Semi-Daily Journal

Yes, i found this quite striking as well. Of course, the first response by the right-wing echo chamber will be to treat carlson just like it treated david brock.

but i refuse to believe that there are as few honest conservatives left as recent experience might suggest, and honest conservatives (as opposed to right-wing radicals) must be waking up every day with the same sinking feeling in their stomachs that honest liberals woke up with in september, 1967....

Well, there is always John McCain who I can respect in the midst of any argument. But, the ranks of thoughtful honest conservatives in Washington seems so darn thin.

There's No Business Like 'Modern' Political Show Business....

"All the world's a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players..."
-- W. Shakespeare

["As You Like It"; The Oxford Shakespeare, 1914

http://www.bartleby.com/70/index20.html ]

"It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them."
-- Adolf Hitler

["Lest We Forget"; By Laurie Manis, Apr 9, 2003

http://www.mikehersh.com/Lest_We_Forget.shtml ]

"...[S]he had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me...It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness..."
-- T. Carlson

["'You burn out fast when you demagogue'" by Kerry Lauerman, Sept. 13, 2003

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/09/13/carlson/index_np.html ]

Lying has been a spectacularly successful strategy so far for this administration. I was shocked that the president should give a speech last Sunday saying directly that he was going to ask for 87 billion. On freerepublic.com one of the first reactions to this was that surely this was "Democratic propaganda" meant to topple the president. If the media doesn't focus on lies, and pretends that there really is a balanced debate, then it's easy to believe that the president was either himself misled or that the lie never took place. There has been a tremendous suspension of disbelief over the last couple of years.

Of course, lying is like creating an artificial bubble market. We can believe the lies as long as there are more liars or believers willing to follow in the wake of those that preceded them. Eventually, however, reality (no Osama bin Laden, the world now despises us, Iraq is a failure, Afghanistan is not under control, no jobs, few stem cell lines, missile defense that doesn't work, country less safe, environmentalism rolled back, civil rights under assault, etc. etc.) sets in and the bubble has to pop.

I'm just surprised that the president could make such an incredible run of it. What went wrong?

Lying has been a spectacularly successful strategy so far for this administration. I was shocked that the president should give a speech last Sunday saying directly that he was going to ask for 87 billion. On freerepublic.com one of the first reactions to this was that surely this was "Democratic propaganda" meant to topple the president. If the media doesn't focus on lies, and pretends that there really is a balanced debate, then it's easy to believe that the president was either himself misled or that the lie never took place. There has been a tremendous suspension of disbelief over the last couple of years.

Of course, lying is like creating an artificial bubble market. We can believe the lies as long as there are more liars or believers willing to follow in the wake of those that preceded them. Eventually, however, reality (no Osama bin Laden, the world now despises us, Iraq is a failure, Afghanistan is not under control, no jobs, few stem cell lines, missile defense that doesn't work, country less safe, environmentalism rolled back, civil rights under assault, etc. etc.) sets in and the bubble has to pop.

I'm just surprised that the president could make such an incredible run of it. What went wrong?

"Why Are We Ruled by These Liars?"

Well, there was a procedure called "impeachment" for the liar who ruled us previously.

In that procedure, all but 4 or 5 Democrats in the House voted not to have an impeachment trial for the liar. And every single Democrat in the Senate voted not to convict the liar (for lying to a grand jury).

In the middle of all that, the liar who was ruling us blew up a pharmaceutical factory, and claimed that the pharmaceutical factory was involved in manufacturing chemical weapons. This claim was promptly shown to be a load of cr@p.

Overall, the clear message to everyone involved was that it's not important for a president to tell the truth, even under oath.

Also, the Vice President at the time did not move up to the presidency, from which he almost certainly would have won the 2000 presidential election.

That's the history of why we are ruled by the people we're currently ruled by.

P.S. Both our current ruler and our former Vice President were invited (along with all other candidates who were on the ballot in enough states to win the presidency) to a debate with the title, "Ethics in Government." Neither our current ruler nor the former Vice President (nor Pat Buchanan nor Ralph Nader) chose to attend the debate. So it was pretty clear that none of those 4 men was especially concerned about Ethics in Government (at least if ethics in government might hurt their election chances).

September 1967? As much as I always harp on the importance of knowing history, I'm afraid I'm blanking on that date. What was it that happened then?

Thank you Mark Bahner for the knee jerk conservative reaction to almost every criticism levelled at the current resident of the White House- "Clinton did it!" Yes, Clinton lied about getting a blow job. I'm sure in your paranoid pantheon he will suffer in eternal damnation for this most terrible of sins against the American Nation, one which forever corrupted the character of our political process in such an unspeakable manner that it eclipsed Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald Reagan in their corruption in one fell swoop. This undying, interminable sin will forever exonerate incompetency, greed, or cronyism practiced by any current or future Republican occupant of the White House forever into eternity. Amen.

