You give Clinton too much to credit him with something as courageous as a drive-by shooting. Here in LA, anyway, a drive by involves loading up the guys in a car, going into hostile territory, and shooting at your actual enemies, who are normally armed. Clinton preferred sending cruise missiles from far away into civilian pharmaceutical factories in third-world countries.

To wit, your dismissing of the argument put forth by the Energy Information Administration that opening up the OCS to drilling would have a negligible impact on gasoline prices. Your sole response was “don’t believe the bureaucrats, believe the oil companies instead,” while ignoring the fact that the oil companies have a vested interest in expanding drilling, while the geologists at the Department of Energy don’t.

Yet you dismiss them withut any factual basis to do so, relying solely on your confirmation bias.

Sorry, but that’s not what I insist on. I insist on documentation from a reliable, independent source. Your routinely use sources like Brent Bozell, Newsmax and Newsbusters, all of which have an ideological bent.

I’m not in the habit of doing that. I try to find independent sources and vet them. As for avoding discussions you can’t win, spare me your faux outrage. All too often, your response to a factual, documented statement I bring up is to call me pathetic or stupid. You’re the one usually avoiding a serious discussion.

Were those Clinton’s EXACT words? I can’t be absolutely sure, but they are pretty close and represent his intent and are backed up by his inactions.

I was trying to remember the context and think that it may have been related to Saddam Hussein. For instance, “I asked myself if I could go another day without killing him.” I even remember HOW Clinton said it–a flippant comment with a laugh.

But, no matter what or how it was said, Clinton said it many times through actions, or should I say his inactions, in dealing with problems that might create a disturbance in The Force.

He was in office for eight years while he left it up to a toothless U.N. to deal with Hussein–except for his drive-by shooting to send twenty-three Tomahawk missiles into people’s home in Baghdad as retribution for Hussein’s attempt to assassinate the former President Bush. The only thing that surprises me is that he didn’t give Saddam Hussein one of his last minute pardons.

The problem isn’t that I don’t remember things well. If anything, it’s that I remember more than most people, even the minutia that takes time (not worth it) to convince people like you.

Of course, I see your strategy, much like that of Randy Paul. Keep insisting on documentation suitable only to you, or it must be false and entitles you to attack the person who reveals it.

As I told Randy and will tell you, it’s a cop-out to avoid a discussion that you can’t win and an attempt to deflect the argument against the commenter. Surely, you can do better than that.

>Stu, I’ll not be voting for either of
>them. Obama is an empty suit with
>zero chance of being capable of leading
>this country and McCain is far from my
>cup-0-tea. I keep threatning to vote for
>reg… maybe I will…

Well, I’m voting third party as always, but neither of the candidates is an empty suit. If you’d been in CA for the Gray Davis-Arnold Schwartzenegger show, you’d know from empty suits.

When did Reg announce his candidacy? Reg, have you always been fastidiously faithful? Are you kind to animals? Do you tip your barber adequately? Great. Please intervene before the Peace and Freedom Party thinks to to nominate Mumia Abu Jamal.

Get that bridgework replaced, Woody, and maybe some of the voices will go away. Until the dental appointment, try ignoring the ones telling you that liberals are Stalinists. Please?

The fact remains: it doesn’t matter that Clinton was out of office. He still had a huge audience even if it’s much diminished now. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been on the radio for you to hear him in the first place.

Noteworthy comments by notable figures get noted, practically by definition. Noteworthy stuff gets echoed all over the Web, not least because nobody can censor it — I.E., THAT VERY SAME WEB VIRTUE THAT YOU CITE ALL THE TIME IN YOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE SUPPOSED RELIABILITY OF RIGHTWING “NEWS” SOURCES . And yet, somehow, what you claim Clinton said isn’t there on the Web, even the rightwing blogs.

Therefore: you remember wrong. He didn’t use those words, in that order. And in some other order, whatever those words of his were, they might well mean something quite different from what you have come to believe he said. It’s that simple. (Remember why courts rule out hearsay in witness testimony? Because it’s dependably unreliable. If your memory is photographic, why are we always catching you out on your errors of fact here, for years now?)

(Alternative hypothesis: the liberal-Stalinist MSM Axis of Evil that protects Clinton has penetrated the Intertubes so deeply that it can intercept any web page containing the quote and silently erase it before it reaches any reader. It’s true! I heard it on my dentures!)

Give it up, Woody. You just don’t have what it takes to find information in reliable sources, at least when it comes to politics. Maybe whatever reserves of accuracy you do have get exhausted with those CPA renewal exams, and your professional practice. I know that if I had to count beans all day, according to unbelievably byzantine rules, I’d prefer the rest of the world, at all other times, to be a dramatic fantasy, with me in an embattled minority on the Side of All That is Good, but fighting in a way that doesn’t cause real-world bruises or bleeding. But maybe you should try online video games for that, and steer clear of political subjects? I hear World of Warcraft is fun.

Very likely: Obama. And I bet Reagan did, to some extent, at least the writing part, if not the sourcing part. Read even a little from Obama’s books, and you’ll see he’s got the chops for it. Ditto for Reagan — he used to write his own speeches, back when he was governor of California. He probably had a big hand in his own presidential speeches, both on the stump and in office. And let’s not forget the unparalleled exemplar to whom they both owed so much: Lincoln.

I believe that politicians who write their own speeches are just better communicators all around, and (for better or worse) more credible with their constituencies because of it. They know when something sounds like something they would say, and when it doesn’t.

G.W. Bush and Clinton convey authenticity (when they do) more in their off-the-cuff unscripted comments, not on the podium with a teleprompter. Both could/can deliver a well-written speech, but they still left you feeling they’d just parroted somebody’s speech. Not much more is expected of your average politician, right? But with both Reagan back in the day and Obama now there was/is that ability to gracefully deliver a scripted line as if it were improvised, and vice versa, having it come across as heartfelt either way.

