Do YOUR Part, America

[Guest DrTom]

And people wonder why I never liked Clinton...

 

 

Boundless: the return of slick willie

by Paul Greenberg

 

Now we all know where William Jefferson Clinton, Esq., plans to get the money to pay all those legal bills he ran up during the late unpleasantness in Washington.

 

No, he isn't about to use up the fat fees he collects for speaking around the world -- $9.2 million just last year. At last report, he was getting between $75,000 and $350,000 a pop.

 

Nor does Bill Clinton propose to touch his book advance (which has been put at between $10 million and $12 million) for what will surely be the most widely unread presidential memoir in American history. Why spend his own money when he can dip into the U.S. Treasury?

 

That's right. Slick Willie proposes to have his legal bills paid by:

 

(ITALICS) You.

 

Mr. and Ms. American Taxpayer.

 

Through his lawyer, who stands to collect a sizable share of those fees himself, the ever impeachable Mr. Clinton has asked a court to direct the U.S. government to pay off the squadrons of attorneys it took to get him off the hook.

 

Yes, now you, too, can pay off Bill Clinton's lawyers.

 

How is that possible? Simple. Slick Willie is taking advantage of a law written to protect those pulled into the independent counsel's investigation of his presidency even though they were never indicted or censured for anything. For example, bystanders like his first chief of staff, Mack McLarty, who was bound to be questioned when he started hanging out with all that bad company, i.e., the Clinton administration.

 

Now comes William Jefferson Clinton, and he wants the public to pay his costs, too, even though he was impeached -- which is the equivalent of being indicted. As we were reminded again and again during his trial in the U.S. Senate.

 

Cited for civil contempt and suspended from the bar, Bill Clinton avoided a criminal indictment by a classic plea bargain: He admitted to testifying falsely under oath -- which is as close as you can come to confessing perjury without confessing.

 

And now, after all this, he wants the rest of us to pay for all the distinguished lawheads who got him off. There is a word to describe this kind of brass, moxie, nerve, chutzpah and greed:

 

Boundless.

 

Yet it's hard to be outraged at this latest caper of Bill Clinton's because it's just what you would expect of him. What in others might be outrageous is in Bill Clinton only standard operating procedure.

 

Different presidents respond differently to disgrace: Richard Nixon, hopelessly puritanical, resigned rather than face impeachment, and then spent the next 20 years rehabilitating himself. Bill Clinton has responded by asking the American people to pay his bills.

 

Whatever you think of that request, it's hard to resist a certain admiration for the sheer, unadulterated nerviness of it. You gotta hand it to the rascal. He keeps setting new records for shamelessness.

 

We can all give up on the foolish hope that, once he was out of the White House and dog house, our prodigal son would turn into some kind of Jimmy Carter in his post-presidential years, traveling the country building houses for the poor. Or settle down in the role of nonpartisan elder statesman a la Gerald Ford.

 

Fuhgeddaboutit. In or out of office, Bill Clinton remains Bill Clinton. The more he changes, the more he doesn't.

 

The years have passed, and by now our boy president has become our boy ex-president. He is still the perpetual adolescent, forever striding up Fool's Hill, knowing he'll get away with it. And why not? Haven't we let him? He may get investigated, but it's always others who take the rap.

 

What a show. It never stops. Now we're supposed to take Bill Clinton for a victim of the Clinton Scandals instead of their central figure. The effrontery of it. If there were any justice in the world, Bill Clinton would be arrested for imitating an innocent bystander.

 

It was said of Teddy Roosevelt by the British ambassador at the time, in perhaps the most concise and accurate summary of that remarkable personality, "You must always remember that the president is about 6."

 

When it comes to Bill Clinton, we must always remember that he's about 17 -- with the same sure confidence that, whatever happens, somebody else will pay for it. And this time, folks, he's nominated you, his fellow Americans.

[Guest bob_barron]

If we pay Lewinsky's legal bills-

 

Will she blow us?

[Guest Ace309]

Of course, what they don't say is that (assuming I've been following this correctly) his request for costs has nothing to do with the impeachment. It's for Whitewater, in which Clinton was exonerated.

 

Additionally, according to CNN, both Reagan and Bush were awarded costs after the Iran-Contra scandal.

[Guest EricMM]

Yeah I heard he wasn't getting legal fees for anything regarding the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he was only getting money for whitewater.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

What about Slick Willy telling a Jewish Group that he would grab a rifle if Isreal was invaded. Suddenly we've got GI Joe on our hands.

[Guest cartman]

...and remember we can always thank the republicans for TRYING their best to get clinton kicked out of the whitehouse.

 

Thank those republicans for the whole lewinsky thing, yes it was Billy's fault but the rep. party was more than happy to support her in her claims and try to find other people Billy "Might Have" fooled around with.

 

Those gosh darn republicans...thank them for making us pay for all the bullshit legal fees.

[Guest Some Guy]

Bill Clinton is a fucking millionaire who wants to take other's tax money to pay for his legal problems. Fuck him and I hope that some of the poor people who claims to represent start to see him for what he really is instead of being blinded by spin and double-talk.

What fucking hypocrits many Leftists are. "It's ok for *ME* to take other's money even though I don't need and I promised to give to poor people because I that promise." This must be what Clinton is thinking because there is no other way to justify him trying this, besides it gets his face back in the news.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

"What about Slick Willy telling a Jewish Group that he would grab a rifle if Isreal was invaded. Suddenly we've got GI Joe on our hands."

 

LOL - That line by Clinton has got to be quote of the year (or at least month).

[Guest hardyz1]

"What about Slick Willy telling a Jewish Group that he would grab a rifle if Isreal was invaded. Suddenly we've got GI Joe on our hands."

