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I am getting this page up a bit later than I had originally intended when I came up with the original concept, but what can you do. This page will hopefully remain active from my keyboard as I try to keep logs of my opinions on the current events of the day. (Hopefully now that I've finally made this public online, it will help me keep up-to-date on it.) I am making this page public on August 29, 1998. I decided a few days ago to do this. The first log was originally written for the Doll Steak Mailing List, a sister to the Heart-Shaped Mailbox Nirvana mailing list, intended for off-topic discussion.

The first part of this page is a transcript of "The Statement the President Should Have Made," as read by Bill Maher.

This page has been accessed times since August 29, 1998.

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-- I thank the people for the 70% approval rating.
And to those many others who feel their curiosity about my personal life has blossomed into a right, who feel that the fate of the Republic is so dependent on me fessing up, let me, as a final gesture of grace, give you what you want.
You want the truth?
You want to know what I really think?
Well, here it is.
She [ bleep ].


*Copied from "Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher" 8/17/98 broadcast, http://www.abc.com/pi

August 19, 1998

What is this country (the U.S. of A.) coming to? This whole Monica Lewinsky thing should not have happened. An investigation proceeding to spend seven months seeing if the president lied about an affair with an intern, in a case that was dismissed and about a question that the judge said was irrelevant? I understand the minor significance of the President of the United States of America lying under oath, BUT, the truth is, NO American other than Bill Clinton (okay, maybe Hillary Clinton too) would have been busted for that. The real legal world doesn't spend the time or the money to investigate if someone may have lied, or even did lie about something so mundane. And the fact that people make such a big deal about how he lied to us when he came out and said that he "did NOT have sexual relations with that woman......" Oh no, he lied to us! How DARE he lie to us, right?? Are these people crazy??? They don't think that past presidents and Congressmen and everyone else have lied to us about MUCH more serious matters about foreign and domestic policy? And then you get into the people who literally do not believe that almost every other president in history has behaved the way Clinton has in his private life. Please! They talk about the founding fathers...JEFFERSON had bastard children with one of his slaves!!! I do NOT condone adultery; the common, widespread occurrence of it disgusts me. But for Christ's sake, it's his family's business. And these people whining about being lied to seven months ago....damned naive babies. Yeah, it's not like Nixon ever lied, it's not like Reagan or Bush ever lied about Iron Contra, something that MATTERS to the world. These are good Christian, conservative Republicans, right?? And look at Bob Dole, he cheated on his first wife. He came up out of the blue after spending night after night down working in his basement and told his wife that he wanted a divorce. And they had a kid together. How about Gingrich? His wife was in the hospital suffering from cancer when he told her that he wanted a divorce. People dare criticize Clinton's morals in favor of these people? Clinton is still married to his wife after so many years. (Of course, speaking of naivete....I actually feel that this is based highly on practicality for Bill's and Hillary's goals....but they're still married nevertheless, and the truth is that I do not know what goes on behind their closed doors. None of us do.)

All of this crap pisses me off. Call me cynical, but I don't expect that everything I'm told by the President of the United States is the damn truth. For reasons of national security AND for the reason that they are human, I do not expect that everything they tell me is the truth. And that's about stuff that MATTERS, I don't give a flying shmuck one way or the other if they lie to me about sex on TV, that's their damn business. Clinton shouldn't have had to go on TV saying that in the first place. Does it matter? No. The great accomplishments outlined in the Presidential Address days after the Lewinsky story broke, THAT is what matters, and Clinton has done a hell of a job at his job.

This is about President Clinton's private life, and it's not our business if he got a blow-job from some 21-year-old intern, where 18 is the legal age of consent. You may feel that if you're famous then you are open for this stuff to come out about you, but the crazy thing is HOW it came out. It wasn't just some rumor where this girl was on tape talking so much about her experiences with Clinton, but the fact that this jackass spent seven months (so far, at the time of writing this) spending millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars to see if such a STUPID and pointless thing happened. No reason to it. Perjury my ass, NO OTHER citizen would have gotten this. No one would have given a second thought if the slightest evidence came out that any other citizen may have lied about something that the judge had already said was irrelevant in the civil case and threw out anyway. People sure like to say these days that the president is not above the law. Isn't that the damn truth, apparently he's BELOW the law.

