4 June 2008 >> The psychology of Bill Clinton as portrayed in the recent Vanity Fair piece “The Comeback Id” (you know, the article that caused the former president to refer to its author as a “sleazy,” “slimy” “scumbag”), reminded me of how I described my perception of the man in “The Shallowness of Clinton.”

I wrote that piece in the spring of 2002, back when Bill Clinton was still a darling of devoted Democrats and the establishment media.

It’s a bit reassuring that so many of his former blind followers finally see him the way I always have.

But still, one thing bothers me...

Did all these folks really not notice the real Clinton? For eight years? Or did they just not care because he had the “right” political enemies?

Bill Clinton was a pretty good con-man, so maybe I should go a little easy on all you former patsies out there.

You’re a little late to reality, but we’ll welcome you anyway.

12 February 2008 >> A Clinton-related conspiracy theory:

It isn’t all that hard to believe that a guy who’s alpha [male] enough to risk his entire political career and presidential legacy for a few hummers from a pudgy intern might subconsciously sabotage his wife’s ascent to power, is it?

Radley Balko, from “Did Bill Sink Hill on Purpose?â€?

18 January 2007 @ 9:02AM >> On July 27, 1997, the Senate voted by a margin of 95-0 that the United States would not sign a treaty structured like the Kyoto Protocol. That treaty, which proponents claimed would improve the environment, had harsher economic penalties for the United States than it did for countries like China, even though 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China.

As a result of the Senate’s lopsided vote, President Clinton never bothered to submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification. So it seems a bit strange that the Associated Press would claim:

The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.

First of all, the United States was never bound by Kyoto. And the reason the U.S. was never bound by Kyoto is because the treaty was never ratified. President Clinton never even submitted it for ratification. Why didn’t he? Because every Senator—Republican and Democrat alike—who voted on the 1997 resolution made it clear that they would oppose ratifying Kyoto.

All of this took place years before President Bush was in office, but it seems that AP is more concerned with blaming Bush than getting its facts straight.

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds.)

25 October 2006 @ 9:13AM >> David Zucker, the writer and director of Airplane! and a number of other comedies, has recently been releasing humorous political ads online. Political involvement among Hollywood insiders is nothing new, but what makes Zucker’s recent work a man-bites-dog story is that he’s been doing ads for those evil Republicans, something which is sure to make him an anathema in his industry.

One of his recent ads, a send-up of the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy—complete with a Madeleine Albright stand-in who looks a little too accurate to be flattering—was deemed too hot for establishment Republicans, who declined to air it. No matter; these days, you can reach audiences online without expensive media buys.

Zucker’s latest piece looks at what life might be like if Democrats captured Congress and dictated the nation’s tax policy.

Has David Zucker stumbled onto a new model in political advertising? I think so.

22 June 2006 @ 12:11PM >> It is now considered gospel among those opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that “Bush lied” about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. That’s despite the fact that many prominent Democrats made the same claims during the Clinton Administration, and that virtually every other Western intelligence service believed Saddam was hiding such weapons. That’s despite the fact that Saddam Hussein himself discussed having those weapons, and that he felt the need to bribe French and U.N. officials during his cat-and-mouse game with U.N. weapons inspectors. That’s despite the fact that Saddam Hussein used those weapons before, and that’s even despite the fact, since the war started, that we’ve seen many bits of evidence that point to Iraq’s possession of WMDs.

No, despite all that, if your only source of information is the editorial page of The New York Times, you probably still believe that Saddam Hussein was an innocent man wrongly deposed by a bloodthirsty American president. You’ll probably also find ways to discount this latest report:

U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq have found about 500 chemical weapons since the March 2003 invasion, with more thought to exist, according to portions of an intelligence report made public yesterday.

“Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent,” said an overview of the report, which was declassified at the behest of Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and head of the House intelligence committee.

“Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist,” according to the report.

Expect this story to pass in a couple of days without much further discussion. There’s simply no good angle for using it to criticize the war effort. The media that spent a decade covering up for Saddam Hussein has too much invested in the “Bush lied” storyline, and deviating from that storyline now would require one massive correction for the last three years of reporting.

10 February 2005 @ 11:28PM >> In 1994, the government of North Korea promised the Clinton Administration that its nuclear program would be shut down. In 2002, North Korea admitted that it had restarted its nuclear program in direct violation of that agreement.

Why did this diplomatic effort fail? Well, for one, it presumed that North Korea could be trusted to keep its promises. And that’s often the trouble with diplomatic attempts to rein in totalitarian regimes. Such agreements are based purely on the hope that you can trust the word of a tyrant. Going back through history, how many tyrants have proven themselves to be trustworthy?

Thanks to the Clinton Administration, North Korea had eight years to advance its nuclear program in secret. If they hadn’t been naive enough to believe that Kim Jung Il could be trusted, perhaps North Korea’s nuclear program could have been stopped before it was too late. Now it is too late; North Korea has nuclear weapons, and it appears likely that they’ve had nukes for several years now. That greatly constrains our options in dealing with North Korea.

Keep this in mind next time the members of the Cult of Diplomacy try to convince you that all the world’s problems can be solved with talk. Sometimes, they can’t. Sometimes, the dangerous developments in the world can only be stopped by action.

