Ain't gonna work. GWB will permanently go down as one of the worst POTUS's.

That being said, on personal note, why did you have your "conversion epiphany" in '96 ? What brought it on? I'd be interested.

Funny thing-----I RELUCTANTLY voted for Clinton
in '96; there were scandals swirling & I had ominous feeling about what was to come.

When Lewinsky scandal broke in '98 I had enough.
I didn't think it merited impeachment,but I thought honorable thing was for him to resign, which, of course, he didn't do.

The above caused me to switch my affiliation to independent in '98.

Priapus53 "When Lewinsky scandal broke in '98 I had enough.
I thought honorable thing was for him to resign, which, of course, he didn't do.

The above caused me to switch my affiliation to independent in '98."


You switched your political affiliation because Clinton did not resign?
You have some gall for a guy without balls, to call others old maids!!!

Btw, still moderated on the other boards ?----

First, I was wrong.  Up until the second Clinton election I had voted the Democratic ticket my entire life and was as solid a liberal/democrat then as I am a conservative/republican now.  Accordingly, I had a low opinion of Reagan, although having been a Soviet studies student I could understand where he was coming from.
That said:
The city of London unveiled a statue in honor or Reagan.  Although it was paid for with private funds, the Westminster City Council voted to make an exception rule refusing permission for statues until ten years have passed since the death of the person.
When he left office, the view in Europe was that Reagan was a dangerously simplistic cowboy, of limited intellectual ability, and would be remembered as possibly the worst U.S. president in history.  He had been burnt in effigy in every capital of Western Europe.  Sounds a lot like someone else.
In a childish display of undiplomatic behavior, the American ambassador did not attend the unveiling.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011077/10ft-Ronald-Reagan-statue-unveiled-London.html#ixzz1RKjcDwi2

Reminds me of a CNN quote.  During the funeral, one of the CNN commentators was surprised at the event.  He turned to his associate and asked, "Did we do the people a disservice by missing a story?"  (Not exact quote, but a recognition they were wrong.)

I am not going to make the final judgment on a president who is only two years out of office.  But my point is that you cannot make the judgment that he is the worst this soon.

You may think he will go down as the worst, and that will never change.  When people said that about RR, they didn't say, "He will be the worst president in history for ever, until 10 years."  

In the first year after he left office, Bush's approval as president went from 22% to 45%, and I haven't seen anything in over a year.  

As to your question, my ephinany actually happened in two sections.

First, my faith was a little shaken when I went to the USSR in '76.  The USSR was one of the richest countries in the world - gas, oil, coal, diamons, steel, and all the resources you could ask for.  They did not have toilet paper or coffee.  (At the time, I spoke fluent Russian and was wandering around Leningrad and Krasnodar pretty much on my own for 8 weeks.  I started law school late because I stayed in the USSR too long.)  They had the world's largest department store (GUM), which had about 15 pairs of shoes.  (The state told factories how many shirts to make and gave them so much material.  The net result was they could make 100,000 shirts in small, none in medium or large, and no one had shirts after they used a million feet of cotton.  Every other thing that makes life comfortable had a similar story.  More people died of starvation in the middle of rich farmland in peace time, than died in the entire Civil War in the US)

The last day in Krasnodar, some of the university students I had met took me to the airport and while we were waiting for the plane, they asked if I would be coming back to visit.  I was about to say, "Why don't you come to the US?"  After all, they were all university students on the success track.  Then I realized that they were all slaves and could never leave.  (When the Soviet Union fell, that changed, but I could not foresee it then.  Later, I learned the Pope, the President and the Prime Minister were some of the only people who saw the system would collapse.

(When conductors, dancers, and other artists came to the US on tour, they were not allowed to bring their family on the tour.  Even though they were the elite of the nation, it was feared if they came to the west with their family, they would never go back.)

The second thing was the reaction of the left to Clintion committing perjury. The left had taken strong positions against sexual harrassment on the job.  I had previously heard the head of NOW say that any sex between unequal people at the work place was rape.  The left created a structure to enforce anti-harrasment laws, and the Clinton committed perjury.  NOT LIED. EVERYONE LIES.  That was perjury. It is a crime because it undermines the legal system.  In this case it undermined the laws against sexual harrassment.  If you could commit perjury in sexual harrament cases, the law was a farce.

