crossposted from Driftglass at the request of Crooks and Liars editors

Once upon a time, there was a President named Bill Clinton, who was, by most historical standards, a typical Centrist Republican, although by a fluke of geography and circumstances he ran for public office with a "(D)" after his name.

Under his Administration, many Conservative ideas which had long gathered dust on the shelf -- ideas such as welfare reform, a balanced budget, debt reduction, a strict “Pay as You Go” fiscal regime, a boom in technology jobs, budget surpluses, NAFTA, GATT, official bans on gay marriage, etc. -- were finally realized.

And for all of his good work on behalf of their ideology, Conservatives spent eight, long years treating Bill Clinton -- a Southern, White, Christian man -- as if he were a case of flesh eating nuclear syphilis.

Because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name.

And because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.

And counterpointing the 24/7 slime campaign, there were those endless, endless hearings. Whitewater. Travel office. Christmas Card lists. Lincoln bedroom. Etc ad nauseum.

Or don’t you remember?

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(A new word entered our lexicon of shame: "Ethnic Cleansing")

Seems there's no such thing as an Average April day in history, unless its one draped in conflict and upheaval. April 22, 1994 - a ten minute capsule via The CBS World News Roundup. The stepped up violence in Bosnia, former President Nixon on his deathbed, ousters of Prime Ministers in Japan amid corruption charges and the full horror of genocide in Rwanda only starting to be realized. Just a normal day in April.

(Some people still don't know what happened, or even where Rwanda is)

("It seemed like such a good idea at the time.")

The Republican Revolution of 1994 didn't last long. It quickly went south when reports of in-fighting, tantrums and hypocrisy started coming to light. By the end of 1995 a full-on war of ideologies had erupted with President Clinton and Republicans in a standoff over the budget. Republicans blamed Clinton for grandstanding and not yielding to pressure. Clinton refused to sign a budget laced with Republican earmarks that cut Medicare, education and environmental funding. Both sides weren't ready to budge. The first of two shutdowns occurred on November 14, lasting a few days before an extension was signed. The second shutdown lasted longer, starting in December and going into January. By the time the crisis passed, there was enough animosity to keep people busy for years.

As a perplexing bonus, I've included a clip of the Singing Senators, who were recorded at a function the weekend just before the shutdown. Trent Lott, Larry Craig, John Ashcroft and James Jeffords proved once again that you really can fiddle while Rome is in the process of burning.

NPR - All Things Considered from November 11, 1995

October 21, 2008 ABC NIGHTLINE
"Nightline's" Cynthia McFadden had exclusive access to the junior senator from New York as she campaigned for re-election through several upstate communities, hoping to lock in an overwhelming victory in November and highlight her popularity with rural voters.

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Let me say first that while I didn't support Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, I could certainly understand why her supporters did.  She's tough, she's arguably one of the smartest people in Washington and she's extremely capable.  And even her detractors must admit that it was a very tough primary season, made worse by the media's need to fill up 24/7 with content that appeared to relish pitting Democrats against one another, usually quite unfairly.

That being said, if any Hillary Clinton supporter actually goes through with this suggestion from Bill "I'm not right about anything, but I still get my regular TV gig to screw over the national discourse" Kristol, you are being played, big time.   This is Operation Chaos in all its nakedly partisan glory.

Kristol (who, by the way, is NEVER right about anything, have I said that recently?) is clearly scared of Obama's pick of Joe Biden for the vice president slot, because as he admits, Biden has the foreign policy experience, the alleged lack of which they are so fond of attacking Obama.  So in the only battlefield that Kristol has the gonads to scale, he challenges Clinton supporters (naturally, it's easier to be brave when others are the soldiers, isn't it, Billy?) to launch a protest by nominating Clinton as the Vice President at the convention, forcing a roll call vote. 

KRISTOL: Look, Senator Obama is going to be the nominee, there's no point in contesting that roll call. What I would encourage Hillary supporters to do...

WILLIAMS: Oh boy...

LIASSON: No!