The media is reluctant to report the lying... To do so exposes the big lie they told us during the election about Bush being straight and honest. They bent over backwards ignoring his national guard "service" and virtually his entire business career in order to portray W as honest and Gore as a liar.

Frank, September, '67 (well, summer '67 to be more accurate) is when anti-vietnam war types began casting about for someone, anyone to run against LBJ. The first choice, of course, was Bobby Kennedy, who for obvious reasons thought it was too dangerous, which is what ultimately led, several months later, to Gene McCarthy running.

But my broader point is that liberals were waking up every day in September '67, knowing that LBJ was lying about Vietnam and jeopardizing the entire Great Society program as a result, with no one willing to challenge him, while today honest conservatives know that every thing they hold dear - fiscal responsibility, smaller government, nonintrusive governmental behavior, free trade, personal responsiblity, the whole litany - is being destroyed by the shallow, ill-informed faux conservative in the white house. I agree, btw, with lise's comment about mccain, who is the one member of the gop with the national security bona fides, the name recognition, and the personal dislike of george bush to mount a challenge, $200M or not....

Meanwhile, mark's comments have been pretty well ripped appropriately by non economist, but let's add: even if we concede your entire case, none of that has anything to do with why the lying liars who occupy the White House today get away with their lies....

Mark's writings should be collected to use as teaching materials in debate classes.

There's a word in Newspeak: doublethink.

Mark, why considerest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and not the heavy timber in thine own?

Mark's writing is further proof that the nutcase partisan variant on the right can't tell the difference between a blowjob and several hundred dead American soldiers.

Well, in fairness to Mark, Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" lie to the American people was -- although about what I think a trivial matter -- incredibly brazen.

But to be fair to our side, this post demonstrates an important difference: I think most of us on the left were pretty shocked at that lie, and as a result we don't really contest the accusation that Clinton was a "liar". Aside from a very, very few folks like Carlson, I don't see a similar reality-check occuring among conservatives.

Non economist writes, "Thank you Mark Bahner for the knee jerk conservative reaction..."

I ain't no stinkin' conservative. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that..." ;-)) I'm a liberal. A REAL liberal.

"Yes, Clinton lied about getting a blow job."

Yes, he lied under oath. Not just in his civil trial, but again in his grand jury testimony. (Thus demonstrating that only people without power are required to tell the truth under oath.)

By the way, do you mean that he told the truth about the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant...that it only made medicines? If so, when did he admit that the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant only made medicines? Or don't you care about a President telling the truth when he blows up a privately owned pharmaceutical plant, in a country with which we weren't even at war? (The questions in this paragraph are NOT rhetorical.)

Howard adds, "...even if we concede your entire case, none of that has anything to do with why the lying liars who occupy the White House today get away with their lies...."

They get away with their lies, because Republicans have decided that, if Democrats will vote to protect and keep liars--even under oath--in office, that there's no need for any Republican to care about truth, either. THAT'S why Republicans get away with it...because Democrats protected THEIR liar.

Raldolph Fritz finishes with, "Mark, why considerest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and not the heavy timber in thine own?"

I've got no timber in my eyes. I voted for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. (After foolishly supporting Bill Clinton in 1992.) Harry Browne DID attend the "Ethics in Government" debate, unlike Bush and Gore (and Nader and Buchanan).

P.S. Harry Browne also made the best point in the whole Ethics in Government debate...that there always were, and always will be, liars in government; the best way to deal with that problem is to give the government as little power as absolutely necessary, so their lies will make less difference.

If the Republicans sought to impeach & convict President Clinton regarding bombing the wrong factory, it would be worth considering.
The fact is, Clinton's lies about blow jobs were not germane to his job as commander in chief.
Americans know people lie about sex, so politicians lying about sex is like falling off a log. The whole M.L. scandal was a trap for Clinton, an attempt to smear him no matter how he answered, and a waste of my tax money.

Non economist writes, "Thank you Mark Bahner for the knee jerk conservative reaction..."

I ain't no stinkin' conservative. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that..." ;-)) I'm a liberal. A REAL liberal.

"Yes, Clinton lied about getting a blow job."

Yes, he lied under oath. Not just in his civil trial, but again in his grand jury testimony. (Thus demonstrating that only people without power are required to tell the truth under oath.)

By the way, do you mean that he told the truth about the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant...that it only made medicines? If so, when did he admit that the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant only made medicines? Or don't you care about a President telling the truth when he blows up a privately owned pharmaceutical plant, in a country with which we aren't even at war? (The questions in this paragraph are NOT rhetorical...though I do doubt you have the courage and honesty to answer them.)

Howard adds, "...even if we concede your entire case, none of that has anything to do with why the lying liars who occupy the White House today get away with their lies...."

They get away with their lies, because Republicans have decided that, if Democrats will vote to protect and keep liars--even under oath--in office, that there's no need for any Republican to care about truth, either. In other words, Democrats failed to get rid of THEIR liar, so no Republican feels any necessity to address lies.

