And the inevitable right-wing temper tantrum has begun in earnest, and believe me, this is a temper tantrum. Like children who were denied an extra serving of ice cream or who were not allowed to stay up past their bedtime, they will scream and yell and threaten and work themselves into a red-faced lather, and I, for one, am not content to sit by and let them be.
I intend to poke fun at them and make their childish tantrums worse.
What will be the most amusing thing to watch will be the necessary villification of John Warner, who must be immediately recast as a traitor, an evil moderate, as unprincipled and as a back-stabbing obstructionist. They are, of course, talking about this John Warner:
– Rated 21% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record.
– Rated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record.
– Rated 100% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record.
– Rated 13% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes.
– Rated 27% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes.
– Rated 11% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes.
– Rated 83% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record.
– Rated 64% by CATO, indicating a mixed record on trade issues.
– Rated D by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun control voting record.
– Rated 0% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record.
– Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record.
– Rated 0% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-labor voting record.
– Rated 74% by NTU, indicating a “Taxpayer’s Friend” on tax votes.
[sarcasm] Clearly, John Warner is a flaming moderate. [/sarcasm]When this man is publicly enemy number one, and considered not conservative enough or a bad Republican, the word ‘conservative’ is either meaningless, or means something wholly different from what I thought it meant. Say it again to yourself- to the lunatics, a man with a LIFETIME rating of 81 by the American Conservative Union is not ‘conservative enough.’
These people have lost their damned minds. I am tired of trying to walk these wingnuts back from the edge of the cliff. I am close to the point where I start pushing.
I think he is, too.
Brad R.
I intend to poke fun at them and make their childish tantrums worse.
Heck, that’s my freaking hobby…
Christie S.
WAIT…WAIT….Let me get my popcorn and soda first…
Heh.
Sav
Throwing a tantrum to protest tantrum throwing.
Interesting.
Anderson
I think Lindsey Graham looks like the big target; he’s from a state where James Dobson actually carries some heft. Interesting to see his next primary …
Dave Ruddell
How come every time I see ‘Lindsey Graham’ I read it as “Lindsay Lohan”?
TJ Jackson
According to your figures you’d descirbe him as a flaming conservative? Exactly how what scores would indicate moderate to you. It would be interesting to contrast these ratings, for say Liberman, that much touted moderate and see how they compare. Warner’s also couldn’t vote for Clinton’s impreachment. Yeah he’s an extreme conservative.
sidereal
Funny, I think of Heather Graham. Then I see pictures. Doh.
” indicating an anti-civil rights voting record.”
That’s not something you want on your epitaph.
Kimmitt
Lieberman isn’t a moderate, he’s a liberal who has one centrist hobbyhorse and stabs his Party in the back for airtime. They’re different things.
Libertine
TJ a question…
Is anybody to the left of Jesse Helms or Strom Thurman a moderate?
JPS
Kimmitt:
“Lieberman isn’t a moderate, he’s a liberal who has one centrist hobbyhorse and stabs his Party in the back for airtime. They’re different things.”
Nice! He’s sort of a mirror-image McCain, come to think of it.
It always amazes me, the positions liberals will forgive McCain–pro-war stance, ACU lifetime rating over 81, instrumental support of Bush–as long as he keeps sticking his fingers in the right eyes.
TJ Jackson
Libertine:
Hildabeast is a moderate. In the travelgate scandal she only used the FBI and IRS to destroy the lives of a score of people for no good reason. If she had been like Janet Reno or her hubby she would have burned them and their families to death for belonging to a cult.
ppgaz
Is it not the case that the White House travel staff, like most White House staff, serve entirely at the pleasure of the president? In other words, they can be replaced without cause. And are, all the time.
Who gives a shit? The whole “travelgate” controversy was a ginned up bunch of bullshit. The superior staffer who fired them did so with all the necessary authority and needed no legal cause whatever.
The story had legs only because the White House press corps considered the travel staff their own private travel agency, and friends. For this reason and this reason only, the core facts of the case were never reported.
