posted on June 22, 2004 01:35:52 PM newBack on topic Now Willie blames all his problems on the "Elite" press? What the hell is the "Elite" press. Seems to me the press Clinton labels as elite is the same "liberal" press that is now failing to report the good news from Iraq.
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Clinton Explains Problems with 'Elite' Press
Also, the former president reveals he tried to inhale, but couldn't.
By Greg Mitchell
(June 22, 2004) -- Now, at long last, we finally know what Bill Clinton thinks of us in the newspaper business -- at least those of us in the big city.
In his memoir "My Life," published today, he mounts a sporadic but spirited attack on an overzealous press for unfairly depicting his involvement in the Whitewater scandal and his battles with prosecutor Ken Starr. At one point he says, "some Whitewater reporters were actually covering up evidence of our innocence."
He also accuses the press of focusing too much on his "character problems," though he admits that he made a big mistake when he revealed that he smoked marijuana but "didn't inhale." What he really meant, he says, is "I couldn't inhale." He'd tried, but failed.
One problem, he says, is that the elite press in New York and Washington "had negative preconceptions about a poor, rural state and the people who lived there."
At one point, in describing the Whitewater coverage, he hails a "fair story" in USA Today, but what he "couldn't believe was that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others in the media I had always respected and trusted had been sucker punched" by Clinton foes such as Jim Johnson and Floyd Brown.
He then recounts a conversation with old friend Nicholas Katzenbach, then on the board of the Washington Post, telling him that he was "ashamed of the paper's coverage on Whitewater."
Later, in a lengthy passage, he recounts how the Times and Post overlooked an important report related to the Starr investigation favorable to Clinton, while the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Times downplayed it. To be fair, he notes that Howard Kurtz of the Post wrote an article about the report being buried, and also praises an account by Lars-Erik Nelson of the New York Daily News.
When the New York Times finally writes an anti-Starr editorial, Clinton notes, "I couldn't deny that the grand old paper still had a conscience; they didn't want Hillary and me handed over to a lynch mob. The rest of the Whitewater media was silent on the subject."
Perhaps the most revealing passage comes on page 692 in another account of his Starr-crossed days, in one sustained paragraph:
"I was genuinely confused by the mainstream press coverage of Whitewater...One day, after one of our budget meetings in October, I asked Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming to stay a moment to talk. Simpson was a conservative Republican, but we had a pretty good relationship because of the friendship we had in common with his governor, Mike Sullivan. I asked Alan if he thought Hillary and I had done anything wrong in Whitewater. 'Of course not,' he said. 'That's not what this is about. This is about making the public think you did something wrong. Anybody who looked at the evidence would see that you didn't.' Simpson laughed at how willing the 'elitist' press was to swallow anything negative about small, rural places like Wyoming or Arkansas and made an interesting observation: 'You know, before you were elected, we Republicans believed the press was liberal. Now we have a more sophisticated view. They are liberal in a way. Most of them voted for you, but they think more like your right-wing critics do, and that's much more important.' When I asked him to explain, he said, 'Democrats like you and Sullivan get into government to help people. The right-wing extremists don't think government can do much to improve on human nature, but they like power. So does the press. And since you're President, they both get power the same way, by hurting you.' I appreciated Simpson's candor and I thought about what he said for months. For a long time, whenever I was angry about the Whitewater press coverage I would tell people about Simpson's analysis. When I finally just accepted his insight as accurate, it was liberating, and it cleared my head for the fight."
As the book nears its close and we reach the 2000 election, Clinton claims that he cared so much about Al Gore winning that he offered to "stand on the doorstep of the Washington Post's headquarters and let him lash me with a bullwhip." Gore replied: "Maybe we ought to poll that." Clinton laughed and said, "Let's see whether it works better with my shirt on or off."
Bla bla bla Linda! I tried not responding to your dumb posts but you just won't shut up. It's like I'm your one and only interest. and what a loathsome cross that is to bear!
Nearthesea, in answer to your question while I was away, someone on a previous page was concerned about the cost of the book so I suggested the library.
