Scoundrels, Knaves, and Fools

A Clinton Classic

• "It was a Clinton classic. President Clinton stood before the National Palestinian Council and spoke of "two profoundly emotional experiences in less than 24 hours." One of those experiences was his meeting with the children of jailed Palestinian-Arab terrorists. The other experience was meeting Israelis, "some little children whose father had been killed in conflict with Palestinians." But the minister for public affairs at the Israeli Embassy, Avi Granot, said he could not confirm whether any such meeting between Mr. Clinton and Israeli children took place. Other Israeli government sources who would speak only on condition of anonymity said Mr. Clinton never met with the Israeli children. The White House and State Department did not return calls about whether such a meeting took place. There was no such event on the public schedule of the trip." (From the Dec. 25, 1998 issue of The Forward, reprinted in January, 1999 by the Wall Street Journal.) (January 1, 1999)
• National Public Radio on its Morning Sedition program January 4 reported that the latest polls show Sick Willie is The Most Admired Man in The Entire World--"even more than the Pope," host Cokie Roberts gushed excitedly. I repeat my call for legislation making Sick President for Life. (January 4, 1999)

• This morning's Wall Street Journal had an absolutely beautiful zinger in an editorial about the controversy over calling witnesses in the Upcoming Sick Willie Unpleasantness in the United State Senate. The Journal duly noted there's plenty of precedent in the Clinton Administration for trials without witnesses. . .for example, the 120 or so witnesses who took the Fifth, fled the country, or stonewalled through selective amnesia rather than testify before Congressional inquiries into Certain Unpleasantnesses Said to Involve Clintonistas during the past few years. (January 7, 1999)

• Pundits and Senators have been huffing and puffing all week about the dignity of the Senate and how the very idea of a person like Monica Lewinsky appearing on the Senate floor (to testify) was degrading and demeaning to the majesty of this hallowed institution. I'll bet money the Senate floor has seen far worse degradations than Monica Lewinsky in the forms of (1) special-interest legislation passed, (2) souls bought by and sold to lobbyists and other special pleaders in sordid cloakroom deals, (3) the mere presence of various Senators (submit your own nominations--I'll offer Ted Kennedy for starters) whose scumbaggery far surpassed any attributable to Monica, and (4) the near dead certainty that over the years more than one Senator has gotten laid right there on the seal of the United States of America and bragged about it the next day to his colleagues. I'm sorry, but this posturing just doesn't wash. And more than a few of them would hush up fast if Monica agreed to bring kneepads.

• Polls continue to show huge majorities of Americans foursquare behind Sick Willie. But for the nettlesome blot of the House impeachment and the blue cocktail dress and its pesky DNA test results, nothing would stand between Sick and greatness in the eyes of history.

Cosmic Questions I Wish The Big Talking Heads Were Asking

• Why are the Clintonistas so stridently opposed to having witnesses?

• Can anyone now dispute that James Carville is the philosophical leader of the Democratic Party? And that Larry Flynt is the party's spiritual chieftain?

• James Carville represents a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Republican Party. He can be as invaluable to the GOP as Newtie was to the Democrats, if only the Republicans are smart and clever enough to take advantage of his troglodytic presence. Bet money they will not be.

• Suppose for a moment you're Sick Willie and you're contemplating strategy for the Upcoming Minor Unpleasantness. You consider the known facts: 1) Huge majorities of Americans are foursquare in your corner. The battle for the hearts and minds of Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch is long ago won. They adore you; 2)You're dealing with enemies--mostly Republicans and conservatives--known for their cowardice, incompetence, and inability to connect with the people or feel their pain; 3) It's obvious the Senate is utterly desperate to be rid of this Unpleasantness, to make it go away, to avoid facing facts or evidence, and to avoid having to go on record about anything even remotely related to the topic; 4) Though a few media pricks continue to torment you, the mainstreamers--the big talking heads--have no stomach or interest in pursuing any of this aggressively, and never did. They're at bay and will remain there; 5) Everything is on your side: momentum, public opinion, the ineptness of the enemy. Your side is a hands-down winner in any contest of cunning, cleverness, or wit. Your lawyers are smarter than theirs; so are your handlers, your advisers, your staff, your limosine driver, cook, dog groomer, 'copter pilot. The contrast is laughable. It's like James Carville going against William Bennett. No contest. Jimbo wins in a romp!

• What should your strategy be? If I'm Sick, I'd do this. I'd go right on with the vitally important business of the American people, I'd utterly ignore the whole proceeding. Refuse to cooperate in even the tiniest way. I'd refuse every request for information. I'd refuse to honor any subpoenae. I'd refuse to answer any press conference or other questions. I wouldn't even send over my defense lawyers. I'd throw down the gauntlet and say: F--- you. What are they going to do? They'll all cut and run, that's what they'll do. And they'll be grateful to you for letting them end the charade!