So now yesterday we attacked Afghanistan and Sudan, and people in CONGRESS are actually trying to say that Clinton decided to do this to get away from the Lewinsky flack. Are these people nuts? WE were bombed two weeks ago. Yet they say think that Clinton is just doing this to save himself somehow? This was a serious decision made with the top military officials for our country. I just can't understand the way some people think.

(Please forgive me for the time lapse here; classes for my 3rd year of college started this week and I didn't have time to keep up with this project of mine.)

I was thinking tonight about the big deal that many people make about the problem of parents not being able to use the president as a high standard for their kids to look up to. I am only 21 years old and therefore do not have any kids, though I can certainly understand the struggle that many parents must be having with all of this news out about the President of the United States lying. I do think that this is a big problem, despite the fact that I am politically a big Clinton-supporter and ultimately wish for him to carry out his term unaffected by this:

It certainly seems all fine and dandy for people to have these fuzzy ideals for how their national leaders should behave, as viewed by their children, but the straight-out truth is that our feelings on this are skewed by the brainwashing of our country's past ideals. This is only a problem in our country, none other. All other nations recognize that their leaders are not moral perfections. Your leader does not have to be perfect. Your leader has to get the job done, and get it done well. That is what Clinton has done. Politics is a messy business. It is a messy phenomenon. It is not something that kids understand, it is not a part of their world. It seems natural for us Americans to wish for our children to look up to the President of the United States for moral leadership, but this is irrational. The very truth and realness, and harshness, that is a part of leading a country such as the United States of America is a deterrant for wanting someone like Fred "Mr." Rogers to lead it. Surely it would be nice for the leader to be a perfect person, but considering that there is no way that anybody could be a perfect human being by each American's standards, this is obviously unrealistic.

Countless times since the Lewinsky story broke in January '98 I have heard people remark about how because of Clinton's behavior the world is laughing at us. This is pure ignorance and naivete, the laughs are obviously not at Clinton, but at our conservative opinions, and our own naive beliefs that Clinton's behavior should be unexpected. They are laughing not at Clinton, they are laughing at the fact that our country has made such a big deal about this matter; they are laughing at the fact that this has become a matter in our country. The ridiculous thing is that this is not a judgement call that I am making, but pure fact. Still, to this day I hear Clinton-bashers whining about how he's made our country a laughing-stock. Wow...some people...

Okay, as I feared, I haven't kept up with this page like I had hoped to. I guess I can always go and blame school. I feel that I must say, however, that I have been quite a bit more upset over this Clinton thing than I had been in the past, demonstrated above. In fact I became upset several days ago when hearing about the number of Congressional Democrats who spoke out in Congress against Clinton, including Clinton's own friend, Sen. Lieberman. However, when I saw Lieberman's speech for myself...it didn't quite strike me as being very ...I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for...'much.' Important. I don't know. That's my opinion...the talking heads and news anchors made it sound much more dramatic than it was.

Here's an interesting tidbit, though...last night on Politically Incorrect, I believe, Bill Maher made a joke about Dick Gephardt deciding to go by "Richard Gephardt" instead, due to this Clinton garbage. Today on NBC Nightly News, I see Mr. Gephardt, and under him I see, you guessed it, "Richard Gephardt" for the first time. I found that rather humorous.

But now I have another little tangent to go on. A lot of people have been insisting that this thing with Clinton and Lewinsky are "NOT" about sex, but about lying. Really? Let's see...the president admitted to the grand jury, to the country, and to the world that he had lied and had indeed had a somewhat 'sexual' relationship with Monica Lewinsky, albeit not "sexual" by the definition specified in the Paula Jones hearing, supposedly. So, what happens after Clinton says this to the grand jury? Is it over, since Clinton confessed to the "crime" that he was being investigated about? Of course not. The next day, Monica Lewinsky is called back again to testify. And now Starr's report is full of hundreds and hundreds of pages in great detail about the sexual relationship that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky. Call me crazy, but, if the man ADMITS that he lied, then what is with all of the sexual detail? Although I must say that I just considered a possible answer to my own question...perhaps Lewinsky's testimony still disagrees with Clinton's claim that he didn't have a "sexual relationship" with her, as defined in the Jones hearing. We shall see, won't we....thanks to that Freedom of Information Act, I suppose...

