Bill or Barry -- who had the most signifigant 2nd term scandal(s)

[MDC 5,892]

Not a good analogy.

 

Why would a secretary have to stay late to fetch coffee for the important workers?

I'd rather be a secretary for the rest of my life than spend 5 minutes in your fat divorcee Welcher shoes.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

Do you get thrills from fishing in a barrel too?

Why go to the lake when the fish keep jumping in the barrel?

[jerryskids 5,206]

Am I the one doing backflips trying to say the Bush admin's prewar claims weren't lies because other people said Saddam was a bad guy?

No, but you are the one in this thread who started out calling his actions out and out lies, then backtracking to being either lies or really dumb or presenting info as more factual than it really was. So you've gotten smarter as the thread moved along.

 

Although the discussion about Congress's culpability didn't go well for you.

[MDC 5,892]

No, but you are the one in this thread who started out calling his actions out and out lies, then backtracking to being either lies or really dumb or presenting info as more factual than it really was. So you've gotten smarter as the thread moved along.

 

Although the discussion about Congress's culpability didn't go well for you.

Presenting info as fact when you know it isn't is lying. And I never said Congress bears no responsibility. Another terrific post jackass.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

[jerryskids 5,206]

Presenting info as fact when you know it isn't is lying. And I never said Congress bears no responsibility. Another terrific post jackass.

Now we are calling names. And you wonder why I don't extend these discussions with you.

 

Anyway, I stand by my initial post: you don't understand what a "lie" is. Here is an interesting opinion on the topic after some googling. Seems like a conservative site, although it isn't a glowing endorsement of Bush.

 

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, it’s important to remember that George W. Bush did not always lie about Iraq and the threat it posed. He did not sell the war simply by making stuff up about the presence of WMD or exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. That storyline is too easy. Bush and his allies did something far subtler—and more disturbing—and what they said was actually well within the canon of national security discourse, both on the left and the right. Here’s an excerpt from The Reactionary Mind:

Hovering about every discussion of war and peace are questions of life and death. Not the death of some or even many people, but, as Michael Walzer proposes in Arguing about War, the “moral as well as physical extinction” of an entire people. True, it is only rarely that a nation will find its “ongoingness”—its ability “to carry on, and also to improve on, a way of life handed down” from its ancestors—threatened. But at moments of what Walzer, following Winston Churchill, calls “supreme emergency,” a leader may have to commit the most obscene crimes in order to avert catastrophe. The deliberate murder of innocents, the use of torture: the measures taken will be as many and almost as terrible as the evils a nation hopes to thwart.

For obvious reasons, Walzer maintains that leaders should be wary of invoking the supreme emergency, that they must have real evidence before they start speaking Churchillese. But a casual reading of the history of national security suggests not only that the rules of evidence will be ignored in practice, but also that the notion of catastrophe encourages, even insists on, these rules being flouted. “In normal affairs,” Cardinal Richelieu declared at the dawn of the modern state system, “the administration of Justice requires authentic proofs; but it is not the same in affairs of state . . . . There, urgent conjecture must sometimes take the place of proof; the loss of the particular is not comparable with the salvation of the state.” As we ascend the ladder of threats, in other words, from petty crime to the destruction or loss of the state, we require less and less proof that each threat is real. The consequences of underestimating serious threats are so great, Richelieu suggests, that we may have no choice but to overestimate them. Three centuries later, Learned Hand invoked a version of this rule, claiming that “the gravity of the ‘evil’” should be “discounted by its improbability.” The graver the evil, the higher degree of improbability we demand in order not to worry about it. Or, to put the matter another way, if an evil is truly terrible but not very likely to occur, we may still take preemptive action against it.

