Clinton on deportation of illegal aliens

Bill Clinton: State of the Union Address (January 24, 1995)

Excerpt:

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

Comment: Bill had / has more polish than Trump but I agreed with Clinton on immigration then, and I agree with Trump on immigration today!

Bill Clinton: A real apology is needed .... not just "treacly crap"

What Bill Clinton still owes Monica Lewinsky

Excerpt:

All I can find on the record is an account of his 1998 speech to a roomful of religious leaders at a White House prayer breakfast in which he famously said, “I have sinned.”

“It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”

If that’s all, then it won’t do. You cannot put Lewinsky in the same sentence as the White House staff and Cabinet, not to mention “the American people.” Clinton’s aides were deceived and inconvenienced, and some were hopping mad, but none of them were flamed on the Internet, denounced as a tramp and a stalker, viciously condemned by commentators of both sexes, including a covey of journalistic harridans who have forever been on the lookout for any suggestion of extramarital sex in Washington. They simply won’t permit it.

Jessica Bennett, the writer of the commendably sympathetic Times piece, found Lewinsky to be “acutely intelligent, something for which she does not get much credit.” Actually, she does. Both her defense lawyers and even the prosecutors described her as both charming and smart, but it was important for her critics to consider her a crazed ditz, as if Clinton was her victim and could not have been genuinely charmed by her. (Remember how much they talked on the phone.) Lewinsky represented a middle-aged woman’s worst fear: the on-the-prowl young woman they once themselves were. She had to be dealt with.

I like Bill Clinton — always have. I think he was a very good president, and I think he’s a remarkable man, moral in a macro way. But I think his “I have sinned” statement is treacly crap, so generalized as to be meaningless. As he once acknowledged to me, he is forever linked to Lewinsky

Comment: Word of the day = "treacly". Image source. As for me ... I think he is immoral in a macro way!

Nelson Shanks' coded shadow in the portrait of "the most famous liar of all time"

Artist: Bill Clinton's portrait contains Monica Lewinsky reference

Excerpt:

An artist who painted a portrait of former President Bill Clinton says there’s more to the piece than one might see at first blush. Pennsylvania artist Nelson Shanks told the Philadelphia Daily News that he included a shadow of a blue dress in the 2006 portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. It’s an apparent reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, with Shanks adding that the 42nd president is “probably the most famous liar of all time.” “If you look at the left-hand side of it, there’s a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things,” the painter said. “It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.”

More: Painter says he included Monica Lewinsky's dress in Bill Clinton portrait, What happened to that dress?, The Stained Blue Dress that Almost Lost a Presidency

Bill Clinton: "We call it Riding the Gravy Train"

Bill Clinton Now Enjoys $1,000 Cigars
Wait until he is Hillary's "First Man". Consider Lewinsky's Testimony

A message for Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton and other disgraced public figures

Background:

• John Profumo
• Christine Keeler
• The chair in the above photo
• The Profumo Affair

How to Find Grace After Disgrace - Today's fallen politicians have a lot to learn from John Profumo's example.

Excerpt:

Because Profumo actually believed in shame, he could absorb it and let it change him however it would. In a way what he believed in was reality. He'd done something terrible—to his country, to his friends, to strangers who had to explain the headlines about him to their children. He never knew political power again. He never asked for it. He did something altogether more confounding. He did the hardest thing for a political figure. He really went away. He went to a place that helped the poor, a rundown settlement house called Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. There he did social work—actually the scut work of social work, washing dishes and cleaning toilets. He visited prisons for the criminally insane, helped with housing for the poor and worker education. And it wasn't for show, wasn't a step on the way to political redemption. He did it for 40 years. He didn't give interviews, never wrote a book, didn't go on TV.

Comment: Same goes for pastors who have fallen morally (into adultery). Go away. Serve quietly. Redeem yourself. Don't seek to Pastor again!

John Edwards channels Slick Willie's "IS"

Edwards, feds arguing if money was donated or gift

Excerpt:

Former presidential candidate John Edwards and federal prosecutors are arguing over whether funds used to cover up his extramarital affair were campaign contributions or just gifts from his longtime friends.