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I've got to say....I must be totally missing something, because I don't understand one bit how it is at all Contitutional, or even right under any circumstances for Congress to have decided to make that Starr report public on the Internet or anywhere else. There are damn paperback books out NOW with it available for purchase at bookstores. What the hell?? How is this public domain? I don't get it, I don't know why they made it public at all, or especially why they did it so ridiculously soon. I guess there's a lot that I don't understand. But let me tell you something, it was released I guess three days ago now on the Internet, and I've not made the slightest effort to go read it. In my opinion it is wrong for us to read that report. That's it...

Today the video of the president's testimony was released to the mass media of live television. I continue to wonder how it is legal that this is happening, that this information is being released to the mass media...or any media for that matter. I've been watching these Republican Congressmen on TV the past several days talking about their decision to release the information, and I've heard a few commentators remark about how this stuff is supposed to be kept private by the definition of a grand jury, yet no one, that I've seen or heard, has given me any reason for why it is legal or right that Congress has made this information available to the world. It makes no sense to me still.

I still have not yet made any attempt to retrieve the Starr report released to the Internet, and I do not plan to. I find the act of such rather immoral, I do not believe that it should have been released. Of course, I find the whole investigation rather unethical, if not immoral...but they're two different things at this point, as far as I'm concerned. Now, when I got up this morning at about 9:30, I admit that I did put on NBC to see what was happening, and I saw the commentators talking. I went into the shower, and when I came out the president was there talking to the "independent" prosecutors. I admit that I watched for several minutes, and then came over to the computer and had the TV on as I did other stuff on here, paying little attention. I then got dressed and went to Rosh Hashana services where I repented for my sin of watching the parts of that mockery to the American judicial system that I did.

And speaking of Rosh Hashana, it seems that many Jews are outraged that Congress released the tape to be aired today, on the Jewish New Year, one of the holiest days of the year. I am outraged, but not as a Jew. I am outraged as an American that the tape was released to begin with, of course, and more in regards to the holiday today, I am outraged that considering schoolchildren around the country were off, of all religions, that these kids were home watching this tape. Unbelievable. And it was the supposed moral Republican majority of Congress that voted on releasing this tape! Unbelievable...

Of course, this tape was a bit more unescapable than the written report. NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, Nightline...if you're going to be watching the news, you're going to see this. And I did. And quite frankly, from what I saw, I felt that the president was quite well-composed under the circumstances, and I found his answers pretty darn good. For all who are complaining about his misleading answers and how he is just totally stickng to very specific words and information.....hey, that's how our legal system works! Either he lied or he did not. If it 'sounds' like he lied under oath but the words are so tricky that he technically did not, then that is all that matters!

All right, that's enough for now. I feel better about the presidency than I did the last time I wrote here, though the whole thing is still quite annoying to me. I still despise Starr. I think very little of Lewinsky, too. The president, in my opinion, is also a jerk...but a brilliant politician. I stand by my vote for him on the 5th of November, 1996. Sue me.

Well. What a damned interesting time in U.S. politics it has been this past semester, this third year of mine in college. In the beginning I started to keep a personal journal of my feelings of what had been going on, but, alas, that ceased due to minimal time on my part to put into it. The semester has now ended. I have missed a hell of a lot to comment on, on this page,, but I have certainly been keeping up with the news, big-time. Hell, I even did a project in connection to it for my Communication and U.S. Cultural Studies class this past semester. And I was certainly there at the polls on November 3rd, voting almost a straight-Democratic ticket. (I voted Republican for Comptroller.)