McCain can be very articulate when it comes to policy he knows well, but it’s a “let’s-reason-together-on-the-Senate-floor” style of communication. He’s been in the Senate so long he’s become a Bob Dole. He’s very likeable and reasonable in small groups and one-on-one, perhaps, but not very good in broadcast mode, where most of the time a Senator is just hoping he’s putting the CSPAN junkies to sleep, and anyone sitting the chamber knows they are just hearing the public-consumption version of the story, and tune it out. There’s a dangerous baring of another Achilles heel that comes with a life of congressional collegiality: you start depending on real-time access to the contents of your colleagues brains for correction. In unscripted moments, on your own, in the media, you can get into very deep trouble. With McCain’s gaffe about the Surge starting with the Anbar Awakening (*tilt*!), you see both vulnerabilities in stark relief: if you watch the clip (painful), it’s startling not only how warped his chronology was, but how bad his delivery was as well. Maybe he’d be better if he were writing his own speeches.

As for the charge of McCain’s speech on the Georgia crisis plagiarizing from Wikipedia: actually, it’s quite possible that Wikipedia was “plagiarizing” McCain’s speech. I’ve been de-plagiarizing some articles on Wikipedia recently (no, the perp seemed to be a conservative, actually, but thanks for asking), and have seen what a two-way street it can be. In the time it could take you to go to the refrigerator for a beer and come back, somebody could have heard McCain over the radio saying that Georgia was one of the first countries to adopt Christianity as an official religion, asked himself “is that true?”, checked it against on-line sources, found where it was verifiable in other sources but not (yet) in Wikipedia, and edited that fact into Wikipedia. The editor might even have unconsciously used phrasing more similar to McCain’s speech than how it was expressed in the source used for verification. It’s also possible that the noted passages are direct plagiarisms in Wikipedia, but are significant rewrites in the McCain speech, both drawing from the same (as yet unidentified) source.

Not saying any of that happened, of course. You can find out for yourself if you like, I’m not gonna bother. Just saying that, in these information-truly-at-your-fingertips days, such scenarios are not only possible, but far from unlikely. And that, to paraphrase something from Moynihan: politicians should know that they aren’t entitled to their own facts, but can own their own words, if they work to earn them.

“I’m not for Obama, but this material is clearly plagerized. Someone’s head needs to roll.

As for blaming McCain… PUHLEZE… name a single person running for the presidency that write’s his own material or knows where his staff got the material… Sheesh and I don’t even like the guy!”

Very likely: Obama. And I bet Reagan did, to some extent, at least the writing part, if not the sourcing part. Read even a little from Obama’s books, and you’ll see he’s got the chops for it. Ditto for Reagan — he used to write his own speeches, back when he was governor of California. He probably had a big hand in his own presidential speeches, both on the stump and in office. And let’s not forget the unparalleled exemplar to whom they both owed so much: Lincoln.

I believe that politicians who write their own speeches are just better communicators all around, and (for better or worse) more credible with their constituencies because of it. They know when something sounds like something they would say, and when it doesn’t.

G.W. Bush and Clinton convey authenticity (when they do) more in their off-the-cuff unscripted comments, not on the podium with a teleprompter. Both could/can deliver a well-written speech, but they still left you feeling they’d just parroted somebody’s speech. Not much more is expected of your average politician, right? But with both Reagan back in the day and Obama now there was/is that ability to gracefully deliver a scripted line as if it were improvised, and vice versa, having it come across as heartfelt either way.

McCain can be very articulate when it comes to policy he knows well, but it’s a “let’s-reason-together-on-the-Senate-floor” style of communication. He’s been in the Senate so long he’s become a Bob Dole. He’s very likeable and reasonable in small groups and one-on-one, perhaps, but not very good in broadcast mode, where most of the time a Senator is just hoping he’s putting the CSPAN junkies to sleep, and anyone sitting the chamber knows they are just hearing the public-consumption version of the story, and tune it out. There’s a dangerous baring of another Achilles heel that comes with a life of congressional collegiality: you start depending on real-time access to the contents of your colleagues brains for correction. In unscripted moments, on your own, in the media, you can get into very deep trouble. With McCain’s gaffe about the Surge starting with the Anbar Awakening (*tilt*!), you see both vulnerabilities in stark relief: if you watch the clip (painful), it’s startling not only how warped his chronology was, but how bad his delivery was as well. Maybe he’d be better if he were writing his own speeches.

As for the charge of McCain’s speech on the Georgia crisis plagiarizing from Wikipedia: actually, it’s quite possible that Wikipedia was “plagiarizing” McCain’s speech. I’ve been de-plagiarizing some articles on Wikipedia recently (no, the perp seemed to be a conservative, actually, but thanks for asking), and have seen what a two-way street it can be. In the time it could take you to go to the refrigerator for a beer and come back, somebody could have heard McCain over the radio saying that Georgia was one of the first countries to adopt Christianity as an official religion, asked himself “is that true?”, checked it against on-line sources, found where it was verifiable in other sources but not (yet) in Wikipedia, and edited that fact into Wikipedia. The editor might even have unconsciously used phrasing more similar to McCain’s speech than how it was expressed in the source used for verification. It’s also possible that the noted passages are direct plagiarisms in Wikipedia, but are significant rewrites in the McCain speech, both drawing from the same (as yet unidentified) source.

Not saying any of that happened, of course. You can find out for yourself if you like, I’m not gonna bother. Just saying that, in these information-truly-at-your-fingertips days, such scenarios are not only possible, but far from unlikely. And that, to paraphrase something from Moynihan: politicians should know that they aren’t entitled to their own facts, but can own their own words, if they work to earn them.