• Bottom line is that Sick can get away with such a strategy. He's like Bob Knight in his imperviousness. Can we imagine, furthermore, how such a strategy would energize the Democratic Party and Clintonistas everywhere? At last, here's a man who'll stand for something! They'd be marching in the streets in his support. I hope Sick goes for it! (January 6, 1999)

• During his drooling rant on a recent edition of Meet The Press, James Carville said the investigation of his President "has cost the nation $100 million." Wow! That's $60 million Starr has spent in just the few minutes since the last uttering of the left's "$40 Million Mantra" died out in the public dialogue. Host Tim Russert did not challenge Carville on this claim. (January 13, 1999)

• Lefties are howling with glee now that Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, the spiritual leader of the national Democratic Party, has outted another antichrist, this one in the earthly disguise of Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. Lefties are accusing Barr of lying and denying and stonewalling and hypocrisy, of taking the Fifth Amendment. Behaving just like a Clintonista, in other words. Next thing we know, he'll flee the country rather than face questions.

• And if I may borrow a phrase from Lanny Davis, let's wait until the facts are in. Barr is entitled to his day in court. He should be allowed to insist that this is about nothing but sex, and to stonewall for a year or so and cost this great nation millions while doing it. We want to be fair, don't we?

• Bob Barr may be the antichrist, but he's OUR Antichrist.

• There's hushed talk that Sick and his handlers have unleashed the dreaded "scorched earth policy" so darkly promised by James Carville. Publisher Larry Flynt, that human-sized replicant of Jabba The Hutt, has brought Bob Livingston and Bob Barr to ground, and promises more--but exclusively Republican--pelts. I have a hunch that if it isn't taken quickly, the official team photo of the 106th Congress will show only several hundred Democratic members and beside them several hundred empty chairs formerly occupied by the now-extinct Republican jihadsters. The final scene will resemble the San Francisco nuclear winter street scene from Nevil Shute's famous novel, On the Beach--cars overturned, newspapers and trash blowing through empty streets, leafless trees, empty blown-out buildings, radioactive ash coating the landscape. . .but this time the camera pans across the Rockies, the plains. . .to the White House, in through a window and there, bathed in a golden glow of satisfaction, resplendent in a sperm-flecked tuxedo, will be Sick Willie, still President. . .with a big, fat and very specially flavored cigar clenched between his teeth, eyes closed, somebody's head bobbing in his lap, and Barney Frank crouched under the Presidential desk, waiting his turn at the nation's icon-god. . .President for Life!!

Jabba Gives Sam A Case of The Shakes

• I watched Sam Donaldson interview Larry Flynt January 13. Sam seemed quite uneasy about the Jabba The Huttlike presence pulsating across the table from him. The bug-eyed looks of exasperation on Sam's face made it clear he felt Flynt didn't belong in any gathering of respectable, refined people. I'm afraid I side with Larry. It's a free country. Considering the history of American journalism--chiefly a history of journalists being in bed with the rich and powerful in Washington and everywhere else--I support scum like Larry Flynt working to uncover these stories more than I do the big talking heads and slipstreamers working to cover them up. And besides, this is war, as Pat Buchanan said a decade ago. If we're going to rejoice every time a Clintonista is hoisted high, then we must face the unpleasantness of our guys being caught, too. (January 13, 1999)

Getting A Job Department

• Getting A Job Department: In his State of the Union address January 19, Sick Willie said that America was enjoying "the hum of prosperity. . ." Obviously, his mind was on other things.

Explaining The Unexplainable

• Chicago Tribune Columnist Steve Chapman took a shot this week at explaining the unexplainable--America's deep, abiding love for Sick Willie. He got parts of it right. For example, he says that Sick has outsmarted the Republicans time and time again, and successfully stolen the Republicans' major issues. He's beaten them twice at the polls, something no Democrat has done since Franklin Roosevelt. Chapman pays only passing acknowledgment to the idea that morality might have something to do with it. "But the best explanation," Chapman writes, "is that conservatives are running short on new ideas and no longer have the stomach to push some of their old ones. Impeachment is a substitute for challenging Clinton on fundamental issues of policy. . ." He notes the obvious, that Sick's opponents "clearly harbor a visceral hatred of Clinton, which existed long before Monica Lewinksy became famous. . ." That certainly describes my feelings, but mine arise from a long-held deep conviction that Bill Clinton is a person of low character, a shabby, sleazy, dishonest, morally depraved human being who daily disgraces our country and the sacred office of the presidency. Clinton's policy positions barely register in my assessment. His "character issue"--an exceedingly polite term for it--goes back over 30 years and is well-documented. I found Bill Clinton deeply offensive when he first emerged on the national scene in 1991-92, and those feelings have only intensified since. That a man like this occupies our country's highest office and is warmly embraced and supported by thundering majorities of Americans is not only incomprehensible, it induces deep despair. Bill Clinton's unprecedented success and popularity are confounding, for they turn upside down every means I have of understanding the world and reasoning my way through daily human experience. The Bill Clinton phenomenon--and it is nothing less that that--nullifies all the moral training I ever had, upends every notion I have of right and wrong. He is a complete walking, smirking veto of my understanding of how the world ought to be. The pundits run on interminably trying to explain it, but not one has yet offered the stark truth I believe faces us as a society: the polls are accurate and what they tell us is quite simple. They tell us that most Americans heartily endorse all that Bill Clinton is. The suggestion that people are "compartmentalizing" and so are able to take what otherwise would seem to be utterly inconsistent positions--saying he's a great President but they don't approve of his behavior, for example--is in my view self-delusional rubbish. I believe most Americans do heartily approve of Sick Willie's behavior, but aren't yet willing to admit it. The truth that deeply hurts is that those with my view of the world are history and irrelevant. I wrote after the 1992 election that the departure of George Bush, the last of the Cold Warriors, and the arrival of Bill Clinton marked a dividing line between not only generations but views of the universe and human experience, and that many of us--older folks, mostly--may as well face up to the reality that our world ended when Sick Willie took his first oath of office. I am an alien in a strange, incomprehensible land. The old days are gone. And I may as well be. (January 22, 1999)
• The Pope was in St. Louis today. Sick was there to schmooze with him. The Pope, with no visible sense of irony, urged America to aspire to a higher moral order. Imagine that. (January 26, 1999)

• What's wrong with the Pope, anyway? Why would he consent to be in the same room with Sick Willie?

