(a thought) A lesson the US has never learned but most other countries have:

Granted, Clinton was a terrible president.

However, having consensual sex with someone (even oral sex or, god forbid, some other "perverse" variant) is not wrong, morally or otherwise.

What precisely is the arguement, then?

Who believes Clinton was a good president, besides deluded centrists and the business elite?

append "in the 20th century" to my previous comment. pardon my mishap. and don't try to bring up Nixon.... that's getting old.

but it is fair to note that the two presidents that have been impeached were both (D)'s.

I think the South are actually the ones that still carry the torch of the war more than the North. Hence the "You lost, get over it" attitude. No one in the North really understands the whole "Dixie pride" thing.

It's the South who do the Civil War reenactments and have the Stars and Bars plastered all over everything and have signs on their pickups proclaiming that "The South will rise again." I think they hang onto some false notion of the South being this high class land of freedom, forgetting the part where that land was toiled over and supported by slaves. I could go on, but if you really want to understand, go visit Georgia or Alabama and talk to people. You'll learn a lot.

--Josh

It's also fair to note that Johnson was tried for the most specious of reasons, mostly centering on his ignoring a law later ruled to be unconstitutional. It was really just a pissing match because Johnson didn't want to grind his heel on the South as much as the Republican-controlled Congress did.



Well, I don't care if he had consensual sex. Nothing immoral about it. However, being a jerk by cheating on his wife, and lying to the American public and legal system because he wasn't enough of a man to just own up to his actions was immoral. Not something to impeach him over, but still pretty low.

--Josh

I'm kinda surprised that you don't see what's wrong with this picture. When a man makes a commitment to another person (i.e.: his wife) it is taken to mean that both parties will be committed to one another in all aspects of marriage, including sexually.</basic assumption> Respect? Yeah. That seems like a gimme...but it's surprising what is passed off oh-so-non-chalantly nowadays. Shocking.

Plus, while it's bad enough that this had to occur, that it occurred in the oval office makes it despicable.

Edit: Oh yeah, and then he lied to all of us about it! Now, if you're making a case that it isn't wrong at all...why did he even have to lie? He should have come out and been all like "Duh, yeah, I ***** her with a cigar both ********* and ******. And THEN I ****** on her."

Oh, there is no doubt. He was a scumbag. Why would anyone expect differently? He was the President, after all.

Like I said, he was a scumbag. I don't know why anyone holds the president to a higher standard, though (not that you personally do). If anything, we should hold the president to a lower standard, if history is any judge.

What would be shocking is if the president didn't bend an intern over his oval office desk. Honestly, I'm amazed they didn't call a press conference and proceed to have sex on the podium. Pretty sad state of affairs, no?

What a wonderful world we live in here in America. Nothing worse has happened to us than one of our presidents cheated on his wife and got caught. Oh the humanity!!!


There are plenty of things that would challenge the notion that the US has yet to learn humility, but citing a sex scandal as proof of our suffering just goes to show how completely out of touch with real suffering some Americans are.

In fact, it just might prove Voodoo's point more than anything anyone could have said.

No doubt! If anything people aren't having ENOUGH sex!

Amen.

Oh my god. That is the smartest thing I've heard all day. Can I put you on my double-awesome un-ignore list?

Perhaps it is symptomatic of the political laziness in this country that we can advocate war and death "over there," but refuse to tolerate it here (or even the images of it in the news). More "Not my problem"-ism.

Where were the defenders of Iraqi freedom during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, or cocescu's reign of terror, or the assualts on NIcaragua, or the Shi'ite uprisings after the 1st gulf war, or the continued massacre of Kurds in Turkey, or the Taliban regime in Afghanisatan prior to 9-11, to name a few relatively modern examples of either US enacted or US supported atrocities. Or, hell, where was all the talk of Iraqi freedom prior to september of 2002, when bush announced his plans? All of a sudden, America slaps its forehead and says "oh yeah, we love freedom! Let's get that douche outta there!" I defy any single person on this board who is in favor of the war in Iraq to point to any attempt to bring attention to the plight of the Iraqis prior to septmeber. Of course, we're all commited to freedom! But it's not a one-shot thing. You have to really be commited to it, every day of your life, not just when your president says you should.

If there's one thing history has shown us, it's this:

Every empire falls eventually.

The US will be superceded as the world's dominant power at some point. No empire can exist forever without exhausting resources, or becoming so large that its own structure causes it to falter. I'd propose that while geographically and geopolitically the US does not fit the empire model, the propagation of american culture is a pretty effective way of co-opting other nations. Case in point - I would contest that the government of Eastern Europe was not ended by diplomacy and bombs - it was ended by the fact that its citizens no longer wanted to wear Bulgarian shoes, and had learned a thing or two about the decadent West from watching Dallas. Shown no better alternative, they'd still be in their former position today. Shown a better option however...

It's just fin de siecle. You can call it a long-overdue humiliation, or karma, but really, it's just the way of the world.

Just got back:

1. Who are you talking to with this "you liberals" stuff?

2, Two presidents in American history have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Your question reveals how little you know. ... Are you really this stupid?

3. If you want to quiz me about American history, crack a book sometime this decade. Then maybe you'll be ready (but I doubt it).

OK, but back to my original point, it doesn't really compare with having your government overthrown.

Yeah, no sh�t. It continues to baffle me how this mass genocide that was supported by dozens of American presidents (now they don't have to support the genocide anymore cause we've wiped them all out) is forever swept under the rug, dismissed as part of the past. I can't think of anything much more humiliating than being more or less wiped off the face of the earth with the survivors herded onto a bunch of little chunks of land we don't want and told to run casinos for the rest of their lives.

/rant

Welcome to the bizarro world of people with "progressive" morals.

Clinton was a sexual predator. That is what he was being investigated for. He had problems with sex. Monica was some of the proof. Clinton lied under oath making her and many other Americans out to be liars to save his own ass. He did this, on the clock, talking to foreign diplomats while recieving oral sex. Real respectful man indeed.

Clinton had a sexual harrasement problem. And probably still has one.

I hate to get into this debate...

All presidents who have been impeached or under threat of impeachment did minor misdeeds.

Clinton was impeached for lying under oath (Ken Starr never claimed perjury, Congress did) in an immaterial (read: irrelevant) portion of a civil lawsuit that was later thrown out of court.

Nixon was accused of knowing about a breaking and entering.

Johnson wasn't even charged with anything until after he was impeached.

Interestingly the people we considered the best Presidents, FDR and Lincoln, did some really nasty things that should have gotten them impeached.

A lesson most other countries have learned but the US has never learned:

HUMILITY.

Please.

I think we all learned some of that 9/11

Actually I would call the Democrats Defeat this past election cycle Pretty Humiliating for them. They thought they had a lock on the American Public.