I don't read much (if any) of what Clinton says or does now. When he was in office, I don't know, not much I can say, but bet he had some good times Mike liked him as President, and had voted for him both times.
Helen, so.. did you buy the book? Or were they sold out? (those are serious questions, not being sarcastic)
posted on June 22, 2004 08:52:20 PM new
I saw on the news today where they showed people standing in line waiting to get a copy of his book. They interviewed a lady that was there with her 2 young daughters and she said something like; it happened, he had oral sex with her and then lied about it and I want to read about it.
I suspect that alot of people will buy the book just for the dirty parts. Go figure, I don't know why.
I think it's rather sad that here you have a man that was President for 8 years and rather than focusing on his economics, health care initiatives or his foreign policy, instead everone focuses in on his extra-marital affair with a bimbo intern. By everyone I mean not just all the media, including the BBC, Oprah, SNL, Leno, Etc but individuals as well.
I would like to see an H. Stern or J. Springer interview of Pres. Clinton. You just know that one of them would probably ask him if while he was sitting behind the desk in the oval office with his pants down around his ankles did he gently stroke the back of his intern-bimbo's head while she polished his johnson, did he moan and groan with pleasure and did he just sit there like a rock or did he at least move his hips a little??
But remember his own words, I did it because I could. LOL
posted on June 23, 2004 11:06:00 PM new
taken from www.stuff.co/nz
WRONG DATE: Bill Clinton has raised eyebrows in New Zealand after claiming his wife, Hillary Clinton, was named after Kiwi mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary.
Reuters
Clinton claim causes stir in NZ
24 June 2004
Bill Clinton has raised eyebrows in New Zealand after claiming his wife, Hillary Clinton, was named after famous Kiwi mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, AFP reported today.
Problem is, Hillary conquered Mount Everest in 1953, almost seven years after infant Hillary was born.
Clinton makes the claim in his memoir, My Life, which went on sale this week.
The former president travelled to New Zealand several times while in office and referred to Sir Edmund as "the second favourite Hillary in our household". Hillary Clinton herself has attributed her name to the mountaineer.
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posted on June 24, 2004 08:43:00 PM new
Looks like we're beginning to get some feedback on ol' clinton's book. Guess some just aren't agreeing with his revision of history.
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Netanyahu Denies Clinton Claim About Golan Heights
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
June 23, 2004
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com)
- Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and two government advisors denied on Wednesday that Netanyahu -- the former Israeli prime minister -- had ever agreed to give up the entire Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria, as former President Bill Clinton claims in his new book.
Clinton wrote in his autobiography My Life that the two Israeli prime ministers who succeeded the late Yitzhak Rabin -- Netanyahu and Ehud Barak -- had both agreed to uphold Rabin's commitment to evacuate the entire Golan Heights.
"It's not true," said Reserve General Jacob Amidror, who was part of a five-man team that helped Netanyahu make contact with then-Syrian President Hafez Assad through (American) businessman Ron Lauder.
"I would testify with my hand on the Bible that what was said is not true," Amidror told CNSNews.com. "The Americans were not involved, and Netanyahu never said that he would go back to the 1967 line."
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Then there's Gennifer Flowers who has alerted her lawyers she may have need of their services IF she doesn't like what clinton wrote in his book about her. Say's he continues to lie about their 12 relationship.
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posted on June 24, 2004 08:46:59 PM new
Clinton Did Promise to Release Pollard, Israeli Insider Says
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
June 23, 2004
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com)
- Contrary to his own claims, former U.S. President Bill Clinton did promise to release convicted spy Jonathon Pollard as part of the Wye River Memorandum that Israel and the Palestinians signed in 1998 -- but Clinton went back on his word at the last minute, said an Israeli insider who attended the Wye talks.
In his autobiography My Life, Clinton denied that he had ever promised to release Pollard, an American convicted of spying on behalf of Israel and sentenced to life in prison in 1987.
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posted on June 24, 2004 09:01:25 PM new
It appears to me he's still in deep denial as to his actions with these women too. Some 'right-winged conspiricy' alright. They're all lying...and we're to believe he's telling the truth. right.....