• One of Chris Matthews' guests on Hardball tonight lamented that Monica Lewinsky "wasn't very helpful" in her testimony this week in the Senate's sham impeachment trial. "Whenever she had a chance," the man said sadly, "she favored the President" (in her testimony). Blaming Monica is all wrong. The problem is incompetent prosecutors and questioners on the Republican side. This ineptness was painfully obvious when Sick Willie's August grand jury testimony was released. There, the inquisitors let Sick get away with non-answers, evasions, and time-wasting delays embarrassingly obvious to even the most naive. This disgraceful indifference to aggressive questioning and pursuit of witnesses still plagues the GOP even now, in this farce's final days. (February 5, 1999)

• Democratic consultant and attorney Julian Epstein has been a regular on Chris Matthews' Hardball program for months. Last night he was there again, resolutely pounding away at the enemy, using "judgmental" like a mantra in explaining why conservatives and Republicans have lost, are losing, will forever lose every contest pitting them against Sick, Democrats, liberals, and anyone else in this great land of ours. "Judgmental, judgmental, judgmental," Julian kept saying. There has indeed been a vast movement (I hesitate to call it a vast left-wing conspiracy) in our country designed to demonize "being judgmental" as a grave offense against society.The idea is even taught to school children now. Julian may be exactly right. We may have sinned, we who make judgments. What a near-heavenly situation this is for lefties. Quite apart from what political belief we favor, both sides apparently go to secret training schools put on by the same company, for both parties' flacks surge onto talk show television and repeat the same words and phrases over and over. Not two percent of what we hear passing as "public dialogue" actually represents a reasoned thought process. A pretty pass we've come to, don't you think? And now, back to being judgmental, for somebody's got to stand for something.

• The Senate argued earlier this week about whether to hold its impeachment debate in public or private. Sixty-seven votes were needed to pry open the doors. A few Republicans joined almost all the Democrats to produce 59 votes. Evening talk shows were jammed with people arguing the point. This was a false issue, and irrelevant, too. The choice is a no-brainer: does the Senate disgrace itself in public, or disgrace itself behind closed doors? The vote doesn't matter, nor does where they have their non-debate. (February 10, 1999)

• Former White House chief-of-staff-but-forever-Clintonista Leon Panetta, like most Americans, has "closure" on the brain. Panetta used the word over and over and over tonight on MSNBC's Hardball program hosted by Chris Matthews. The American people, Panetta intoned, desperately need the closure that official censure would bring. I disagree. Censuring the president won't bring closure. Bill Clinton is the problem. He's what divides our country. Until he goes away there can be no closure.

• "We've come a long way from coats staying on to pants coming down. He's turned the Oval Office into a dirty joke." --Former Clinton aide David Gergen, appearing on Larry King Live and comparing the Current Unpleasantness to the days of Ronald Reagan's administration when anyone entering the Oval Office was required to wear a coat and tie.

Shutting 'em Up

• Here are three questions guaranteed to silence any Clintonista: 1) Would you leave him alone with your daughter? 2) Would you leave him alone with your wife? 3) Would you leave him alone with your mother?

• More advice to the GOP Department: Don't be suckered into participating in censure of the president. Tell the Democrats and the long suffering, angst-ridden American people that Republicans already have censured Sick Willie. They did so when the House impeached him. Democrats fought that every inch of the way. If they want to do something now, let them. But they can do it without Republican involvement. The GOP should say: We hear the mournful cries of the American people and we are heeding them. We're done. It's time to move on to the important business of the people.

• What ever became of the Clintonista predictions that if their idol was impeached the stock market would collapse, hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, the economy would go into the tank and government would be paralyzed?

• Bob Bennett played house pariah last night on Larry King Live. He was joined by Senator Orrin Hatch, Barbara Boxer of California and several other ardent defenders of Sick Willie. Near the end of the program, in rebuttal to Boxer, Bennett said, "I'll tell you this: our fathers would never have stood for this. Nor would our grandfathers have stood for this." Precisely. And boy do Clintonistas hate him for pointing it out!

• Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold was the only Democrat to break ranks when the Senate voted to call witnesses in its impeachment sham trial. Forty-four of 45 Democrats held the line in a 56-44 vote. But you will not hear pundits and the media accusing Democrats of partisanship. Instead you'll hear it described as a partisan vote by Republicans to call witnesses.