When Clinton was accused, I was amazed at the reaction of the left to someone who had crapped on their entire creation, and they flocked to him. I heard someone from NOW say that women often lie about sexual harrassment.  (WHAT??????? How can NOW take that position. It is insane.  What rabbit hole had I slipped into?)

The girl's father (can't even remember her name) was angry that they were attacking the president.  If I has sent my daughter to be an intern in the White House and I later found out that someone had shoved a cigar up her cunt, I would have barged into the White House and kicked his ass down PA Ave.
And the father was defending the person who did that to his daughter and made her a national joke. She was a regular on every late night talk show comedy section for 6 months, and he wasn't mad at the person who humiliated her.

I asked how can people totally ignore everything they believe in and everything they love the most (or should - a man's daughter) to support a sleeze.  And I had no answer. I started thinking.

Those are the short versions.  There were a few other things.  (My S.O teaching in public schools,etc, but those were the biggies.)I started writing an essay for other purposes, but can't find it or I would PM you.

I just saw this so it is a little redundant to my next post.  It isn't that Clinton didn't resign, although that would have been honorable.

It was that the feminist left, which had made sexual harrasment at the work place one of their main corner stones, flocked to what may have been the most insulting incident of work place harrasment.  The most powerful man in the world shoves a cigar into a rather private place of an underling, then lies about it in public, implying that she was making the story up, and when the house of cards crumbles, the Feminist left defenstrates the victim and flocks to the offender, attacking anyone who questions his standing.

...have to be "unwelcome"?  Lewinski was a willing participant, maybe even the instigator.

Sure, Clinton was an asshole for doing it and then lying about it and impugning Monica's story, but that doesn't make what he did sexual harassment.  I don't recall Monica saying she felt pressured because Clinton was in a position of authority (the ultimate position of authority).

Title VII prohibits employment discrimination and sexual harassment is one type of employment discrimination. But only unwelcome sexual harssment violates Title VII:

(2) The employee was subject to unwelcome sexual harassment, i.e., sexual advances, request for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is unwelcome in the sense that it is unsolicited or unincited and is undesirable or offensive to the employee;


     Now individual companies can certainly prohibit dating between employees - see Dallas Cowboys EX 1 - and make it a firing offense, and feminist organizations can do likewise,  but it is not illegal under federal law.

The view of NOW and other groups was any sexual conduct between a superior and a person under him, please excuse the pun, was inherently coercive, and could not  be consenual. When your boss calls you in, unzips his pants, and says "Take Dicktation," consent is irrelevant.

THAT is exactly why many business have a policy of ZERO "fraternizing."  A boss cannot date a secretary.

In the view of the feminists, it was so fraught with danger of intimidation.

Please. Think for a moment.  Haven't you heard that many work places don't allow any internal dating?  I have some friends in the AGs office and they were attracted to each other. Co-equals. And they thought they had to keep it secret until they actually got married.  At that point one was transfered to another office because the fear then became favoritism.

The ironic thing is that the liberal feminist movement moved from "I am woman, I am strong.
to "I am woman. I am too weak to stand up for myself. I need the State to protect me."

Finally, even if that were true, WHICH IT IS NOT, a father SHOULD still be pissed when he sends his daughter to work in the White House, and POTUS shoves a cigar up her cunt.  I wouldn't give a rat's ass if my daughter "consented."  I would still barge in 1600 PA Ave and bash the guy's head in.  That is my daughter, and no one does that to her and makes her tabbacie scented vagina the subject of jokes on Letterman.

But no. Her father was mad at everyone else.

about the Clinton-Lewinski incident where there was no government policy forbidding dating/ romances/ sex between members of the Executive Branch, so I think your NO DEFINATELY NOT response to his post was mighty misleading.


      Further, I don't think you are correct that the "feminist view, which is what I was talking about, was that sex between unequals was inherently coercive." I suppose there are some feminists who hold that view but there are many "feminists" out there and that view by no means has been universally adopted by all who claim that label.

And BTW, W is still far and away the worst President in history. You don't need 10 or 20 years of history to know this.

LBJ was reviled in his time largely because of Viet-nam. 20 years after his death, he got higher marks in his Presidency because of his "great society" & civil rights programs. All this comes from out of touch academia Presidential historians. If one lived during LBJ's time ( either some of the historians were
young children, or born after his Presidency )
than one realized what an abomination he was, who caused lasting scars to this country.