 

LOL - That line by Clinton has got to be quote of the year (or at least month).

 

He should take Jesse Jackson with him.

 

And his wife.

[Guest DrTom]

"Thank those republicans for the whole lewinsky thing, yes it was Billy's fault but the rep. party was more than happy to support her in her claims and try to find other people Billy "Might Have" fooled around with."

 

They shot themselves in the foot on that one. The thing is, they had a decent case, with Clinton lying to a grand jury, and he and his buddy Vernon Jordan suborning perjury, Webster Hubbell's convenient amnesia, etc. But Ken Starr chose to focus on Clinton getting his freak on in the Oval Office, and the vast majority of Americans didn't care about that. Hell, I never liked Clinton, and I wouldn't care if he had a different intern sucking him off every day. The Starr Report, released to much hullaballoo, was basically an account of the women Clinton had diddled since he took office. BFD. The Republicans, and Starr, actually had a case to build something around, but they focuesed on the tabloid shit and it cost them.

[Guest Powerplay]

Bill Clinton is a fucking millionaire who wants to take other's tax money to pay for his legal problems. Fuck him and I hope that some of the poor people who claims to represent start to see him for what he really is instead of being blinded by spin and double-talk.

What fucking hypocrits many Leftists are. "It's ok for *ME* to take other's money even though I don't need and I promised to give to poor people because I that promise." This must be what Clinton is thinking because there is no other way to justify him trying this, besides it gets his face back in the news.

The Reagans and the Bushes are just as well-to-do as the Clintons, so why aren't you yelling at them for getting their legal expenses paid for by the government after the Iran-Contra Scandal? And the Starr investigation costed millions upon of dollars in legal fees and only showed that he got a blow job from an intern. But you aren't harping on them for wasting millions of dollars which could have been put into education, defense, social security, or some other programs that could have used it so much better. If you are going to trash Clinton, trash Reagan, Bush Sr, and Kenneth Starr as well. Otherwise it seems hypocritical that you trash Clinton while not trashing Conservatives who did the same thing.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

I think what some guy was trying to say is that liberals try to pull of this "we care about the poor" shit. When they really don't.

The Starr report did not show that Clinton just got a blowjob. Clinton committed perjury, that was something the media never talked about.

[Guest Powerplay]

Wasn't the lie "I did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky"? Verne, I do remember the perjury part, and the media didn't cover it as much because Starr concentrated on Clinton's sex life, which made the investigation look like a glorified muck-raking campaign by the Republicans. But please remind me why he was on trial when he said it (Seriously, I don't mean this sarcastically. I've been really busy as of late and my memory is really jumbled right now) since he had been on trial so many times I'm having trouble sorting them out.

 

Verne, what makes you think they don't care about the poor? Sure, some of them don't, but there are fakes on both sides of the lines. There are honestly some politicians that really do believe what they say. Otherwise, there really isn't any point in having faith in the political system and we should just revert to anarchy. You have to have some faith in the people leading us.

[Guest EricMM]

Would you all please stop and listen for a minute? The Clintons were not looking for money for anything having to do with Monica Lewinsky.

 

Good or bad (which I am undecided on) the situation was in regards to Whitewater. Something I'm not too sure about. Heck I was pretty young when people were talking about it, too young to get my news from anything other than SNL

 

But as my ex-teacher once said, if you've been a president, you're set for life. I would like it if he paid his own legal bills, because while the GOP probably muckraked some for whitewater, I'm sure there was some wrongdoing on his part too...

 

Argh politicians...

[Guest HoffmanHBK]

Politicians are all pretty much scum...this one happens to be a bit scummier than the others. He's not a devil among angels or anything. Seriously though, he *should* be paying his own legal fees, regardless of what they were for. I wasn't involved in Whitewater, so I sure as heck shouldn't have to pay for any costs involved in it.

[Guest EricMM]

Yeah I guess you're right.

 

If you think about it, that seems to be what this all comes down to. It was one idea to imagine someone not having to pay legal bills for something The Republicans Did, but on the other hand, the far greater hand, this money will come out of taxes from every pocket except his own, which as I said are probably pretty dirty and definitely fuller than a lot of other peoples'.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Some care about the poor. I just don't think Bill Clinton cares about anyone but himself.

[Guest NoCalMike]

I don't think the people should be paying his legal fees through taxes. Clinton is a millionaire and could probobaly pay all his debt off with the change in his pocket, yet where is the same outrage for people like Kenneth star that used millions of taxpayer dollars(and wouldn't let up ever)to head the ridiculous investigation in the first place?

[Guest Spicy McHaggis]

"What is your definition of 'is'?"

[Guest Some Guy]

Some care about the poor. I just don't think Bill Clinton cares about anyone but himself.

Exactly adn you were right about what I was trying to sy in your first post.

 

The Clintons, Kennedys, and various other Dems always say how much they care about teh poor and how we should "do our part" to help them and yet at every turn they're trying to scam of teh atxpayers money or avoiding their own taxes or in Hillary's case underdeclaring her taxes. That's hypocracy, teh GOP say we shouldn;t ahev to pay so fucking much in taxes anyway, so if one of them tries to cheat the system it seems more alomg their party line as far as taxation goes.

I thought Ken Starr went about the investigation wrong. He overestimated how outraged teh country would be by the sex. The only people who were really outraged by the sex (the Religious Right) never would have voted for Clinton in the first place. He was barking up teh wrong tree. If he concentrated on how big a liar that Clinton is and sprinkled in the adultery, which is a form of lying he would have been better served. But hindsight is 20/20 and all.