmatic Placebo President.
Placebo is Latin for "I shall please."
And please he does
doling out sham treatments, iconographs, with abandon.
To please, to placate, to numb, to deflect.
Ultimately to showcase his imagined virtue.
Or to confute his genuine vice.

clinton will dispense sugar pills (or bombs)
at the drop of a high-heeled shoe...
or at the hint of high treason...

clinton's charlatanry mimics that of primitive medicine.
Through the 1940s, doctors had little effective medicine to offer
so they deliberately attempted to induce the placebo response.

The efficaciousness of today's medicines
does not diminish the power of the placebo.
A recent review of placebo-controlled studies
found that placebos and genuine treatments
are often equally effective.
If you expect to get better, you will.

Which brings me back to the original question:
Can clinton be a failed human being but a good president?

Clearly he cannot.
These two propositions are mutually exclusive.
clinton's fundamental failure is a complete lack of integrity.
He has violated his covenant with the American people.

Because clinton has destroyed his moral authority as a leader,
he can no longer function even as a quack;
the placebo effect is gone.
And so the Placebo President must now go, too.

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.

[COMMENT: Certainly 9-11 has removed all doubt for George Will regarding the former assessment and compulsive clinton CYA-ing following 9-11 has done nothing to dispel the latter.]

There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip), and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. ... Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel
The rape took place while Bill was running for governor. Hillary came bursting into the room to talk to two people, one of whom I personally know. She said "You won't believe what this &^%$#@#$%^ did now. He tried to rape some b*tch."

It was the job of these two to squelch the story.

doug from upland to Shaun Hannity, WABC, 10/16/00
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