. . . or the late Christopher Hitchens who I liked to refer to as 'our modern-day' H.L. Mencken. . .
(from 1999's No One Left To Lie To; The Values of the Worst Family by Christopher Hitchens where he is quoting his contribution to the Los Angeles Times in January of 1998)
Montesquieu remarked that if a great city or a great state should fall as the result of a apparent "accident," then there would be a general reason why it required only an accident to make it fall. This may appear to be a tautology, but it actually holds up very well as a means of analyzing what we lazily refer to as a "sex scandal."
If a rust-free zipper were enough on its own to cripple a politician, then quite clearly Bill Clinton would be remembered, if at all, as a mediocre Governor of the Great State of Arkansas. It is therefore silly to describe the present unseemly furor as a prurient outburst over one man's apparently self-destructive sexual compulsions.
Until recently, this same man was fairly successfully fighting a delaying action against two long-standing complaints. The first was that he had imported unsavory practitioners like the disgraced Webster Hubbell. The second was that he viewed stray women employees as spoils along the trail. . .
. . . Had Clinton begun by saying: "Yes, I did love Gennifer, but that's my business," many of us would have rejoiced and defended him. Instead, he disowned and insulted her and said he'd been innocent of that adultery, and treated the voters as if they were saps. Having apparently put Ms. Lewinsky into the quick-fix world of Jordan and Morris, he is in no position to claim that it's a private emotional matter, and has no right to confuse his business with that of the country's. Which is why he has a scandal on "his" hands, and is also why we need feel no pang when he falsely claims that the press and public are wasting his valuable time, when the truth is exactly the other way about."
The Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories have never been convincingly refuted.
Ted Kennedy's episode with Mary Jo Kopechne was never satisfactorily explained.
People actually praised Richard Nixon upon his death in spite of his suspicions, grudges, lies, deceit, vulgarity, mean-spiritedness and paranoia.
Mother Theresa is internationally revered even though her positions were ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms.
Ronald Reagan is viewed as a hero even though he single-handedly sought to destroy the credibility of the United Nations,
spat in the face of international law, and brought misery and suffering
to the oppressed working class across the world.
George H. W. Bush is deemed an innocent incompetent notwithstanding his incomplete triumph in the first Gulf War or the broken promise ("read my lips: no new taxes") which came to embody his Republican Party's unwavering commitment to perpetual tax cuts and staggering debt. Instead, Poppy's legacy can be summed up in three words he introduced to enable Republicans and their conservative amen corner to brush off charges of their own corruption and law-breaking: "criminalization of politics." From Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge and his son's regime of detainee torture, 41's criminalizing politics defense has been part of the GOP scandal playbook ever since.
The events of 9-11-2001 have never been fully investigated to the point that the 9-11 Commission's conclusions appear to be a coverup.
Barack Obama ran for president of the U.S. on the premise of change but has, in reality, changed very little of what the prior administration hath wrought.
(from http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/19/20582863-mozart-and-french-cars-what-we-know-about-the-popes-likes-and-why-it-matters?lite)
". . . Pope Francis took a selfie with youths from the Italian Diocese of Piacenza and Bobbio inside St. Peter's Basilica in August.
— Selfies. Benedict XVI started the official Vatican Twitter account, @pontifex, and Francis makes use of it almost daily. (Why not? He already has more than a billion followers.)
But the new pope is just as much an Instagram guy. In August, a group of 500 young people was visiting the Vatican from a diocese in Italy. He called them “bearers of hope,” and then mugged for the camera. Behold, the papal selfie. . ."
(from http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/49470)
". . . Most of those who hold public office are drunk with the intoxication of power.
Republicans, we are learning more and more, are led by a Speaker of the House who is not only drunk from power but also, based on his actions and the smell that accompanies him, is blasted from the effects of too much booze.
Speaker John Boehner‘s severely affected mental state comes from his drinking and increases his inability to deal with his failures as leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and as the man that Americans blame most often for the government shutdown that is dragging his party into political oblivion.
Bob Ney, Boehner’s one time Ohio GOP colleague who went to prison for his part in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, is one of the few Republicans willing to publicly discusses Boehner’s drinking.
Ney calls Boehner “a chain-smoking, relentless wine drinker more interested in the high-life — women, cigarettes, fun and alcohol.” The Speaker, Ney says, “golfed, drank constantly, and took the easy way legislatively.”