Neither statement was meant to justify great crimes of state, but both suggest an inverse relationship between the magnitude of a danger and the requirements of facticity. Once a leader starts pondering the nation’s moral and physical extinction, he enters a world where the fantastic need not give way to the factual, where present benignity can seem like the merest prelude to future malignancy. So intertwined at this point are fear and reason of state that early modern theorists, less shy than we about such matters, happily admitted the first as a proxy for the second: a nation’s fear, they argued, could serve as a legitimate rationale for war, even a preventive one. “As long as reason is reason,” Francis Bacon wrote, “a just fear will be a just cause of a preventive war.” That’s a fairly good description of the logic animating the Cold War: fight them there—in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola—lest we must stop them here, at the Rio Grande, the Canadian border, on Main Street. It’s also a fairly good description of the logic animating the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union:

We are fighting on such distant fronts to protect our own homeland, to keep the war as far away as possible, and to forestall what would otherwise be the fate of the nation as a whole and what up to now only a few German cities have experienced or will have to experience. It is therefore better to hold a front 1,000 or if necessary 2,000 kilometers away from home than to have to hold a front on the borders of the Reich.

These are by no means ancient or academic formulations. While liberal critics claim that the Bush administration lied about or deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in order to justify going to war, the fact is that the administration and its allies were often disarmingly honest in their assessment of the threat, or at least honest about how they were going about assessing it. Trafficking in the future, they conjured the worst—“we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”—and left it to their audience to draw the most frightful conclusions.

In his 2003 state of the union address, one of his most important statements in the run-up to the war, Bush declared: “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.” Bush does not affirm the imminence of the threat; he implicitly disavows it, ducking behind the past, darting to the hypothetical, and arriving at a nightmarish, though entirely conjectured, future. He does not speak of “is” but of “if” and “could be.” These words are conditional (which is why Bush’s critics, insisting that he take his stand in the realm of fact or fiction, never could get a fix on him). He speaks in the tense of fear, where evidence and intuition, reason and speculation, combine to make the worst-case scenario seem as real as fact.

After the war had begun, the television journalist Diane Sawyer pressed Bush on the difference between the assumption, “stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction,” and the hypothetical possibility that Saddam “could move to acquire those weapons.” Bush replied: “So what’s the difference?” No offhand comment, this was Bush’s most articulate statement of the entire war, an artful parsing of a distinction that has little meaning in the context of national security.

Probably no one in or around the administration better understood the way national security blurs the line between the possible and the actual than Richard Perle. “How far Saddam’s gone on the nuclear weapons side I don’t think we really know,” Perle said on one occasion. “My guess is it’s further than we think. It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate . . . . And, unless you believe that we have uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.”

Like Bush, Perle neither lies nor exaggerates. Instead, he imagines and projects, and in the process reverses the normal rules of forensic responsibility. When someone recommends a difficult course of action on behalf of a better future, he invariably must defend himself against the skeptic, who insists that he prove his recommendation will produce the outcome he anticipates. But if someone recommends an equally difficult course of action to avert a hypothetical disaster, the burden of proof shifts to the skeptic. Suddenly she must defend her doubt against his belief, her preference for politics as usual against his politics of emergency. And that, I suspect, is why the Bush administration’s prewar mantra, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”—laughable in the context of an argument for, say, world peace—could seem surprisingly cogent in an argument for war. “Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions,” Burke noted, “than ruined by too confident a security.”

As Walzer suggests, an entire people can face annihilation. But the victims of genocide tend to be stateless or powerless, and the world has difficulty seeing or acknowledging their destruction, even when the evidence is undeniable. The citizens and subjects of great powers, on the other hand, rarely face the prospect of “moral as well as physical extinction.” (Walzer cites only two cases.) Yet their leaders seem to imagine that destruction with the greatest of ease.

 

http://coreyrobin.com/2013/03/17/george-w-bush-did-not-always-lie-about-iraq/

[MDC 5,892]

Now we are calling names. And you wonder why I don't extend these discussions with you.

l]

I took your initial passive aggressive b1tchiness to mean you weren't interested in a dialogue.

[GobbleDog 816]

Bill Clinton's was a joke. He got caught doing what JFK did every week. Nothing to see here.

 

A joke? I think it showed Bill Clinton's true character. Cheating on his wife and getting blow-jobs in the oval office is pathetic enough, but ball-face lying under oath to Congress... a felony.?. In the face of being disbarred and impeached? No sweat for Clinton. You have to wonder how far would he have gone to keep it quiet. Obviously wide open for extortion by other politians and countries. That's scary given the power of the Presidency. What other secrets was he keeping covered?