I wonder if Kathleen Wiley will also be seeking the advice of a lawyer, again, after he made the below statement in his new book.
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By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Bill Clinton calls his sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky "immoral and foolish" and said his "relationship" with Gennifer Flowers was one he "should not have had." But in his autobiography flying out of bookstores, he doesn't mention several other women whose names were linked in scandal with his.
Mr. Clinton denied conducting affairs with Miss Lewinsky and Miss Flowers when news of them first surfaced, but he writes in his 957-page autobiography, "My Life," that now he is "deeply ashamed" of what he had done and lied about it because he was "trying to protect my family and myself from my selfish stupidity."
The former president gives no details on his relationships with Miss Lewinsky nothing about a blue dress or a cigar or with Miss Flowers, other than to say that he wanted to "slug" reporter Steve Croft of the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" when Mr. Croft pressed him about it in the "Stand by Her Man" Super Bowl interview.
He is less forthcoming about, or does not mention, other women who say they were either sexually involved with him, or that they had been sexually harassed or assaulted.
These include:
c Dolly Kyle Browning, a real estate lawyer and Clinton high school classmate who said she had an off-and-on-again romance with Mr. Clinton for 30 years.
c Sally Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas who said she had a four-month affair with him in 1983.
c Connie Hamzy, a self-proclaimed rock-and-roll groupie, who said Mr. Clinton propositioned her in 1984 while she was sunbathing by a Little Rock hotel pool.
c Juanita Broaddrick, a gubernatorial campaign volunteer who said Mr. Clinton raped her during a nursing-home-operators convention in Little Rock in April 1978.
c Bobbie Ann Williams, a one-time Little Rock prostitute who said Mr. Clinton fathered a child by her when he was the governor of Arkansas.
c Eileen Wellstone, an English woman who said Mr. Clinton sexually assaulted her after she met him at a pub near Oxford University where Mr. Clinton was a student in 1969.
c Sandra Allen James, a former Washington, D.C., political fund-raiser who said Mr. Clinton invited her to his hotel room during a 1991 campaign trip, pinned her against the wall and put his hand under her dress.
c Christy Zercher, an airline flight attendant on Mr. Clinton's 1992 campaign plane, who said Mr. Clinton exposed himself and grabbed her breasts.
c Lencola Sullivan, a former Miss Arkansas and fourth runner-up in the Miss America pageant.
c Elizabeth Ward, a former Miss Arkansas and Miss America.
c Susie Whitacre, press aide to Mr. Clinton when he was governor.
Several of the women were identified in a lawsuit filed by Larry Nichols, a one-time Arkansas state employee, as having had affairs with Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Clinton describes as a "liar"
Kathleen Willey, a one-time White House aide, who accused him of groping her during a November 1993 interview at the White House when, she testified under oath in federal court, Mr. Clinton was "very forceful" in the unwanted sexual advance kissing her on the mouth, touching her breasts and putting his hands under her dress.
He writes that her "sad tale" was part of a conspiracy by conservatives, including Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, to "discredit me and impair my ability so serve."
Mrs. Willey had applied to get back her job at the White House, citing financial problems. She learned later that her husband killed himself on the day of the meeting, citing mounting debts. Mr. Clinton does not say why he was interviewing an applicant for an assistant's position in the Office of Social Secretary, a relatively low-level position.
Mr. Clinton describes Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who said she was escorted in 1991 to a Little Rock hotel room by Arkansas state troopers, where Mr. Clinton exposed himself and asked her to "kiss it," as a political opportunist.
He writes that he agreed to pay Mrs. Jones an $850,000 settlement in a pending lawsuit, so he could get "back to work" for the American people.
"I settled the Paula Jones case for a large amount of money and no apology," he writes. "I hated to do it because I had won a clear victory on the law and the facts in a politically motivated case. But I had promised the American people I would spend the next two years working for them; I had no business spending five more minutes on the Jones case."