14 December 2004 @ 7:49PM >> The New York Post is reporting that Marc Rich, the billionaire financier who was awarded a “midnight pardon” in one of President Clinton’s last acts in office, is “a central figure” in the U.N. Oil-for-Food corruption scandal:

Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.

Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.

“We think he was a major player in this — a central figure,” a senior law-enforcement official told The Post.

[...]

Investigators say they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, set up a series of companies in Liechtenstein and other countries that they used to put together deals between Saddam and his international supporters in the controversial oil-voucher scheme — which the dictator designed to win international support against U.S. sanctions at the United Nations.

Under the scam, hundreds of international political and financial figures from France, Russia and other countries were awarded middleman vouchers allowing them to purchase set quantities of Iraqi oil at discount rates.

[...]

Investigators now believe Rich and Pollner brokered many of the deals by finding buyers for the oil allocated to people who were bribed by Saddam. The discount Iraqi oil would be resold to major oil companies at higher prices and Rich and Pollner would pocket percentages of the profits, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, sources said.

[...]

In January 2001, in the final hours his presidency, Clinton bypassed law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to wipe the books clean for Rich after being subjected to intense lobbying from former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Rich’s jet-setting ex-wife, Denise, who donated more than $1 million to Democratic campaigns — including Sen. Hillary Rodham’s first Senate race — along with an additional $450,000 to Clinton’s library fund.

Interesting.

12 October 2004 >> A new video is making the rounds that gives a rather exhaustive account of President Clinton’s statements on Saddam Hussein’s WMD program and the threat posed by Iraq. Check out The Terror War: Chapter 3, especially if you’re one of the Bush Lied!!! folks.

It remains to be seen whether our intelligence was faulty, as it now appears. Then again, given September 11th, nobody should have been under the impression that our intelligence operation was perfect. The fact remains that every major intelligence service in the world—including those of France, Germany and Russia—believed Saddam Hussein had WMD. Saddam’s own military believed they had WMD.

So when you hear Clinton sounding like George W. Bush, it’s hard to take seriously the conspiracy theorists who talk of oil, Halliburton or “the president’s daddy”. Not that it was easy to take them seriously before.

29 June 2004 >> Bill Clinton’s latest attempt to define his legacy is a 957-page book called My Life. Though panned by the New York Times as “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull,” thousands of people still stood on line for eight hours or more to have the former president sign their copies. As the line snaked around the corner of Broadway and Wall Street in lower Manhattan, I asked the autograph-seekers for their thoughts on Bill, his book, and his legacy. Video >>

8 April 2004 >> Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission made for riveting listening. The political fireworks were on full display when the Democrats on the panel pressed Rice, asking why President Bush had not developed a pre-September 11th plan to preemptively attack Afghanistan and disrupt al Qaeda. These questions, of course, come from the same folks who criticize Bush administration for acting preemptively against Iraq.

The inconsistencies of the Democratic arguments against the Bush Administration make it impossible for them to put forth any alternate vision, because anything they propose will conflict with some of their previous criticisms. Even that they’ll deny, though; they’ll sweeten their waffles with the syrup of nuance, the word they use to cover up the fact that they’re holding several completely contradictory stances simultaneously.

According to principles of quantum mechanics, it is possible for a subatomic particle to occupy multiple positions at the same time. Perhaps the Democrats hope to become the quantum party. If so, it explains why John Kerry, the consummate Quantum Candidate, is the perfect person to head the Democratic ticket this fall. More >>

24 March 2004 >> Some people would like you to think President Bush lied when he talked about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. The funny thing is, many of the president’s current critics are politicians who made strikingly similar claims about Iraq in the not-too-distant past. To find out if the current spin was sticking, I impersonated a game show host and quizzed a few protesters about some particularly hawkish quotes from notable Democrats. Video >>

12 June 2003 >> Saddam and Osama must not exist. Why? Because they cannot be found. And, as we all know from witnessing the recent hyperventilation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, if something can’t be found, it must not exist. More >>

29 January 2003 >> “Sometimes, there is no choice but to meet danger with force. To resort to war is not the sign of ultimate failure, as some argue, it’s just the sign of diplomacy’s failure. But we shouldn’t let failed diplomacy fester while stealthy enemies strengthen and scheme. Now that we’ve seen how easily terrorists can bring death to our door, we must prevent them from acquiring weapons from thugs like Saddam Hussein. The best way is to make sure there aren’t any thugs like Saddam Hussein.” More >>

27 March 2002 >> “Bill Clinton is a low-life thief, a petty swindler, and a smooth-talking scam artist more suited for Tammany Hall than the White House. He’s shallow because he was given remarkable gifts and the opportunity to do great things with them, yet he achieved nothing substantial. In the end, his presidency amounted to little more than talk and corruption. The man who spent the final days of his presidency fretting about his legacy will find it to be recorded quite accurately by history: Bill Clinton is a shallow, failed man.” More >>

11 January 2002 >> “Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle seems bent on becoming the Senate Minority Leader and destroying the chances his fellow Democrats have of retaking the House of Representatives this fall. While layoffs accumulate, while the unemployment rate climbs, and with the country mired in recession, Tom Daschle is selfishly playing with people’s lives so that he can provide his party with an ‘issue’ for the 2002 elections.” More >>