• Some have wondered at the astonishing loyalty shown Sick Willie by his cabinet officials, staff, and hangers-on during the Most Recent Unpleasantness. A quip from Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala in the February 11 Wall Street Journal offers a clue to understanding this fanatic devotion: "I never considered resigning. Our unfinished agenda is too important." (February 11, 1999)

• I'd swear I saw George Stephanopolous in the lobby of the downtown Hyatt hotel this morning. He must have been in town for some wacko leftwing kook shivaree, the little Clintonista prick. (February 17, 1999)

• A Democratic pollster and consultant said on TV the other night that "the American people have made a very sophisticated decision" in opposing Sick Willie's removal from office. To attribute sophistication to the public thought process is preposterous. If anything, the reaction is visceral, gut-level, crude. Americans love a rogue cocksman, a guy who gets all the poon he wants, thumbs his nose at authority figures, and outsmarts everybody. They love Sick Willie. The same process accounts for the Grape Kool-Aid Crowd's fierce devotion to Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight. Why won't they just admit it?

• Certain Things You Just Know Department: Hillary Clinton will be sworn in as President no later than January of 2009, after serving one six-year term as a U.S. Senator from the great state of New York.

Some Nominations From The Most Recent Unpleasantness

• Biggest Disappointment: Senators Byrd, Moynihan, Lieberman, for all their mighty and indignant huffing and puffing about what grave matters these were and then receding into partisan silence when it came time to vote.

• Biggest Idiot Appearing on Any Talk Show: Susan Estrich, the California law professor and ardent defender of Sick, who also managed (there's a clue in here, I suspect) the Dukakis Presidential Campaign in 1988.

• National Scold: Bill Bennett

• Most Utterly Faithful Flack: Lanny Davis, for what seemed to be literally thousands of talk show appearances repeating the same words over and over and over and over and over and over.

• Most Shameless Media Flack: Geraldo Rivera, Charles Grodin, or Joe Whatshisname from the New York Post.

• Clintonista Who Could Yell The Loudest: Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida

• Most Obnoxious Single Individual, Regardless of Cause: An unbreakable tie: David Kendall, Sick's attorney, and James Carville, spiritual leader of the National Democratic Party.

• Best Question Deflector: John Podesta, most recent White House chief of staff

There could be more categories and more nominees. May I have yours?

• One of the better bumper sticker slogans to emerge from The Most Recent Unpleasantness Said to Involve Sick Willie describes him as Our Nation's Fondling Father. Precisely.

• Whew! Well, Monica's had her national television special. Her marketing tour's underway, with a book, interviews, god knows what else. She's headed toward a $5 million payoff while the rest of us go about our duties of work, family, and friends for peanut wages. Maybe we can get back to the important business of the American people now, put this behind us. But what is there to get on to, or with? A yawning abyss, that's what.

• Juanita Broaddrick has emerged from the shadows of "Jane Doe No. 5" to charge in a nationally televised interview that Sick Willie raped her 21 years ago in an Arkansas hotel room when he was the state's attorney general. Sick's attorney, the supremely obnoxious David Kendall, issued this statement: "Any allegation that the president assaulted Ms. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that we are not going to comment." Careful students of Sick will examine this word for word with a microscope and notice that the statement does not deny that Sick raped anyone, only that he didn't commit assault, and that "more than 20 years ago" when the alleged unpleasantness is said to have occurred, there was no "Ms.Broaddrick" since her name was then Juanita Hickey. Doubless other subtleties can be unearthed. TV's talk show pundits agree this story probably has no "legs," meaning it will soon dry up and go away. Likely so, but with Sick the best we can ever hope for is to simply get things on the record, and Broaddrick's TV appearance adds another important piece to the case against this despicable man.

• "As a society, as a country, as a national family, we don't have to put up with this kind of abuse, and we will not." --Vice President Al Gore, presiding at a White House ceremony in early March to announce $223 million in federal grants to fight violence against women, and who is not known to have uttered a single critical word publicly about his boss's abuse of women. (March 11, 1999)

• George Stephanopoulos is out with a self-serving memoir about his faithful service to Sick Willie and his administration, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page seized on the occasion to comment about how former Clinton aides are coming forth to justify their loyalty and tell us how they knew all along that Sick really was a bit short of character. The Journal suggested that the Clinton presidency resembles the life of another famous man who escaped offical conviction. The president, the newspaper said, is free to play golf and run around the country giving speeches and say it's time to "put it behind us" but he dare not face the press "lest he be asked something he will have to lie about again. Bill Clinton has become our President O.J." Perfect.

• They're never going to let him be. New reports about Sick Willie are surfacing on the web. One says New Haven, Connecticut, police confirm that Sick had a sexual assault complaint filed against him in 1972 by a Yale coed. Another claims that a then 19-year-old British girl claims Sick raped her in the 1960s when he was over there on a Rhodes scholarship, and a retired British policeman is quoted saying, "We were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes scholar charged with rape. I filed a report with my superiors and that was the last I heard of it." Old news, of course. And made up, every last tittle and jot of it, by that vast right-wing conspiracy that seeks to destroy a good and decent man and his family. The statue of limitations (the one with the missing arms and nose) has expired, as it always seems to with this chap. And who can you believe on the web, anyway? Let's get on with our lives! (March 11, 1999)

• Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, co-hosts on ABC's This Week, showed a taped segment March 13 featuring Vice President Al Gore at a press conference saying, "During my years of service in the Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Cokie then noted that Gore was 21 years old and not a member of Congress when the Internet was actually created. Apparently Sick Willie's disease is contagious. (March 14, 1999)

Chinese Wondering Where to Send Deposits

• Sam and Cokie devoted another segment of their March 13 program to a report that Democrats were exploring ways to set up a fund to finance a possible Hillary Clinton campaign for the New York State Senate that would enable the money to be passed on to another Democrat should Hillary decide not to run. Columnist George Will, one of Sam and Cokie's guest panelists, immediately noted that he worried that the Chinese must be wondering where to send their deposits.