At the time of the November 1998 settlement, Mr. Clinton and his attorneys had spent more than four years contesting the Jones suit. Mr. Clinton writes that as a result of the lengthy Jones case he had an opportunity to spend "two to three hours alone in my office," where he read the Bible and books on faith and forgiveness.
"I had had a lot of stones cast at me, and through my own self-inflicted wounds, I had been exposed to the whole world," he writes. In some ways, it was liberating; I had nothing more to hide," he writes. "Whatever the motives of my adversaries, it became clear on those solitary nights ... that if I wanted compassion from others, I needed to show it."
Mr. Clinton writes that he is not angry at adversaries who raised questions about his conduct, made unsupported accusations or sought to damage his presidency.
"Becoming a good person is a lifelong effort that requires letting go of anger at others and holding on to responsibility for the mistakes I've made," he says. "And it requires forgiveness.
"After all the forgiveness I've been given from Hillary, Chelsea, my friends and millions of people in America and across the world, it's the least I can do."
posted on June 25, 2004 03:18:13 PM new
Another person who doesn't agree things happened the way clinton said they happened. oh....who to believe....the habitual liar or everybody else.
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There are places Bill Clinton remembers in My Life—just not too well, according to Kennedy School of Government professor and Dunster House Master Roger B. Porter, who alleges that the former president fabricated a damning conversation between the two of them in his newly-published memoir.
Recalling the impetus for his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton writes that he was initially ambivalent towards seeking the office, but says that a call from Porter "showed what was wrong with [then-President George H. W. Bush's] administration."
According to Clinton's book, Porter—then Bush's Economic and Domestic Policy Adviser—said that while other potential Democratic opponents could be undermined through weaknesses grounded in their politics, the Arkansas governor was "different."
"Here's how Washington works," Clinton quotes Porter as saying. "The press has to have somebody and we're going to give them you...We'll spend whatever we have to spend to get whoever we have to get to say whatever they have to say to take you out. And we'll do it early."
But the only conversation Porter can recall the two having came during President Bush's 1989 Education Summit with the Governors, at which he joked with Clinton about how he ought to run for president in much the same fashion as Ronald Reagan—as a Republican.
"We never had any conversation as he has described in his book," Porter said last night. "You don't remember every conversation in life, but I would certainly remember a conversation like that."
posted on June 25, 2004 03:42:16 PM new
Then if there are any sympathetic to poor Monica...My Way News reports from Reuters today:
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I really didn't expect him to talk in detail about the relationship," she said, according to a partial transcript of the interview provided by ITV.
"But what I was hoping, and did expect was for him to acknowledge and correct the inaccurate and false statements that he, his staff and the (Democratic National Committee) made about me when they were trying to protect the presidency," she said.
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poor, silly girl....why should he change just for you? And didn't you write a book of your own?
posted on June 25, 2004 06:33:38 PM new
Poor ol Bubba, had to resort to having Arkansas State Trooper pimp for him.
You would have figured clinton would have been smart enough, (oops did I say clinton & smart in the same sentence), to keep his lies straight.
"The natural family is a man and woman bound in a lifelong covenant of marriage for the purposes of:
*the continuation of the human species,
*the rearing of children,
*the regulation of sexuality,
*the provision of mutual support and protection,
*the creation of an altruistic domestic economy, and
*the maintenance of bonds between the generations."
posted on June 25, 2004 10:22:31 PM new
And here's a review from Newsweek:
NEWSWEEK:
Newsweek Obtains Copy of Clinton Memoir; 'Hardly an Edge-of-Your-Seat Experience'
Sunday June 20, 10:41 am ET
Shows No Remorse For Legal Dodges; In Paula Jones Case: 'I Would Have Answered ... Truthfully' If Jones's Lawyers Had Asked The Right Questions
NEW YORK, June 20 /PRNewswire/ --
In speeches and interviews, former President Bill Clinton has coyly hinted at the great revelations to be found within his book, "My Life," which goes on sale Tuesday. In truth, it is hardly an edge-of-your-seat experience, report Senior Editor Weston Kosova and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the June 28 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 21).