 

Yet many Americans think "Getting a blow-job as president is cool. No big deal" I don't think people realize how serious it was and how pathetic Clinton's true character is.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

 

A joke? I think it showed Bill Clinton's true character. Cheating on his wife and getting blow-jobs in the oval office is pathetic enough, but ball-face lying under oath to Congress... a felony.?. In the face of being disbarred and impeached? No sweat for Clinton. You have to wonder how far would he have gone to keep it quiet. Obviously wide open for extortion by other politians and countries. That's scary given the power of the Presidency. What other secrets was he keeping covered?

 

Yet many Americans think "Getting a blow-job as president is cool. No big deal" I don't think people realize how serious it was and how pathetic Clinton's true character is.

Nailed it.

[NewbieJr 540]

 

A joke? I think it showed Bill Clinton's true character. Cheating on his wife and getting blow-jobs in the oval office is pathetic enough, but ball-face lying under oath to Congress... a felony.?. In the face of being disbarred and impeached? No sweat for Clinton. You have to wonder how far would he have gone to keep it quiet. Obviously wide open for extortion by other politians and countries. That's scary given the power of the Presidency. What other secrets was he keeping covered?

 

Yet many Americans think "Getting a blow-job as president is cool. No big deal" I don't think people realize how serious it was and how pathetic Clinton's true character is.

A lot of people will lie and deny to the very end when it comes to their cheating. And I agree, the cheating/lying does show a character flaw. However, he was still an awesome President. As was JFK before him, who probably cheated 100 times while in office. I wouldn't care if the next President of the US gets his cack sucked every night, by a differentr skank every time, of his entire Presidency if he could end up being as good for the country as Clinton or JFK was. Loving the ladies is not real high on the list of things that I'd consider being detrimental to the country. hth

[drobeski 3,061]

 

A joke? I think it showed Bill Clinton's true character. Cheating on his wife and getting blow-jobs in the oval office is pathetic enough, but ball-face lying under oath to Congress... a felony.?. In the face of being disbarred and impeached? No sweat for Clinton. You have to wonder how far would he have gone to keep it quiet. Obviously wide open for extortion by other politians and countries. That's scary given the power of the Presidency. What other secrets was he keeping covered?

 

Yet many Americans think "Getting a blow-job as president is cool. No big deal" I don't think people realize how serious it was and how pathetic Clinton's true character is.

BINGO!!!!!!

[The Moz 69]

While the actual deed done by Clinton IMO wasn't that big of a deal. The lying about it on TV to the world WAS A BIG FOCKING DEAL. The Famous -- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" -- to having it proved he did -- to him trying to somehow say that a BJ wasn't sexual relations -- to him finally admitting it. Had Clinton just said it straight up it never would of been a big deal -- could anyone blame the guy -- I would too if I was married to Hillary -- though I might not revel in fatties quite as much.

[MDC 5,892]

While the actual deed done by Clinton IMO wasn't that big of a deal. The lying about it on TV to the world WAS A BIG FOCKING DEAL. The Famous -- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" -- to having it proved he did -- to him trying to somehow say that a BJ wasn't sexual relations -- to him finally admitting it. Had Clinton just said it straight up it never would of been a big deal -- could anyone blame the guy -- I would too if I was married to Hillary -- though I might not revel in fatties quite as much.

Where does lying us into a war that's killed 4,000+ troops and tens of thousands of civilians fall on the morality scale? Better or worse than perjury?

[NewbieJr 540]

Where does lying us into a war that's killed 4,000+ troops and tens of thousands of civilians fall on the morality scale? Better or worse than perjury?

Not as bad as a hummer.

[Mungwater 588]

Where does lying us into a war that's killed 4,000+ troops and tens of thousands of civilians fall on the morality scale? Better or worse than perjury?

I think the difference is that the lie was based on misinformation for the war, the perjury deal was one where he had direct knowledge.

[NewbieJr 540]

I think the difference is that the lie was based on misinformation for the war, the perjury deal was one where he had direct knowledge.

One vote for the BJ being worse.

[Mungwater 588]

One vote for the BJ being worse.