The most appropriate thing for me to do here and now is at least pick up with the current events of the day. Last week the House Judiciary Committee voted in the four articles of impeachment against President Clinton. Anyone with an impartial attitude (and ideally even with a biased attitude, if our elected representatives are to theoretically have any basic intelligence to have graduated high school sufficiently....yes, even by American standards) can clearly see that the offenses addressed in these debates for impeachment do not meet the criteria set by our founding fathers. And you can forget about the idea of interpretation; our founding fathers outside of the words within the U.S. Constitution addressed quite clearly exactly what they intended by allowing for the act of impeachment. It was to disallow presidents from becoming tyrants. It was to allow for the removal of presidents who commit treason. It is my opinion that Senate majority leader Trent Lott should be removed from office for having committed treason, not anything that President Clinton is charged with within these articles of impeachment. [Lott, of course, who yesterday expressed feelings that President Clinton sent our troops to war merely for his own political gain, before having been briefed by our military counsel. Lott, who paid no attention to the largely non-U.S. connections to this matter who have large roles in these circumstances of strife with Iraq, and who made the decision to strike with the U.S., not because of.]

And then there are those such as Dick Armey who claim that all of this distrust and these questions of Clinton's motives are all the more reason to impeach him.

But gee, then again, we come to the point that none of this fits the criteria set by our founding fathers to allow for the impeachment, and then the removal, of a president. And it should not be ignored that the public mistrust of President Clinton is largely a direct result of the Republican majority's vendetta against him; which, of course, I have already more-or-less proven as being irrelevant on Constitutional grounds.

The members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat alike, who have stood up and expressed doubt of President Clinton's motives in sending our troops to fight, which was but one voice in the whole United Nations organization, have committed treason. And even if you disagree with that strong statement, they should most certainly be ashamed of themselves, especially since they did so before being briefed by the military officials who later, for the most part, proved them wrong. (Yes, even Trent Lott has seen the error of his speech.) And this is not even the first time they have done this. I've addressed this already, months ago, and don't feel like going into it further. And literally as I am writing this, on MSNBC I hear the breaking news that House Speaker-elect Livingston has disclosed his own sexual affairs....not 'affair' mind you, but his affairs. I won't say much about this, because as the Republican community will be saying, this has nothing to do with Clinton's case of having allegedly lied about it under oath. (You would think that the "moral majority" would speak out against Livingston's break of his oath to GOD, however...) It is my feeling that the Democrats in the Senate should take as much advantage of this as they can. Clearly President Clinton will be impeached by the House and will send the case to the Senate for the trial, which may or may not culminate in the removal of Bill Clinton from the office of our country's President. As this trial in the Senate will clearly be a complete sham, I feel that the Democrats, to make a certain point, for whatever it would be worth, should call Bob Livingston to testify. They should ask him, if he had been asked under oath at all in a sexual harassment case if he had had an affair with any of these women, would he have definitely, no question, admitted to it? Perhaps my idea is silly and immature. I say that it is no more silly or immature than any of the outrageous actions taken by the Republican majority in this matter.

As Rep. McCollum of my home state has said, Livingston's situation does not involve obstruction of justice and lying under oath. Gee, that's funny....I watched a good deal of the hearings in front of the House Judiciary Committee, and I didn't see any witnesses supporting the claims of obstruction of justice.......did you? As I recall, outside of the hearings both people involved, Clinton and Lewinsky, denied obstruction of justice. Yet the House is going to impeach the president.

God bless America.


Back to Iraq...it's about damn time we bomb Hussein's ass. I said on my college radio show on November the 2nd, it's been time to do so. (Not that this means much, having only a four-mile radius.) I do realize that these things take time, and it is not nearly as easily said than done. The Republicans seem to disagree from everything they've said, and have no concept of what happens in the world outside of theirs.