Throughout its leisurely 957 pages, however, every facet of Clinton's complex, nuanced and sometimes maddening personality is on display. In the book, which Newsweek obtained in a bookstore last week, Clinton is by turns introspective and willfully obtuse, expansive and curt. One moment, he forces the reader on a joyless march through an arid policy debate. The next, he offers up a raw, confessional moment that almost makes the book seem worth the $35 price of admission.
As ever, Clinton is generous to his friends and ruthless toward his enemies. It comes as no surprise that the former president saves his most bitter venom for Ken Starr. The book's index contains no fewer than 41 entries for the independent counsel, who worked tirelessly to bring him down. Clinton accuses Starr of breaking the law by leaking grand-jury testimony to the news media, and says Starr shouldn't have been allowed to pursue the Paula Jones case in the first place, because he had once publicly claimed she had a constitutional right to sue a sitting president.
Yet Clinton still shows no remorse for the shameless legal dodges he used to avoid being pinned down by prosecutors. During his 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case, in which he denied having "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton writes, "I would have answered...truthfully" if Jones's lawyers had asked the right questions. He was, of course, later found in contempt by the judge in the case, who said Clinton gave "false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process." Clinton writes that he strongly disagreed with the ruling.
For such a big book, there are a lot of other things curiously missing. Clinton denies sexually harassing Paula Jones, but doesn't give his account of what did, and didn't happen during that infamous hotel encounter.
He goes on at length about the enemies who whipped the Whitewater flap into a major scandal, but doesn't explain his and Hillary's role in the mess, or concede the political pressure he exerted in his attempts to make it disappear.
He is silent about Johnny Chung and Indonesian billionaire James Riady, who funneled vast sums in questionable contributions to Clinton's campaigns.
Clinton's selective memory about unflattering episodes in his life is interesting, considering his ability to recall the minutest details of his childhood. In what may be the best part of the book, Clinton lovingly re- creates his boyhood in Arkansas, remembering the names of every teacher, neighbor and shopkeeper.
But by the time Clinton finally becomes president on page 476, a little of the steam has gone out of the telling. Chapters often pass in a blur of policies, people and trips abroad, making the rare moments of candor leap out. At one point, Clinton ruefully recalls a debate inside the White House over whether he should give in to demands for an independent counsel to investigate Whitewater. Hillary urged him not to, saying it would set a terrible precedent.
But Clinton didn't listen. "I had nothing to hide," the lifelong keeper of secrets amazingly concluded. At the time, he was exhausted and grieving over his mother's recent death. Clinton gave the go- ahead for the investigation. Looking back now, knowing what he knows, he writes, "It was the worst presidential decision I ever made."
(Read Newsweek's news releases at http://www.Newsweek.com .
Click "Pressroom."
posted on June 26, 2004 04:51:13 AM new
Most people could care less what Clinton did in office... they are just buying the book to read about his sexual exploits...
One of this countries best presidents... not hardly.
posted on June 29, 2004 01:27:33 PM new
History Will Not be Kind to Clinton
By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com | June 29, 2004
Since 1960 we have had only two politically successful presidents -- reaffirmed and re-elected, dominating their decades: Reagan and Clinton. (Except for Kennedy, whose presidency was cut short, the others -- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush [41] -- were repudiated.) Clinton's autobiography, appearing as it does in such close conjunction to the national remembrance of Reagan, invites the inevitable comparison.
The contrast is obvious. Reagan was the hedgehog who knew -- and did -- a few very large things: fighting and winning the Cold War, reviving the economy and beginning a fundamental restructuring of the welfare state.
Clinton was the fox. He knew -- and accomplished -- small things. His autobiography is a perfect reflection of that: a wild mish-mash of remembrance, anecdote, appointment calendar and political payback. The themeless pudding of a million small things is just what you would expect from a president who once gave a Saturday radio address on school uniforms.
Small, but not always unimportant. Clinton did conclude NAFTA and did sign welfare reform. His greatest achievement was an act of brilliant passivity -- he got out of the way of one of the largest peacetime economic expansions in American history. And though he takes personal credit for all the jobs created -- a ridiculous assertion to make about the decade of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- he does deserve credit for not screwing things up. Presidents often do. He easily could have.