Comment: Clinton

Bill Clinton and the Meaning of "Is"

Excerpt:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Final comment: If it was a gift to help cover up his sin to protect his campaign it was a campaign contribution!

The "Land of Is" occupies the space between truth and deception.

Let Their Words Do the Talking - Verbal Cues to Detect Deception

Excerpt:

The Land of Is

Yes or No questions deserve "Yes" or "No" answers. When people choose not to answer "Yes" or "No," they go to the Land of Is. The Land of Is occupies the space between truth and deception. This murky area contains a labyrinth of half-truths, excuses, and suppositions. President Clinton's grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinski investi¬gation inspired the concept of the Land of Is. The following is an excerpt from Clinton's grand jury testimony:

PROSECUTOR: Your statement is a completely false statement. Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the statement that there was no sex of any kind in any man¬ner, shape or form with President Clinton was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?

CLINTON: It depends upon what the meaning of the word is means. If is means is, and never has been, that's one thing, if it means, there is none, that was a completely true statement.

Clinton took the prosecutor to the Land of Is. The prosecutor asked Clinton a Yes or No question. Clinton for obvious reasons chose not to answer "Yes" or "No." Notwithstanding, an analysis of Clinton's statement suggests that he was truthful. If "is" means never has been, then "is" equals nothing or "is" = 0. If "is" means there is none then 0 = "is." The proposition "is" = 0 and 0 = "is" is, indeed, a truthful statement. Clinton told the truth, but the truth about what?

Comment: We all remember this famous exchange.

Spring: “otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.”

Clinton Returns to Washington, Needling Himself, Obama and the Press

Excerpt:

Elsewhere in his remarks, he noted he was speaking on the night before the start of spring, “otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.” Of the current vice president, he said: “Vice President Biden, God bless his mouth.”

He praised a speech given earlier in the dinner by the night’s Republican speaker, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, thusly: “Orin, he’s the wittiest of all the Republicans. That ‘s sort of like saying he’s the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.”

Mr. Clinton managed to get in a plug for his economic record as president, in a backhanded kind of way: “My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that two million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits.”

Comment: Funny!

So wonderfully Clintonian

Obama's Clinton Education

Excerpt:

One of our favorite Bill Clinton anecdotes involves a confrontation he had with Bob Dole in the Oval Office after the 1996 election. Mr. Dole protested Mr. Clinton's attack ads claiming the Republican wanted to harm Medicare, but the President merely smiled that Bubba grin and said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

We're reminded of that story listening to Barack Obama protest his treatment by the now ex-President Clinton on behalf of his wanna-be-President wife. "You know the former President, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," Mr. Obama told a TV interviewer. "He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas."

Comment: The say anything, "gotta do what you gotta do" political speech is "so wonderfully Clintonian"!

He was a good judge of character (or lack of!)

Ford saw Clinton as a sex 'addict'

Excerpts:

"He's sick - he's got an addiction. He needs treatment," Ford told Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank, author of "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford."

....

That opinion was based on behavior Ford witnessed the weekend he hosted the Clintons in Colorado.

"I'll tell you one thing: He didn't miss one good-looking skirt at any of the social occasions," Ford said later.

"He's got a wandering eye, I'll tell you that. Betty had the same impression; he isn't very subtle about his interest."

Nevertheless, when the Monica Lewinsky sex-and-perjury scandal erupted and barreled toward impeachment, Ford was willing to help Clinton - to a point.

After the House voted to impeach Clinton but before the Senate's decision on whether to convict him, the sitting President phoned the ex-President.

"He said he needed my help and wanted to know if I could help," Ford recalled not long after.

Ford had written two Op-Ed pieces in which he called for Clinton to admit he had lied to federal investigators in exchange for censure over impeachment.

He told Clinton that he would help him, if he agreed to such a deal.

"Bill I think you have to admit that you lied. If you do that, I think that will help - and I'll help you. If you'll admit to perjury, I'll do more," he said.

"I won't do that," Clinton told him. "I can't do that."

Ford was stunned by Clinton's lack of contrition. "It's a character flaw," he concluded.