I didn't mention a BJ

[NewbieJr 540]

I didn't mention a BJ

I know. But that's what this is really all about. The BJ. Just like no one talks about Barry Bonds and brings up the perjury. They bring up the steroids.

[Mungwater 588]

I know. But that's what this is really all about. The BJ. Just like no one talks about Barry Bonds and brings up the perjury. They bring up the steroids.

I don't care about if someone cheats on their wives, that's their issue, but lie under oath? Whole bigger issue, what is so hard to understand about that?

[MDC 5,892]

I think the difference is that the lie was based on misinformation for the war, the perjury deal was one where he had direct knowledge.

Another difference is that one lie resulted in thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars down the sh1tter, and the other was about a BJ.

[Mungwater 588]

Another difference is that one lie resulted in thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars down the sh1tter, and the other was about a BJ.

Let's do you're at work, getting hundreds of emails saying the same thing, you act on it, turns out to be incorrect, do people label you as a liar? You go rob a newspaper boy, when he says you did it, just keep denying it.

 

You honestly don't see a difference?

[NewbieJr 540]

I don't care about if someone cheats on their wives, that's their issue, but lie under oath? Whole bigger issue, what is so hard to understand about that?

Because when people get caught cheating, they often try lying about it too. Human nature. Not condoning, simply not trying to make it more than it is simply because of a guy's party. Like you and the other hacks here.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

I don't care about if someone cheats on their wives, that's their issue, but lie under oath? Whole bigger issue, what is so hard to understand about that?

Leftty hacks have to keep on the BJ mantra cuz perjury seems so illegal.

[5-Points 2,731]

Because when people get caught cheating, they often try lying about it too. Human nature. Not condoning, simply not trying to make it more than it is simply because of a guy's party. Like you and the other hacks here.

Lying to your wife is one thing. Lying under oath is perjury. The POTUS should have more respect for the law than to commit perjury. Only a hack would refuse to acknowledge that.

[Mungwater 588]

Because when people get caught cheating, they often try lying about it too. Human nature. Not condoning, simply not trying to make it more than it is simply because of a guy's party. Like you and the other hacks here.

I don't have a party, just have a pure disdain for liars, always have

 

ETA: social lies are OK, "I loved the greenbean casserole.." is much different than "yeah, I deposited the check.."

[NotesFromUnderground 0]

Wow if you actually believe that statement than you are choosing to ignore all logic. While you may be able to say that about Benghazi to say that about the other 2 simply makes you look pretty ridiculous. The IRS allegation is no scandal huh - just mad up by Fox news? The AP and Eric Holder's cover up is just made up none sense huh? and could be a scandal other than Fox News anyway right? Maybe you should tell a growing number of democrat congressmen that who want Holder fired that so they don't make a mistake.

 

Is this English? It makes my head hurt.

[drobeski 3,061]

Where does lying us into a war that's killed 4,000+ troops and tens of thousands of civilians fall on the morality scale? Better or worse than perjury?

Better or worse than having 3000 American civilians murdered by letting bin laden walk when slick willy had him in the cross hairs ?

[5-Points 2,731]

Where does lying us into a war that's killed 4,000+ troops and tens of thousands of civilians fall on the morality scale? Better or worse than perjury?

BUSH

 

If your wife told you that some guy you know raped her and you killed him for it, only to find out afterward that he never raped her, would you blame your wife or yourself for the guy's death?

[MDC 5,892]

Let's do you're at work, getting hundreds of emails saying the same thing, you act on it, turns out to be incorrect, do people label you as a liar?

Let's see, several key members of the Bush admin belonged to a think tank that wrote white papers about using a Pearl Harbor type disaster to marshal support for an invasion of Iraq for years before 9/11. It's just a wild coincidence that Colin Powell's pre-war speech to the UN included a ton of bullsh1t such as the yellowcake uranium and mobile weapons lab claims. Powell presents this all as fact when some of this evidence was based on obvious forgeries and others had no legitimate source. Then Cheney et al say the war will be over in six weeks for around )30 billion, most of which will be paid back in oil revenues.

 

And you think this was all an accident?