• ". . .in his Brookings (Institute) speech in September, Gore incredibly claimed that the light-rail system in Portland, Oregon (the Potemkin Village of the smart-growth movement) was attracting 40 percent of daily commuters. The actual number is less than four percent on a good day. . ." --Steven Hayward, writing in the Match 22, 1999, issue of National Review.)

• Sick told breathless CBS reporters March 31 that he doesn't consider his impeachment any "great badge of shame" and that, quite the contrary, the impeachment gave him "a chance to defend the Constitution." So, badge of shame becomes badge of honor in one easy spin. Gotta love that Sick Willie!

• You can turn on the TV any Sunday George Will is a panelist on ABC Television's This Week program and get a delightful nugget of insight plus an artful use of the English language matched by few in journalism or anyplace else. Today Will pierced another of Sick Willie's casually tossed public statements by noting that Sick "passed through several distinguished American universities and still believes the Second World War started in the Balkans." Will also offered the opinion that Sick "just isn't being serious about this (The Kosovo Unpleasantness) yet" but predicted events would soon force him to be. Co-host Sam Donaldson repeated his belief that the Vietnam War was immoral and a waste of American effort, a view only coincidentally held by Sick himself. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, normally so dignified and placid as to resemble inert matter, strongly criticized Administration policy and said ground troops would have to be used if we were serious about things. This is two times in a row Lugar has spoken out strongly about something (The Sick Willie Impeachment Unpleasantness was the other). What accounts for his new-found passion? (April 4, 1999)

• Over at CBS, Tim Russert's show featured Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stoutly defending every last bit of American strategy in the Balkans, and the Yugoslav UN ambassador denying every last accusation of killing, genocide, ethnic cleansing and any other unkind act his country is accused of perpetrating. It's all either made up by lying NATO lackeys, the Americans, or other dark enemies. Russert later broadcast a recent interview with baseball home run king Mark McGwire, who showed up for this important occasion wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a baseball cap bearing a Starbucks Coffee logo. Aside from that, McGwire showed how different he is from many in public life when he said he accepted that he was a role model for young people. McGwire was articulate, sincere, humble, and quite refreshing. If we could just get him to take off his hat indoors, he'd be close to perfect.

• Sick referred during a press conference to the "hundreds and hundreds of times I did not abuse my authority." This is ground-breaking logic for all future criminals: look at all the banks I didn't rob, the children I didn't molest--that's what should count, not the times I did. A bizarre man, that Sick.

• News Item: Sick and China's chief trade negotiator huddled all day yesterday without reaching agreement on China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Translation: Sick must be holding out for more money. (April 9, 1999)

• Tim Russert showed a film clip on Meet The Press April 11 from a press conference three weeks ago at which Sick was asked by a reporter if he, Sick, could assure the American people that no nuclear secrets had been stolen during his administration. Sick's reply--classically artful--was that no secrets had been stolen from nuclear laboratories. A careful student of Sickiana will note that Sick was not asked if secrets had been stolen from laboratories, but if secrets had been stolen. Russert then showed a graphic of a New York Times headline a couple of weeks after Sick's statement, in which the paper trumpeted a second "China Spy Case," this one involving secrets stolen from nuclear laboratories. Poor Sick. On the same show, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who achieved brief notoriety for rising on the Senate floor last winter to excoriate Sick's unseemly behavior, then lined up with the rest of his liberal pals to vote against impeachment, told Russert he had read the Cox Report on Chinese spying and campaign contributions and was "struck by the extent and aggressiveness of Chinese espionage in this country." Senator Fred Thompson noted in passing that Sick's close friend and Chinese money bagman, Johnny Chung, "has (finally) testified that the head of Chinese military intelligence was delivering money to the Clinton campaign." There was a time when revelations such as these would have prompted an immediate national scandal and accusations of treason. No more. Now we just yawn and shrug. (April 11, 1999)

• Newspaper editorial pages and television talk shops are full of people lamenting the silly mess in which the U.S. finds itself in Kosovo. What do we expect? Sick Willie is in over his head. He has no credibility in military matters or anything else. World leaders can't possibly take him seriously. He is not prepared or qualified by history, personal character, temperament, or experience to set the right example or provide leadership. He is a draft-dodger, a liar, and a whore. He's a preposterous buffoon biting his lower lip and stumbling around on the world stage. He is what 80 percent of the American people deserve. The rest of us don't. Wake me when this Snopesian grifter is gone. (April 6, 1999)

• Add Judge Susan W. Wright to that vast Wright-wing conspiracy out to destroy a good and decent man and his entire family. Judge Wright has found the contemptible Sick Willie in contempt of court for lying in his testimony in the Paula Jones Unpleasantness. Spin however desperately they will, Sick and his handlers and acolytes can't make this one go away, either. It will add to the already-present--so long as that blue dress shall live!--stain on Sick's legacy for the ages. One wonders why the judge could figure out he lied when Congress and the American people, aided by the redoubtable antichrist, Kenneth Starr, and billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars spent. . .could not. Judge Wright was one of Sick's law students once upon a time, meaning the probability is high that she has personally witnessed the distinguishing characteristics of the presidential prong. Strange world, friends. But now, back to the important business of the American people--getting that Luddite loon, Al Gore, elected president.