Raldolph Fritz writes, "Mark, why considerest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and not the heavy timber in thine own?"

I've got no timber in my eyes. I voted for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. (After foolishly supporting Bill Clinton in 1992.) Harry Browne DID attend the "Ethics in Government" debate, unlike Bush and Gore (and Nader and Buchanan).

P.S. Harry Browne also made the best point in the whole Ethics in Government debate...that there always were and always will be liars in government; the best way to deal with that problem is to give the government as little power as absolutely possible, so their lies will make less difference.

Non economist writes, "Thank you Mark Bahner for the knee jerk conservative reaction..."

I ain't no stinkin' conservative. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that..." ;-)) I'm a liberal. A REAL liberal.

"Yes, Clinton lied about getting a blow job."

Yes, Clinton lied under oath. Not just in his civil trial, but again in his grand jury testimony. (Thus demonstrating that only people without power are required to tell the truth under oath.)

By the way, do you mean that he told the truth about the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant...that it only made medicines? If so, when did he admit that the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant only made medicines? Or don't you care about a President telling the truth when he blows up a privately owned pharmaceutical plant, in a country with which we aren't even at war? (The questions in this paragraph are NOT rhetorical...though I do doubt you have the courage and honesty to answer them.)

Howard adds, "...even if we concede your entire case, none of that has anything to do with why the lying liars who occupy the White House today get away with their lies...."

They get away with their lies, because Republicans have decided that, if Democrats will vote to protect and keep liars--even under oath--in office, that there's no need for any Republican to care about truth, either. In other words, Democrats failed to get rid of THEIR liar, so no Republican feels any necessity to address lies.

Raldolph Fritz writes, "Mark, why considerest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and not the heavy timber in thine own?"

I've got no timber in my eyes. I voted for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. (After foolishly supporting Bill Clinton in 1992.) Harry Browne DID attend the "Ethics in Government" debate, unlike Bush and Gore (and Nader and Buchanan).

P.S. Harry Browne also made the best point in the whole Ethics in Government debate...that there always were and always will be liars in government; the best way to deal with that problem is to give the government as little power as absolutely possible, so their lies will make less difference.

Non economist writes, "Thank you Mark Bahner for the knee jerk conservative reaction..."

I ain't no stinkin' conservative. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that..." ;-)) I'm a liberal. A REAL liberal.

"Yes, Clinton lied about getting a blow job."

Yes, Clinton lied under oath. Not just in his civil trial, but again in his grand jury testimony. (Thus demonstrating that only people without power are required to tell the truth under oath.)

By the way, do you mean that he told the truth about the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant...that it only made medicines? If so, when did he admit that the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant only made medicines? Or don't you care about a President telling the truth when he blows up a privately owned pharmaceutical plant, in a country with which we aren't even at war? (The questions in this paragraph are NOT rhetorical...though I do doubt you have the courage and honesty to answer them.)

Howard adds, "...even if we concede your entire case, none of that has anything to do with why the lying liars who occupy the White House today get away with their lies...."

They get away with their lies, because Republicans have decided that, if Democrats will vote to protect and keep liars--even under oath--in office, that there's no need for any Republican to care about truth, either. In other words, Democrats failed to get rid of THEIR liar, so no Republican feels any necessity to address lies.

Raldolph Fritz writes, "Mark, why considerest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and not the heavy timber in thine own?"

I've got no timber in my eyes. I voted for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. (After foolishly supporting Bill Clinton in 1992.) Harry Browne DID attend the "Ethics in Government" debate, unlike Bush and Gore (and Nader and Buchanan).

P.S. Harry Browne also made the best point in the whole Ethics in Government debate...that there always were and always will be liars in government; the best way to deal with that problem is to give the government as little power as absolutely possible, so their lies will make less difference.

Mark, on what basis can you possibly make such a silly claim? You really expect us to believe that Republicans, en masse, woke up and said that when 2/3 of America didn't think that Bill Clinton should be kicked out of office for misleading and false answers in a deposition in a civil suit, that meant that they didn't have to hold any president responsible for continuous lying about policy?

You can't really believe that, can you?

"Mark's writing is further proof that the nutcase partisan variant on the right can't tell the difference between a blowjob and several hundred dead American soldiers."

The question was, "Why are we ruled by these liars?" The answer is, "Because Democrats refused to get rid of THEIR liar, Bill Clinton." That failure to get rid of Bill Clinton is why G.W. Bush is in office, and Al Gore isn't. If Al Gore had been in office for the last 1.5 years of Bill Clinton's second term, Gore would have easily been re-elected in 2000.

P.S. And it's ludicrous to say that Bill Clinton ONLY lied--under oath--about sex. He NEVER told the truth about Al Shifa. And you Democrats didn't care whether he did or didn't. Even though that almost certainly meant the deaths of innocent people from lack of drugs. And then y'all have the nerve to attempt to claim some sort of moral superiority!