His great failing was foreign policy. Viewing the world through the narrow legalist lens of liberal internationalism, he spent most of his presidency drafting and signing treaty after useless treaty on such things as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. All this in a world where the biggest problem comes from terrorists and rogue states for whom treaties are meaningless.
Like the 1920s, the '90s were a golden age permeated by a postwar euphoria of apparently endless peace and prosperity. Both decades ended abruptly, undermined ultimately by threats that were ignored as they grew and burrowed underground. Clinton let a decade of unprecedented American prosperity and power go without doing anything about al-Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq (where his weakness allowed France and Russia to almost totally undermine the post-Gulf War sanctions). And although al-Qaeda declared war on America in 1996 and, as we now know, hatched the September 11 plot that same year, it continued to flourish throughout the decade.
Looking the other way was largely a function of the age -- our holiday from history, our retreat from seriousness, our Seinfeld decade of obsessive ordinariness. Clinton never could have been elected during the Cold War. In the 1990s, history produced the president perfectly suited to the time -- a time of domesticity, triviality and self-absorption.
Its essence is captured perfectly, and inadvertently, in one sentence, Clinton's own account of his response to al-Qaeda's most spectacular and murderous pre-Sept. 11 outrage: the African embassy bombings of Aug. 7, 1998. Ten days afterward, Clinton made his televised confession of having lied to the nation for seven months about the Monica affair. He then retired to a chilly vacation on Martha's Vineyard with wife and daughter. Two days later, he emerged by helicopter on the White House lawn, gave a snappy salute, and marched into the Oval Office to announce the bombing of an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a chemical factory in Sudan.
Clinton writes: "I spent the first couple of days (after the national television confession) alternating between begging for forgiveness (from Hillary) and planning the strikes on al-Qaeda.''
Or as he told Oprah just this week, "I'm bombing Osama bin Laden's training camp and sleeping on the couch. It was a strange time.''
That produced a strange man. His associates called this compartmentalization. I call it trivialization.
One is inevitably reminded of the quite unbelievable image of the president of the United States on the phone with a congressman discussing Bosnia while being simultaneously serviced by Monica Lewinsky.
What was always staggering to me about this scene was not what it says about Clinton's sexual practices -- I couldn't care less one way or another -- but about his unseriousness.
I never hated Clinton. On the contrary, I often expressed admiration for his charm and for the roguish cynicism that allowed him to navigate so many crises. Nor was I scandalized by his escapades. What appalled me then, a feeling that returns as Clinton has gone national revisiting his own presidency, is the smallness of a man who granted equal valence to his own indulgences on the one hand and to the fate of nations on the other. It is the smallness that disturbs. It is that smallness that history will remember.
"The natural family is a man and woman bound in a lifelong covenant of marriage for the purposes of:
*the continuation of the human species,
*the rearing of children,
*the regulation of sexuality,
*the provision of mutual support and protection,
*the creation of an altruistic domestic economy, and
*the maintenance of bonds between the generations."
posted on June 30, 2004 03:39:33 PM new
hey bear - latest challenge to his book...
CNN.com today's issue:
[Paula Jones],
Arkansas state employee whose sexual harassment suit against President Clinton helped trigger his impeachment, is challenging him to debate her publicly after he again denied harassing her in his new best-selling memoir.
"God, I and he knows what he did," Jones told CNN on Tuesday.
"Bill Clinton has a very big problem with telling the truth, and I think most of the American people know that.
"I'm not afraid of debating him because I know what happened, happened. He says it didn't happen, but it did happen," she said.
"I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to be out and meet him eye-to-eye and tell him he knows he did what he did to me. But Bill Clinton would never agree to something like that."
[url]
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One common demoninator is clear. They ALL think he has lied.
Re-elect President Bush!!
This topic is 6 pages long: 1new2new3new4new5new6new
Mike liked him as President, and had voted for him both times.