For those of you who are dense: The staff has no tenure, and can be fired by the president OR HIS DESIGNATES without cause, at any time.
There was no travelgate scandal.
Neither is it improper for staff superiors to ask for FBI assistance in investigating and alleged improprieties. This process is as much for the protection of the persons under suspicion as it is for the protection of the office.
From the Columbia Journalism Review, circa 1996:
The services provided apparently went well beyond the mere booking of fares and rooms. Dale and his associates, by many accounts, became federally funded valets to the travelling journalists, servants who knew the imperial tastes of their masters, from the best hotels right down to the premium brand of whiskey each one preferred. White House press travel perks were mentioned in stories and columns in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Time, and The Washington Monthly, all of which alluded to a more questionable travel office practice — looking the other way when reporters avoid taxes and duties on goods from around the world. Kenneth Walker, a former White House correspondent for ABC News, wrote in The Christian Science Monitor that many White House journalists “point proudly to expensive collectibles and furnishings in their homes that were collected from around the world and on which they paid not one penny of duty. . . . All this was abetted by the White House travel office.” So far, no major news organization has published an investigation that names names about who did what for whom in the White House press corps. More recently, in a deeply sympathetic profile of Dale that appeared in the February 1996 Washingtonian magazine, it was suggested that the travel office director knew intimate secrets about his journalistic pals — including their trips to foreign brothels and their sexual liaisons. It’s not necessary to believe such lurid suggestions, however, to understand the fierce loyalty Dale’s devotion engendered.
And indeed, when Dale and his colleagues were suddenly fired, the reaction of the White House press was ferocious. ABC White House correspondent Brit Hume was speaking for many when he expressed his scorn in the September 1994 American Spectator: “The advance men who composed most of the old travel office had been doing it for years and their experience was an asset the Clinton White House inherited but was too obtuse or arrogant to recognize.” More than a year later, on January 7, Hume noted on an ABC broadcast that the travel office was something “that the press cares a lot about . . . you might not want to mess with it too much because there’d be a lot of press interest, as there was.”
—/
The press corps may have been outraged, but what those lying cocksukers failed to report was that it was NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.
TJ Jackson
PPGAZ:
We can always expect a reasoned humane statement based on cool reason and icy calculation of right and wrong, justice and injustice.
When the Hildabeast could have just dismissed these employees she instead choose to ruin their lifes. It took 15 minutes for a court to dismiss the charges against them.
But demonstrating the logic and humanity for which you are well know said “Who gives a shit/”
Well sir obvious not you. These are the tactics and sentiments of an ogre and an infantile one at that.
Res Ips Loquitur
ppgaz
Nope, Dead wrong again.
Check the law. The staffers serve at the pleasure of the president. Period. End of that story.
The White House legal office can, and should, request an appropriate investigation whenever there are suspicions of impropriety. Period. End of that story.
Suspicions of impropriety were wide and deep in the muck surrounding the travel staff that had served King Ronnie and George The First for twelve years, and investigation was well beyond appropriate. Period. End of that story.
All the rest is crap you picked up from the lying rightwing websites you hang around.
TJ Jackson
PGAS:
Can’t you read? I repeat form your tiny little mind”Hillary had the right to dismiss the travel staff instead she choose to use the FBI andIRS to lodge false charges against the staff to ruin their lives. The cahrges against them were dismissed in federal court by a jury in 15 minutes.”
You are both dishonest, a brain numbed robot who cannot weigh or evaluate the truth but prefers bromides that suits your biases to the truth.
It is trolls like yourself that make democracy a mockery. To think that a creature such as yourself has the right to vote. No wonder this country elects creatures such as Clinton.
Tell us again why you said “You don’t give a shit” about these ruined lives. Do you suppose these workers were all Republicans? Or is it that anything the Left does is for the greater good regardless of who must be sacrificed.
Scary man, just the way Hitler and Stalin thought.
ppgaz
Nice rant, but your dog won’t hunt.
Columbia Journalism Review has the full story, published in 1996.
Should I take their view of the story, or yours?
Gee, this is hard …. let me pray on it.