• The Unpleasantness in Kosovo is the first war in human history where one side apologizes after every bomb dropped or casualty inflicted.

• George Will noted on ABC's This Week program April 18 that for the first time in American history, neither the President nor any of his top civilian defense advisers has any military experience (though of course Sick has experience evading it). The show's co-host, Cokie Roberts, quickly pointed out that this surely must be true in the other NATO countries--England, France, you know. Will replied that the United States was different, that his point was valid, and that it was a factor in the Sick Administration's bungling of the conflict. I suspect George is correct. It's not their fault, of course, that they've made mistakes. (April 19, 1999)

• The April, 1999 issue of The American Spectator featured an article exploring the possibility that Newtie may make a political comeback now that he's been vindicated by an IRS investigation. I don't find that an appealing prospect. But of more interest to me was a brief analysis late in the article of American press coverage of Newtie's Travail. Author Bryan York was mean-spirited enough to do a computer search, for which he'll never be forgiven by lefties. Here's a bit of what he found. On the day after the Congressional Ethics Commitee received its report on the Newtie Allegations (January 18, 1997), the New York Times ran 11 stories on the Gingrich matter, four of them on its front page. Dan Rather railed that night on television about Gingrich's "ethics violations and tax problems being disclosed in detail." There were over 10,000 media references to Gingrich's troubles during the six months leading up to his reprimand by the Committee. Democrats, led by the rabid David Bonior who accused Gingrich of "seven years of tax fraud," seemed to be on TV nightly excoriating the antichrist Newtie. Gingrich later resigned as Speaker of the House and paid a $300,000 fine. (One can't help but notice that Bonior and The Party of James Carville and Larry Flynt haven't asked for a dime from Sick Willie.) The IRS responded to Democrat demands to investigate Gingrich and in early 1999 issued a 74-page report which completely exonerated the former Speaker by finding him guilty of nothing. York's computer search revealed that--strangest thing--the IRS report got minimal to no coverage and no Democrat has stepped forward to acknowledge even the tiniest mistake. The Washington Post, York reports, ran a brief story about the IRS verdict on page 5 (it used bold front-page headlines on page 1 when the committee report came out). The New York Times placed its IRS report story on page 23 and--to quote York--"the evening newscasts of CBS, NBC, and ABC--which together had devoted hours of coverage to the question of Gingrich's ethics--did not report the story at all. Not a word (italics mine)." None of this media bias is against the law, of course. I just wish they'd stop claiming they're neutral. Sorry for peeking.

• Mona Charen noted in a column this week that Sick's not only guilty of contempt of court, but contempt of country. Well, yes, but we need to get on with the really important business of the American people.

• I just mailed a modest but heartfelt contribution to the Linda Tripp Legal Defense Fund. And when it comes time to erect a statue in her honor in Heroes Plaza, I'll dig deep for more. It's the least I can do to show gratitude. (April 22, 1999)

• Young George Bush has about $940 billion in his campaign bank accounts as well as the hearty endorsement of everyone who is anyone. He has the nomination by acclamation if he wants it. Mark this down: Bush will be eventually revealed as a lightweight. He's not up to the office and when Al's attack dogs are done with him he'll regret being born. Just a hunch. (June 5, 1999)

• ". . .Gore told C-SPAN's Brian Lamb that his (Gore's) sister was the first Peace Corps volunteer. Less credulous than (CNN's) Wolf Blitzer, Lamb asked Gore to repeat his assertion--and he did. Not only was it not true, as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund pointed out, but Gore had earlier attended a White House state dinner for Ghanian strongman Jerry Rawlins at which the real first Peace Corps volunteer, Thomas Scanlon, was honored." --Grover Norquist, writing in the July, 1999, issue of The American Spectator.

Chris Has Tape And It Debunks Sick's Touching Tale

• Sick, in a mid-July press conference, told eager reporters of a warm memory involving JFK Jr. Sick said he invited JFK Jr. back to the White House in the early 1990s for a task force meeting, and at its conclusion invited young Kennedy over to the Oral Office so he, JFK Jr., could again see the desk under which he played when daddy was Cocksman-in-Chief, see the residence, the bedrooms, the rest of it. Sick said it was the first time RFK Jr. had been back to the White House since his daddy died. Sick went to considerable length to make this point and to make it clear by implication that he, Sick, was a wonderfully sensitive guy for having the depth of feeling and caring to have given young Kennedy this opportunity to revisit his past, to see and touch it, to perhaps come to terms with it. It was touching. Sick himself was moved by the mere telling of it--he used the familiar, soft, low gravelly voice, the lower lip biting, a tug-o'-the-forelock. We may be sure the reporters were moved, too. But none of them researched any of it. Then on the evening of July 20 on CNBC's Hardball program, host Chris Matthews played a video of an interview he'd conducted about three years ago with young RFK Jr., in which they discussed the time in the 1970s when Richard Nixon invited Jackie Kennedy, young RFK Jr., and his sister, Caroline, to the White House for dinner. The Kennedys accepted, had a wonderful evening (by their own telling of it), and Nixon himself showed RFK into the (then) Oval Office, showed him around. . .RFK Jr. told Matthews how much he'd enjoyed the chance to see the desk again, and all the rest of it. This episode, according to Chris, was reported in his mid-1990s book about the Kennedy-Nixon relationship and this book, Chris said, is on Sick's bookshelf in the White House. And so Sick's lies continue. This is one sick puppy, friends. Meantime, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Larry King, CNN, and the rest of the big talking heads completely ignored this story. (July 22, 1999)