I regard Reagan as the 20th century's most overrated POTUS. But, Phil, this is an exercise in futility. Liberals despise Reagan as do conservatives FDR. Yet both frequently rank in the top 10 of POTUS's. It's all subjective according to one's ideology.

I was not talking necessarily in the context of the technicalities of the law.  

I was talking about how the feminist movement viewed "sexaul harrassment."  

The law can define something one way, but many people may use it in a different way.

The feminist view, which is what I was talking about, was that sex between unequals was inherently coercive.

Pelease, think and use your memory.  Have you never heard of work places prohibiting all fraternization?  

Don't look up something is a law book to find definitions all the time.  

YES, you admit individual companies can make it a firing offense, and do it.  THink:  Why would some companies have such a policy if no one would call it sexual harrasment because it is consensual?
They are responding to social - not universal and not legal - definitions.

IN FACT, feminisists would be more likely to take a stricter view and prohibit this - and it was the feminist view that Clinton crapped on and still they swooned to him.

FINALLY  even if everything you say is true legally, and legally is the last of my interests, if I were the father and a guy did that to my daughter, I would not be saying "Gosh, how does Title VII define sexual harrassment?  No. It is okay of that guy to shove a cigar up my daughter's twat and make her a laughing stock."  

NO. I would kick his ass.  

And the fact that Dad and NOW flocked to Clintoon is where I started, what I stated int he middle, and where I conclude.

Can you not understand that.

Someone asked me why I changed my mind, and it got off track.

And you may think he is still the worst president, but the view of him is already changing.  It has only been two years, and a vast number of people who formerly disliked him have changed their opinon.

And you can predict the future in 30 years, because everything you think is absolute fact and not based on perception and opinion.

There is a genre of "what if" literature.  What if Hitler won, JFK lived, etc.

I can think of 1,000 possible events that would restore W and make him look great.  I am not saying they will happen, because I can't predict the future, unlike some people, but any on them are possible, maybe likely.  

Want a few?

-- Modified on 7/7/2011 6:52:26 AM

Some things that you think showed how bad he is are things other people think proved how great he is.

Just one that  you mentioned - unions.  First, he only took a stand against public employee unions, which many liberal icons also abhored - like FDR.

Second, "liberal" states - NY and Wisconsin as a start - are taking stands that reflect RR's views.

And they are doing that because the public employee unions destroyed their budget.  

You may hate him, but RR was the visionary that allowed a liberal state like NJ to reign it it's worst problem.

I wasn't talking law. He changed it to legally. I stayed with non-legally. He went legally. I said I wasn't talking legally.

If you haven't heard the theory that I am talking about, I just don't know where you have been.

I am not revising history by changing the facts, etc.

I am just saying perception of historical figures changes.  One day someone is viewed as the greatest thing since sliced bread and the next he is considered the Devil's Spawn.

All I said from the start of this thread it that perceptions change and it is dangerous to make the "final" assessemnt when the ink is still dry.  

The day Obama was elected, a friend told me he was going to be great.  She has already changed her mind.  I didn't know what Obama would do in the next 4 (8) years, and I just said it was a little early to say.

All I am saying is that to look at a president the day after his term ends and say, "History will judge him as X. Y, or Z"  is very presumptious.  To know today how history will make judgments in 30 years is just crazy.

All I am saying is to make a judgement like that is silly.

Is that really so hard to understand?  Can  you say for sure how "history" will judge

I have a middle view of Reagan.  On the one hand, his intelligence was under-estimated.  He was far from an "amiable dunce."  And his overture to Gorbachev in Iceland was one of the most brilliant, game-changing ideas in recent diplomatic history.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of most of his other policies.  And especially not a fan of the Iran-contra affair that was run under his nose by a renegade National Security office by Poindexter and North, violating the express will of Congress.  In all likelihood, it was after Reagan had declined due to Alzheimers -- at least if you believe Ron Reagan's account.
In sum, not our worst President (I agree with Pri on Dubya for that "honor"), but certainly not the "Saint Ronald" that the Right believes in.

I am not even commenting on the merits of RR.  All I am saying is that instant judgments can be a bad idea, and that appears to be the case now.  He was universally "known" to be the worst. Now they have statutes to him in London.