 

Let's all focus on the important stuff though, like blowjobs.

[NewbieJr 540]

Let's see, several key members of the Bush admin belonged to a think tank that wrote white papers about using a Pearl Harbor type disaster to marshal support for an invasion of Iraq for years before 9/11. It's just a wild coincidence that Colin Powell's pre-war speech to the UN included a ton of bullsh1t such as the yellowcake uranium and mobile weapons lab claims. Powell presents this all as fact when some of this evidence was based on obvious forgeries and others had no legitimate source. Then Cheney et al say the war will be over in six weeks for around )30 billion, most of which will be paid back in oil revenues.

 

And you think this was all an accident?

 

Let's all focus on the important stuff though, like blowjobs.

It's not the blowjob, it's the lying about said blowjob, silly. Now THAT'S bad!!! Grrrrrrr

[OldMaid 1,838]

It's not the blowjob, it's the lying about said blowjob, silly. Now THAT'S bad!!! Grrrrrrr

Come on, man... Even as a liberal, I can admit that when he went on tv and so blantantly lied... that was huge. It's like he thought we were all stupid or something. His "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" semantics bullsh!t, was a slap in the face. Not saying I don't understand why he did it, though... which is what I think you're trying to argue.

[BunnysBastatrds 1,920]

How about we try this: One could argue that the blow job and the lies surronding the blow job are the reason Bush was POTUS.

[OldMaid 1,838]

How about we try this: One could argue that the blow job and the lies surronding the blow job are the reason Bush was POTUS.

I think only the people on the right cared about the blowjob. But the majority of Americans didn't appreciate being lied to.

[drobeski 3,061]

Better or worse than having 3000 American civilians murdered by letting bin laden walk when slick willy had him in the cross hairs ?

:bump:

[NewbieJr 540]

Come on, man... Even as a liberal, I can admit that when he went on tv and so blantantly lied... that was huge. It's like he thought we were all stupid or something. His "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" semantics bullsh!t, was a slap in the face. Not saying I don't understand why he did it, though... which is what I think you're trying to argue.

I think when you get caught cheating, you go through a lot of emotions. Embarrassment, shame, fear of repercussions, and the feelings of your spouse. And that's the average person. The embarrassment, shame, and repercussions are magnified tenfold when you're a public figure. Unfortunately, lying seems to be most cheater's first reaction.

I thought he was scummy when I first heard about him banging his intern. And even moreso when I found out he lied about it. But unlike a lot of people here, I didn't take it as a personal insult to me. It was still a character/relationship issue and not really any of my business.

[MDC 5,892]

:bump:

Trick question: everyone know Cheney planned 9/11.

[jerryskids 5,206]

 

A joke? I think it showed Bill Clinton's true character. Cheating on his wife and getting blow-jobs in the oval office is pathetic enough, but ball-face lying under oath to Congress... a felony.?. In the face of being disbarred and impeached? No sweat for Clinton. You have to wonder how far would he have gone to keep it quiet. Obviously wide open for extortion by other politians and countries. That's scary given the power of the Presidency. What other secrets was he keeping covered?

 

Yet many Americans think "Getting a blow-job as president is cool. No big deal" I don't think people realize how serious it was and how pathetic Clinton's true character is.

I've wondered about this. Mung or anyone in the know: could Clinton get a top security clearance after what he did?

[Voltaire 4,562]

BUSH

 

If your wife told you that some guy you know raped her and you killed him for it, only to find out afterward that he never raped her, would you blame your wife or yourself for the guy's death?

For some people, it wasn't 100% obvious beforehand that there was a very high chance it would be a total clusterfock if we invaded Iraq to sack Saddam.

[Mungwater 588]

I've wondered about this. Mung or anyone in the know: could Clinton get a top security clearance after what he did?

Top secret would be out of the question, even a basic secret would be hard to get. It shows you're vulnerable to be bought off. Military guys get thrown in jail for cheating, so it's a big one.

 

Cheating and a bad credit report is an instant way to lose a clearance.

[Recliner Pilot 61]

Having a POTUS who couldn't get basic security clearance prolly wouldn't be a good thing.