Bumper Sticker Industry's Booming

• Honk If You've Had Sex With the President. . . .If His Private Life Doesn't Matter, Let Him Date Your Daughter. . .Save The President--Legalize Perjury. . .Clinton: Our Nation's Fondling Father.

• George W. Bush's past life and character are now officially on the table. The Washington Post kicked off its in-depth series on this topic recently and the writer is already make the talk-show rounds. I'm confused. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of Americans have already decided--and spent the last several years telling the rest of us--that character and past life don't matter when they're Sick's. Why does the Washington Post now say they do matter when they're G. W. Bush's? (July 30, 1999)

• Judge Susan Webber Wright, a former law student of Sick's, has fined Sick 90 grand for lying. It's important--and it's about the only consolation we can hope for--to have the historical record nailed down, and Judge Wright's ruling has helped do that. But I most enjoyed the last line of the Associated Press story about the fine: "Clinton admitted no wrongdoing." Good! President for Life, I say.

A-Team Swings Back Onto TV Circuit

• Sick's defense team is back on the TV talk shows. Geraldo had Lanny Davis, Julian Epstein and another Clintonista on the other night defending Sick and Hillary's marriage. Apparently this is the latest target of the vast right-wing conspiracy. They had an easy time of it, since there was only one conservative on the show--though an exceedingly comely one--Ann Coulter of Human Events magazine. Geraldo had her up there with him, strategically posted on a high sctool so he could check out her crotch as the show roared on. I always enjoy Lanny and Julian, whose capacities for denial know literally no bounds.

A Nickname For The Ages

• An appropriate new sobriquet has been draped around Sick's neck by the Westchester County Times, the local newspaper in Chappaqua, New York, where the president and his bride are said to be establishing their home once a new president takes office. Times columnist Pope Brock, one of those rare individuals willing to call a thing what it is, refers to Sick as The First Predator. Priceless! (October 10, 1999)

Spiritual Leader Flynt's Work Said To Please Sick

• Sick has nominated world-class dirtbag Carol Moseley Braun to be ambassador to New Zealand and Jesse Helms is threatening to block the nomination. . .and Larry Flynt, spiritual head of the Democratic Partry, is said to be boasting that he has 18 separate investigations into Republican private lives underway, that G.W. Bush is one of his targets, and that Sick himself is privately said to be most pleased with Flynt's courageous work.

Stunner: Democrat Opposed to Partial Birth Abortions

• A self-admitted Democrat stood up in Congress yesterday in debate about proposed legislation banning partial birth abortions and told her colleagues this was part of a hidden agenda to ban all abortions, a right that millions and millions of Americans "would never give up voluntarily," and that to pass such legislation would put the Congress on the dreaded "slippery slope". . .toward God only knows what evil and abomination. I restlessly scanned the news and talk shows last night looking for guests hauled in to mock the slippery slope argument and ridicule the extreme wacko left for its obviously hysterical, groundless fears. But alas, not a single one could be found. I imagine the national screams of outrage and excoriation will erupt on this weekend's more important forums. (October 22, 1999)

• ". . .in the 40 years I've watched politics I have never seen the depth of animosity the Congress has for this president. . ." --Presidential scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution, following the Senate's defeat of the comprehensive test-ban treaty.(October 25, 1999)

• I don't know if I could vote for Pat Buchanan, but you've got to love the hell he raises. His announcement Oct. 25 that he's leaving the Republican Party and joining the Reform Party sent his critics ballistic. Buchanan is the best wordsmith of the whole sorry lot of candidates. He can make a speech sing and sting and he was at the top of his game Monday. You get the feeling he strongly believes in things, unlike the others who seem willing to say anything and not believe it. Evidence of how much alarm he's causing came last night on Chris Matthews' Hardball program on CNBC. Rich Bond, a present or former national Republican Party pooh-bah, enthusiastically trashed Pat, calling him a bigot, a hater, an anti-Semite, a racist, a crackpot. And that was just for starters. Several other Republican guests did the same. The frenzy in their voices betrays them. What they see but dare not admit is this: Pat getting between 10 and 20 percent of the vote and thus getting Al Gore elected. The Democrats, meanwhile, have to be ecstatic. They'll lie low, keep their mouths shut till it's time to trash Bush. Then they'll wheel out their big guns, Carville, Flynt & Co., LLP, and the carnage will begin. They'll have help from their enemy. Scenes from Network run through my mind. . .of the big confab late at night, with Robert Duvall and his lackeys in the board room. I see a bunch of Republican bigshots gathering somewhere secretly, too, during the next 8-10 months. Finally someone (Duvall did it in the movie) will ask the question: What are we gonna do about him? Silence. Finally someone says: I guess we're gonna have to kill him (Buchanan). Far-fetched? I think not. The Republicans have their lives, their non-sacred honor, everything staked on getting Bush elected. Sooner or later, someone has to suggest a snuff of Pat if polls show he's going to get 10-20 percent.