As to those who say he was an amiable dunce, and I know you are not saying it, I will say one thing:

For years, RR was a lib Dem and a labor leader.  He was known by every person in the Hollywood industry and liked and admired.  They admired him so much that they made him president of the Screen Actors Guild.  In decades in Hollywood, you cannot find one piece of contemporary literature that described him as dumb.

Everything that describes him as dumb dates from the time after he changed his views.  Then everyone "knew" Ronnie was a nice, but not too smart person.

Funny how contemporary records never reflected that.  And I am accused of revisionist.

...everyone say I change the subject (to change the subject)?

Yes, you pointed out the incongruity of feminists taking Clinton's side over Lewinsky but you used the legal conclusion of referring to his conduct as "sexual harassment" and "workplace harassment."  I simply asked you how you arrived at these legal conclusions.

BTW, "definately" should definitely only be used in TER reviews.  

-- Modified on 7/7/2011 5:48:40 PM

...Legacy Project, an attempt to deify him started while he was still alive.  If he was so great, why are his acolytes making such a concerted effort to get his name and image on everything they can?

His greatness should speak for itself.  When was the last time you saw a TV commercial for Rolls Royce?

...feminists throwing Lewinski under the bus to protect their boy Clinton.

Thanks for the clarification as to your usage of "harassment"

-- Modified on 7/7/2011 7:47:11 PM

Sexual harassment is not only a legal term, nor is "work place harassment."  It is true that they have legal meanings, but they are not limited to that.  

Harassment has non-legal meanings.  You can harass people in a way that has sexual innuendos and it is still harassment.

In fact, before the laws were enacted, it was a part of the common language.  If you think about it, the first "sexual harassment" cases were non-statutory and common law.  That means that they were applying the legal tort system to something that existed.

The term pre-dates any statutes.  Statutes adopted it and gave it a legal meaning, but they did not restrict the English language usage.

Try thinking of "nuisance."  It has both a legal and non-legal meaning.

I never arrived at legal conclusions.  I don't do legal unless I am getting paid. Far too boring.

Finally, even if there is a legal meaning, the feminist movement is always seeking to expand it.  They do not settle for it when it is narrowly defined.

My point was that the feminist flocked to the the wrong side.

AND THE ONE AMAZING THING was the head of NOW saying sometimes women lie about molestation and rape.  Of course, they do, but that is not a position that now ever announced.  They always give the benefit of the doubt to the woman.  Here, she makes accusations and they were saying, "Gosh, maybe she's a liar." Puke, Puke, Puke.

Posted By: BigPapasan

...everyone say I change the subject (to change the subject)?

Yes, you pointed out the incongruity of feminists taking Clinton's side over Lewinsky but you used the legal conclusion of referring to his conduct as "sexual harassment" and "workplace harassment."  I simply asked you how you arrived at these legal conclusions.

BTW, "definately" should definitely only be used in TER reviews.  

-- Modified on 7/7/2011 5:48:40 PM

Yes, it was paid for privately. I think I said that in my OP.

The thing is the Westminster City Hall granted an exemption to the muni law requiring that the subject be dead for 10 years.  

If the City was not comfortable with it they didn't have to do that.

In fact, you can't just put up a statute in London because you have the money for it.  Any statutes have to be approved by the City.

As for your position that greatness speaks for itself, it is kind of funny that The Great Obama is going to have 4 years that he can point to and he needs A BILLION DOLLARS to run for re-election.  That shatters the old record by hundreds of millions.

He has the bully pulpit can could call a press conference every day if he didn't want to pay for it.

Of course, as you say, "His greatness should speak for itself.  When was the last time you saw a TV commercial for Rolls Royce?"

In any event, everyone does that. Cinton has a foundation that is tax exempt and raises millions for vairous Clinton projects.  So do they all.  But when RR does, it shows.... Well, I don't know what it shows.

Ironically, the statute is not even in "London," legally. It is in Westminster, which is the adjoining city.  Most of London isn't legally in London, any more than Rodeo Drive is in L.A.  If I recall, the Queen has to request permission to even go to London from the Lord Mayor, because she lives in Westminster.

However, everyone says, "London."  In 30 plus years of going overseas, I don't think I ever heard anyone say they were going to Westminster, althought that is where 98% (estimate) go.

I hate law.  I just had a rotten day with stupid lawyers. And most were my friends. Idiots all.