KRISTOL: ...is to express their outrage over the pick of Senator Biden over the better qualified Senator Clinton as the Vice Presidential pick by putting her nomination for the vice presidency. That would be a good roll call vote, don't you think? Clinton and Biden. Although I'm not sure she wouldn't beat him. And that would be exciting and that would be a ben...it would be a favor to Senator Obama. Because the truth is Obama/Clinton is a much stronger ticket. It is a stronger ticket than Obama/Biden. Does anyone seriously doubt that Hillary Clinton would bring all the Clinton voters over? Whereas Biden I think is going to have a tough time doing so.

WILLIAMS: It would be drama. But I think that you make
that suggestion as a subversive act...

KRISTOL: You think? [laughs] No...no...

Listen up, for those of you considering this:  THIS IS A SUGGESTION FROM SOMEONE WHO THINKS THE IRAQ INVASION AND OCCUPATION WILL MAKE GEORGE W. BUSH A GREAT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY BOOKS. 

Can I possibly reiterate how wrong Kristol ALWAYS is? 

I don't care how unfairly you think Clinton was treated during the primaries (and frankly, I might agree with you on that) nor how great a VP you think she'd make (she'd be great and it would be a historic administration with an African-American and a woman leading the country--I'll stipulate the whole to you for the sake of argument), it is simply bad for the party, bad for the country and insulting to our collective intelligence as Democrats and/or liberals to do anything that the leading neo-con cheerleader for the Worst. President. Ever. suggests.

Don't even think about it.

Full transcript of his pathetic tactics below

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Stephen can't seem to grasp the concept of "electability." Who better to help him figure it out than the smartest person he knows...

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"What if everyone votes for someone that nobody would vote for?!"

Note from Nicole: We originally posted this last week, but had problems with the videos, so we pulled the post.  We got that straightened out and it was too good to not post again. 

It always amuses me when upper-class people with power and privilege start screeching about “elitism.” Today all manner of political, media and blogging elites — people with advanced degrees who’ve never been to a tractor pull in their lives — are snorting about elitism because Barack Obama said something that anyone with a real redneck background knows to be true — working-class, small-town whites feel left behind, bitter and frustrated.

Ezra Klein and Marc Ambinder provide good commentary on what Barack Obama said. My remarks today are aimed at the critics who are rushing forward to defend the tender sensibilities of small-town, working class whites that Obama allegedly offended. I say that most of those expressing outrage and defending the "values" of small-town Americans are the real elitists.

Granted, my background is southern Missouri small-town working-class white, rather than Pennsylvania small-town working-class white, and there are subtle cultural distinctions between the two. While I may have kinfolk in half the trailer parks in the Ozarks, I admit that doesn’t qualify me to speak for Pennsylvanians. But over the past forty or so years small-town, working-class white America has been living through the shared experience of diminishing opportunity combined with increasing financial instability.

In community after community, the old factory or mining jobs that sustained the local economy are gone. Forty years ago, young folks left high school, signed on to jobs that paid Union-obtained wages and benefits, and looked forward to all the trappings of American middle-class affluence — homes, new cars, trips to Disney World. Now the bright young people move away to cities, and those who remain in the small towns sustain themselves — barely — by flipping hamburgers or cashiering at Wal-Mart.

The only ones who aren’t bitter and frustrated are those too young or too dim to realize life was much better a couple of generations ago.

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NOW he tells us...

AttyTood:

Don't you just love these truth tellers in American journalism like Katie Couric and Chris Matthews who are suddenly here to complain that the Bush administration has manipulated Big Media like them, and they're not going to take it anymore? At least not now that George W. Bush and Congress have a record-low approval rating, and after 3,809 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

Here is MSNBC "Hardball" host Matthews:

In front of an audience that included such notables as Alan Greenspan, Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy, Matthews began his remarks by declaring that he wanted to "make some news" and he certainly didn't disappoint. After praising the drafters of the First Amendment for allowing him to make a living, he outlined what he said was the fundamental difference between the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The Clinton camp, he said, never put pressure on his bosses to silence him.

"Not so this crowd," he added, explaining that Bush White House officials -- especially those from Vice President Cheney's office -- called MSNBC brass to complain about the content of his show and attempted to influence its editorial content. "They will not silence me!" Matthews declared.

As Nicole wrote recently, Matthews' behavior is puzzling at times to say the least -- but even with his staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq, it's really egregious that he hasn't talked openly about this up to this point. PERRSpectives looks at some of the glowing things that Tweety has said about these "thugs and criminals".