Ney’s criticism might be excused as the bitter ramblings of a politician caught in his own vices, but other Republicans also say publicly and privately that Boehner is a lightweight who drinks too much.
Former Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a talk show host, says “so many Republicans tell me this is a guy that is not the hardest worker in the world. After 5 o’clock, 6 o’cock at night, he is disengaged at best. You can see him around town…you can see him at bars.”
Boehner is a regular at The Capitol Hill Club, a GOP club where members of Congress often get drunk in the basement bar.
“Is John Boehner a drunk? Of course he is,” a House GOP aide says his boss grumbled to him recently. “He’s a boozer.”
When Boehner became Speaker of the House in 2011, more than a few Republicans shook their head and wondered why. Some speculated on just how long it would be before their new Speaker got caught drunk in public.
Ney, in his book: “Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men of Capitol Hill,” wrote that Boehner broke promises to him, including one to take care of his Ohio colleague if he would resign from Congress during the Abramoff affair.
In 2006, Boehner, then House Majority Leader, called Ney to his office and said to the embattled Congressman:
If you resign the next day, I will personally guarantee you a job comparable to what you are making, and raise legal defense money for you that should bury all this Justice Department problem for you.
Ney says he took the advice and quit and Boehner walked away from him and did nothing.
Unlike Boehner, Ney admits being a drunk. In his book, Ney writes:
After a night of drinking, I concluded that it was better for my children financially if I were to die before going broke. My problem with alcohol became an alcohol problem on steroids from 2005 to 2006, escalating into blackouts, anger, depression, extreme sadness. You name it. I experienced it.
Ney says he took his last drink on Sept. 13, 2006. Like many in recovery, he deals with his dependance on alcohol by being honest about himself and others around him.
As a fellow recovering alcoholic who has been sober since June 7, 1994, I can recognize what Ney is going through and also believe his stories about Boehner and the drinking problem of the Speaker of the House.
My friends and contacts on Capitol Hill from my days as a Congressional staff member (press secretary, chief of staff and committee staffer) from 1981-87 and a later stint from 1987-1992 as Vice President of Political Programs for the National Association of Realtors, tell me that Boehner’s bouts with alcohol abuse are well known around Capitol Hill and the subject of much concern.
On December 20th of last year, Boehner stood before Congress, after his Republican colleagues defeated his “Plan B” for avoiding a fiscal cliff and said: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
More than a few of the House members in the chamber know the words that Boehner spoke. They comprise the Serenity Prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A week later, after voting for a bill that brought even more criticism from the conservative wing of the GOP, Boehner spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby, walked up and jabbed a finger at the Democratic Leader, and said “go fuck yourself!”
Republicans with Boehner said he reeked of alcohol at the time.
It’s one thing to be drunk with power. It’s even worse to be a drunk who abuses power. . ."
I don't know John McCain personally. Honestly, he's not exactly a personal hero to me. I wouldn't vote for him for president. As time goes on though, I'm thinking maybe . . . NAHH!!! With time however, I am seeing what I believe to be a thoughtful, principled and conscientious public servant, a decent human being. . . and man with a sense of humor too.
(from www.wikipedia.com)
". . . John McCain's early military career began when he was commissioned an ensign and started two and a half years of training at Pensacola to become a naval aviator. . . His combat duty began when he was 30 years old, in mid-1967, when Forrestal was assigned to a bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, during the Vietnam War. . . John McCain's capture and subsequent imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg ejecting from the aircraft, and nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake. Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. McCain was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, beating and interrogating him to get information; he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral. His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of major newspapers.
McCain spent six weeks in the hospital while receiving marginal care. By then having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi[39] in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years. . .
(Later, after pursuing his political ambitions). . . McCain developed a reputation for independence during the 1990s. He took pride in challenging party leadership and establishment forces, becoming difficult to categorize politically. . ."
The Washington Post wrote that an NBC-WSJ showed that seven in
10 people agreed with the statement that Republicans are “putting their
own political agenda ahead of what is good for the country”. At the other end, only
27 percent said that the GOP is “demonstrating strong leadership
and standing up for what they believe in.”
House Republicans repeatedly said that their efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act were in response to the wishes of the American people.
WHAT American People???? I shouted at the radio or television every time I heard it.
Why didn't our dear friends in the press, who daily bring us the mealy-mouths and pasty faces of these cartoonish "public servants", ASK THIS QUESTION???
I think the outcome of this debacle answers MY question.
