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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (9931)	10/17/1998 12:55:00 PM
From: Volsi Mimir	Respond to of 67261

The Hidden Side of Clinton Economy The official government measures of unemployment and poverty disguise the fact that millions of Americans can't make a decent living theatlantic.com by John E. Schwarz A TRIUMPHAL view dominates coverage of the longest peacetime recovery in U.S. history. The numbers tell the story: the lowest yearly unemployment in a quarter century, rising profits, a budget in balance, low interest rates, even lower inflation, and declining numbers of Americans classified as poor. All this is cause for rational exuberance. Allen Sinai, a noted economic analyst, has likened the times to a "worker heaven." But just as the buoyant Reagan economy of the 1980s masked seas of red ink, so the booming Clinton economy of the 1990s masks bad news. Relying on dubious measures that tell us good news, we have ignored the deepening erosion of the American Dream.

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (9931)	10/17/1998 1:01:00 PM
From: Volsi Mimir	Respond to of 67261

Ex-Spokesmen Speak Out on Clinton By LINDA DEUTSCH AP Special Correspondent dailynews.yahoo.com ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) _ Two former presidential press secretaries said Friday they would have refused to lie if they'd been working for Bill Clinton and would have resigned when he admitted lying to them and the American people about Monica Lewinsky. But George Christian, spokesman for Lyndon B. Johnson, and Larry Speakes, who handled press for the Ronald Reagan White House, said they believe Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry escaped with his credibility intact. Christian and Speakes, appearing at the Associated Press Managing Editors annual conference, said they were dismayed that the president misled his cabinet for so long about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. Christian said he is surprised cabinet members didn't resign en masse. ''The way President Clinton has hung his folks out to dry for months is unconscionable,'' Christian said. ''It's still bubbling in the cabinet and elsewhere _ that they went out and lied for him. '' ... Today there's numerous persons working in the White House that are so unhappy they're talking big,'' Christian said. ''It hinders the White House and makes it difficult for (the President) to function. But it's his own fault.'' Christian was asked by moderator Ed Jones, managing editor of The Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Va., if he would resign under those circumstances. ''Oh, I would have to,'' Christian said. ''I think anyone hung out like that would have to quit. I'm surprised members of the cabinet haven't quit.'' McCurry had considered leaving the administration earlier this year but delayed his departure to support the president as the Lewinsky scandal developed. He left earlier this month. Speakes said a press secretary who was lied to would be forced to resign. ''You make a choice: You're either going to bend your morals or resign,'' he said. If he learned the president had lied to the American people, what would he do? ''I'd be mad as a hornet and yes, I think I'd probably resign,'' Speakes said. The press secretaries gave high marks to the press for accuracy, and another member of the panel, Kevin Merida of The Washington Post, said the criticism of press coverage was predictable. ''It happens every time we get involved with sex. It happened in '92 with Gennifer Flowers and going back to Gary Hart,'' Merida said. One panelist, political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, said the crisis has empowered the cabinet. ''It appears to me that (Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright and the secretary of the treasury now have incredible opportunity to do policy,'' Jeffe said. ''The White House is too busy dealing with Monica.''

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (9931)	10/17/1998 1:19:00 PM
From: Volsi Mimir	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Intelligentsia Bankrupt by James K. Glassman October 15, 1998 intellectualcapital.com It is easy to pick on artists when they write about politics. They may know fiction and poetry, but, when their brains turn to matters of state, we get, well ... mush. But why did the new editor of The New Yorker, an intelligent fellow named David Remnick, decide to put their uninformed, often moronic opinions on display? It is mind-boggling, but there they were, leading off the "Talk of the Town" section in the Oct. 5, 1998, edition. In fact, so many artists wanted to weigh in that the pieces slopped over into the next issue. "The Topic"; was it necessary In its coy style, The New Yorker did not even delineate the question, other than to call it "The Topic," but we all knew what it was: the Lewinsky scandal. "Thanks to the papers," said the introduction, "we know what the columnists think. Thanks to round-the-clock cable, we know what the ex-prosecutors, the right-wing blondes, the teletropic law professors, the disgraced political consultants think. Thanks to the polls, we know what the 'American people' think. But what about the experts on human folly?" For the defense The first expert was the hyperbolic Toni Morrison, who tells us that the independent counsel's authority "may be reminiscent of a solitary Torequemada on a holy mission of lethal inquisition" (a theme to which many of the Nobelist's colleagues will return). She talks about "feral Republicans, smelling blood and a shot at the totalitarian power they believe is rightfully theirs" as they mount a "sustained, bloody, arrogant coup d'etat." Next, we have Janet Malcolm, who writes (well, I should add) on such matters as psychoanalysis. "It is the brash Monica," she writes, "not the passive Bill, who finally earns the reader's censure." Actually, this is a kind portrayal of the intern. Someone named Louis Begley (sorry if I can't identify him; The New Yorker, again coyly, provides no clues, but he writes like a prig) calls her a "little slut." Novelist Jane Smiley opines: "War always brings Bill Clinton to a state of deep reluctance rather than a state of secret thrill. Love seems to have a different effect. Love seems to turn him on." This is good, she believes -- who doesn't? In fact, throughout these little essays, there winds the theme that left-wingers are hot, sexy folks, while right-wingers are uptight, resentful prudes. (This has not been my personal experience.) More...