"No question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI is an impeachable offense." -- Bill Clinton, ARKANSAS GAZETTE, August 8, 1974, page 7-A.

Booo!
The unintended view of the Presidential motorcade (he's in the second car.)

It's not the sex, it's the lying, stupid! If Clinton had just told the truth (if he even knows HOW) in January in the Jones trial, there would have been a couple of days of embarrassing headlines, the trial would probably still have been dismissed, and he wouldn't be the lame-in-both-legs duck he is now, propping up an equally weak Russian premier. (I picture the two of them as an upside-down "Y" leaning on each other.)

I thought, too, of Wag the Dog when the bombs fell (and I wonder if the Sudan one wasn't wrong and hasty) but mostly I was grateful for the scandal. I think we needed a strong reaction to terrorists, but Weak Waffling Willie wouldn't have ordered one except to provide a distraction and to show he's strong. (Another lie.) Scott Ritter's resignation, on the heels of the Washington Post story of our appeasements to Saddam, only reinforces my belief. (The Sacramento Bee never reports this stuff or buries it on inside pages. They've been remarkably subdued the past two weeks, but they still have their agenda. For instance, I hear from someone who was there that there were protestors in Virginia with "Jail to the Chief" signs. Sure not reported in the Bee!)

After the speech, to state the opposition point of view from what I knew the pollsters would come up with, I sent a note "Shame on you!" to the White House (who don't follow their own privacy guidelines, by the way) and received this response:

   to:  The President
about:  Disgust

My first reaction, when he went into "I was wrong and it's all Ken Starr's fault", was to compare him to a pill addict character on General Hospital. The behavior is very similar, as is the denial, the lying, the evasions, the promises. And Hillary is the First Enabler. (I would, at least, have burned the ties!) The worry is that he will, like the character, get more and more irrational, and his finger is on the button. As someone pointed out today, "He can't control himself" (obviously) and he's in major spin right now.

Oooh, look at the delicious karma! As reported by Matt Drudge, and in the Arkansas Gazette:

The Candidate Clinton

"In an interview [ARKANSAS GAZETTE, 7/2/74], Clinton, 27, said, 'I had grave reservations about him [Mr. Nixon] going there to negotiate under the cloud that he's under now."

"'It doesn't help ... for the president to be weak at home. My thought is that, perhaps, the trip should have been delayed a few months until the matter is resolved.' Clinton said the Russians might think they could get 'a better deal because of our own domestic upheaval.'"

Congressional candidate Bill Clinton of Fayetteville said he thought President Nixon was having difficulty reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union on nuclear arms limitation partly because of the Watergate scandal.

"'How strong you are at the bargaining table tends to determine the terms you get in an agreement,' he said."

President Nixon met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in late June of 1974 as the final chapters of the Watergate scandal were unfolding.

"The summit meeting gave a fleeting impression of an active president engaged in the international arena, but nothing of substance was accomplished. Five weeks after returning to Washington, Nixon resigned in disgrace," Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES remembers.

"REPRESENTATIVE IS 'OUT OF STEP,' CLINTON CHARGES" was the headline in the newspaper on August 8, 1974.

In the wake of President Nixon's public admission that he had lied about his role in Watergate, Clinton, then a law professor at the University of Arkansas, said:

"I think it is plain that the president should resign and spare the country the agony of impeachment and removal proceedings."

"I think the country could be spared a lot of agony... if he'd go on and resign," Bill Clinton declared.

The ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT, two days earlier -- August 6, 1974, page 10-A -- quoted Bill Clinton again talking about the need for Nixon to leave office:

"Bill Clinton, Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, said, "There is nothing left to say. There's no point putting this country through an impeachment since [Nixon] isn't making any pretense of innocence now... This country has suffered so long."

I had various musings during the trip:
I listened to the NPR round table of feminists who were very disappointed in Hillary. They had at least hoped for a slap in the face. They said, get this, that Clinton was just acting like a man, but they couldn't fathom what made Hillary tick. No one of the Democrats on the panel would have acted like that, just swallowing (pardon the entendre) her humiliation.
I heard one caller to a talk show insist that Hillary and Bill each knows where all the bodies are buried and CAN't separate.
Our own DiFi is "disappointed." She's worried about her own credibility. Me, I think her credulity is in question.
I got a kick out of the Russian reporting of the Ejaculation Proclamation: Clinton admitted to "unseemly relations" and that he "deluded his fellow workers."
Another interviewee on the radio said that "after he hit 'but' everything else was no longer valid.
They were playing "Devil with a Blue Dress On" on one station. Or, "these boots were made for walking." ("You've been lying, when you should have been truthin', and you keep thinkin' that you'll never get caught.")
The Black Avenger (I like his show!) says Hillary is not abused, she is in it for the power.
I heard excerpts from David Fry's Clinton, an Oral History.
On Thursday I heard that Monica L. was purportedly mad that she wasn't mentioned except as "servicing" him: I say it's time she grew up. It's the old secretary falls in love with the boss story. I find I feel a little sorry for her, even though she set her cap at a married man. Obviously she's not very emotionally mature, and she certainly didn't get much guidance from her parents! If it had been one of my girls, I would have been talking myself deaf, not been supportive. Rich would have gone to buy a shotgun.
Then came the bombings. Clinton mentioned 4 reasons, and I figured a 5th was the need to look strong.
"The Commander in Heat".
I understand he was reading the Bible and David and Bathsheba. Yes, God forgave David, AFTER he suffered heinous punishment (losing his son, for instance.) Besides, his sin wasn't adultery, it was abuse of power, sending Bathsheba's husband to die. And, finally, all the penitential psalms express that David was truly sorry.
Susan Rhymer of the Baltimore Sun says to dump him and move on. Hillary can't dump his clothes out the window and change the locks, but WE CAN.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM enjoying this. I've despised the man for 6 years and can't believe what he's gotten away with. I can't comprehend Patricia Ireland and Barbara Boxer and all, whose partisanship shows. (I disliked Nixon, too, yes. I'm a non-partisan despiser, though Clinton has definitely won the prize.) The part I don't enjoy is the apathy and ignorance the polls are showing. I think, though, the checks and balances will turn out to work, if Clinton does anything harmfully irrational.