• Meanwhile, columnist Robert Novak, often thought of as conservative, ridiculed the GOP this week, saying the party rolled over dead again in last week's budget non-discussions with Sick Willie. Novak noted that the two parties agreed to spend every penny of the $38 billion budget surplus not committed to Social Security, and so there is not one penny left for the tax cuts the GOP has made such incessant noise about for years. Novak says the Republicans no longer stand for saving money, cutting spending or cutting taxes, or much of anything else. Just a few pages away in the Indianapolis Star, Buchanan was making the same argument at his Monday press conference. In typically pungent Buchanan phrasing, he charged that the two parties of merely "the left wing and the right wing of the same bird of prey." I prefer to think of them as two pinstripe-suited criminal gangs fighting for control of the national trough, sharing far more in their rapaciousness and self-interest than they have in common with Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch. George Wallace was right: not a dime's worth of difference between 'em. (October 27, 1999)

• Chris Matthews was yapping last night on his Hardball program about how the American people are really concerned about character in the upcoming 2000 election. How can he say that when we've spent the last seven years of the current decade in full-throated support of Sick Willie and polls prove it? Chris is wrong: the American people have already ruled that character isn't important. (November 16, 1999)

• Is anybody in Congress working on post-Sick legislation planning? Somebody's got to be putting together a bill to compensate the nation's dry-cleaning industry for the falloff in semen stain removal orders once Sick leaves office. Let's get busy on it!

• Could someone tell me what that despicable, loathsome degenerate of a president, Sick Willie, is doing grief-mongering out in Worcester at the funeral of six firemen? And why the families and friends of the deceased would allow the occasion to be desecrated by his presence? Just wondering.

• I mailed a small but heartfelt contribution today to Alan Keyes's presidential campaign. Of all the sorry lot of them, Keyes seems the most outspoken against the Sick and the Clintonistas and all they represent.And he's the only one among them who seems to realize there is a moral foundation to the American enterprise and that it is under relentless attack. This is the first political candidate contribution of my lifetime.

Still Lyin' After All These Years

• John McCaslin of the Washington Times quotes Sick at a recent private fundraiser: "Now you know I once had a lifetime membership in the NRA. I've even got my jacket there. I'm sure they revoked it somewhere now." McCaslin then quotes NRA executive Wayne LaPierre Jr.: "He never had a lifetime membership, he never had a jacket. He made it up." (Reported in the "For the Record" column in the Dec. 6, 1999 issue of National Review.)

Trial Balloon Department

• Clintonistas are letting it leak out that Sick is contemplating asking taxpayers to cover his millions of dollars of legal expenses incurred in evading The Most Recent Unpleasantnesses. If the country's snoozing, he'll go for it. If not, he'll deny it and back off. It's worth a run up the pole, certainly, if you're Sick.

• During a conversation on ABC's This Week about possible terrorism in the U.S. associated with Y2K, columnist George Will reminded Americans that the threat of terrorism is something the Israelis live with daily. He said it was "good for us" to be reminded of this. Host Cokie Roberts grimaced, and added, "Except that it's a little upsetting." There can't be many crimes greater than upsetting a liberal. (December 26, 1999)

Judgmentalism Rears Its Ugly Head

• USA Today has done some digging and reported this week that the U.S. government has granted top secret security clearances to numerous convicted felons, including murderers, child molesters, alcoholics and others falling a bit short of (now prehistoric) community standards. A government spokesman told the newspaper that it didn't want to be judgmental of anyone's past behavior in granting the clearances. So what's the big deal? And why would anyone be surprised, given the example of the Sick Administration, the most ethical administration in the history of this great nation? Let's cut the negativity and get on with our lives. (December 28,1999)

Proof The World Is Upside Down Department

• Sick Willie and the Clintonistas walk free while Linda Tripp faces the full, hostile force of the law in a Maryland courtroom.

• USA Today reported the week of December 13-17 that while 63 percent of Americans opposed Sick's impeachment last year, 50 percent now agree he should have been, and 42 percent now say the Senate should have finished things off with a vote to impeach (versus 29 percent a year ago). If true, not good news for the Clintonistas, who've been counting on a massive public punishment of the GOP in next year's elections for leading the impeachment efforts. More likely the shift in opinion reflects nothing more than the absence, now that the battle has been won, of Sick's spinners and dirt-diggers on the nightly television talk shows.

• More ugly rumors circulated at year-end about Al Gore's strange difficulty with the truth. According to one, Gore in a November interview (published in a December issue) told Time magazine that he was responsible for the enactment of legislation creating the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. Negativist troublemakers, however, researched this and learned that Gore had not yet been elected to Congress in 1974 or 1975 when the legislation was passed. One would expect that a man of even modest cleverness would lie about something not easily verifiable. Gore can't even do that. He must be intent on becoming an even greater president that his mentor and idol, Sick Willie. (December 31, 1999)

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