Well, as was expected, today the president was impeached by the House of Representatives. Two of the four articles of impeachment were passed, in a highly partisan vote. It is obvious today that while Republicans have the reputation of being conservative, and Democrats are said to be liberal, that the opposite is in fact true. The Democrats stuck to the meaning and intentions of the U.S. Constitution. The Republicans, on the other hand, "dumbed down" the criteria of impeachment in a very scary manner. The right-wing (anti-Clinton) excuse of impeaching the president by referring to his crimes, even alleged crimes but realistically his crimes, is that they fit with the criteria of "high crimes and misdemeanors." This is akin to their common claim that the Bill of Rights gives Americans to have guns. Just as the Constitutional Amendment gives Americans the right to bare arms for the purpose of organizing a militia to protect themselves from being overpowered by some sort of tyrant, the "high crimes and misdemeanors" are to be comparable to treason and tyranny, or other serious abuses of power. Not any possible abuse of power to have been instituted to cover up an extramarital affair.

Republicans are "conservative," eh? My ass they're conservative.

Happy belated New Year. I don't have anything major to say at this point, but I'd better keep up with this page as much as I can. Last night was the State of the Union address, and also was the day that Clinton's lawyers started their defense in front of the Senate. This being my 2nd week of the new semester, I've been unable to watch this trial like I was able to watch the debates in the House, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Of course, a year ago the address was made days after the Lewinsky story broke. We were told to expect a very subdued audience that night, and I was very happy to see that just the opposite happened. I noticed familiar faces on the right side of the aisle last night definitely more subdued, though, which is how you'd expect it. Also a year ago I was thrilled with how extremely well I thought Clinton did, and how exciting what he said was. I didn't so much get that feeling this time, though there were a lot of good things said, of course.

I saw someone on MSNBC (I think just text of this person's e-mail) talking about how she knows that it's over for Clinton's case, because his attorneys will never be able to convince the Senate that it is okay to lie. This person's an idiot, plain and simple. Nobody is saying that it's okay to lie. And Clinton is certainly susceptible to prosecution after he leaves office. But, as I've said so many times before and I don't really have to say again, this is not an *impeachable* offense! This was NOT a crime against the COUNTRY! Sure, the prosecution is trying to say that the supposed subversion of justice was a crime against the country....bull. "Crime against the country" refers to treason, bribery, and so on. Subverting justice for the purpose of covering up an affair for a civil case is NOT a crime against the country. If the founding fathers wanted presidents to be impeached/removed for breaking their oathes and committing ANY crimes and misdemeanors, they would have said so; but that's not what they said. They referred to HIGH crimes and misdemeanors.

I know I'm repeating myself...forget it...

Yep, here we go. Gee, in the House stage of this impeachment mess the Republican majority of the Judiciary Committee refused to allow witnesses to be called to testify. They didn't need witnesses, they said. And guess what, now, with the refusal to allow a vote on this, Trent Lott has allowed the House Managers to call Lewinsky to testify...with Kenneth Starr, no less. And MSNBC's Jay Severin is saying that Democrats should have nothing to worry about unless they know something that might come out. That is complete bull. (Well, it could be true, but that's not the point.) This is, as I see it, a matter of obvious principle. If you put up no fight when some ridiculous decision like this is made, just because you don't think it will hurt you, then what happens the next time they decide to do the same thing, which in effect would be more harmful? It's a matter of principle, you don't just allow these things with no vote. Plus it shows how ridiculous the deal was with the Republican Committee members refusing witnesses before impeaching the president, and now, as if to say that they didn't have a strong enough case when impeaching the President of the United States. Unbelievable. (Or maybe it's not...)

Even Manager McCollum is up there accusing the President's Council of being fearful of having Lewinsky testify! Unbelieveable! He didn't seem to have trouble IMPEACHING the President of the United States without witnesses, but he has the nerve to accuse the Council of ulterior motives for not wanting the same witnesses???

I don't have anything extraordinary to say today, but one thing is bothering me....the Pope has come back to the country today and met with President Clinton, and, as should have been expected, there've been a bunch of comments about the irony with such a moral leader meeting and shaking hands with...well, Clinton. Oh, please. The Pope just met last year with Fidel Castro; I think he's got a bit of a worse morals problem than Bill Clinton. Man o' man....people just look for the 'obvious' for things to open up their mouths about, but they don't think about what they're saying. Well, whatever...

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