Bill Clinton Presidency Quotes

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So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel!
Eddie Izzard
from Bill Clinton speech- People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...
Bill Clinton
Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.
Bill Clinton
Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.
Noam Chomsky
[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.
Michael Moore
Gerald Ford once said that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the “more perfect union.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
do as much as you can for as many as you can, every day. Even on the bad days, there’s always something good you can do.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Sometimes the “them” strategy is just a narcotic to feed the beast in all of us.
Bill Clinton (The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade (Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers Book 1))
That depends on what your definition of 'is' is.
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office.
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I’m out of rabbits and hats to pull them out of.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left)
I may become weak and start listening to what my body has to say more than my brain. So I elect you the responsible one." "I've been crazy about you since we met. You've elected Bill Clinton president of the chastity club.
Robin Alexander (Next Time)
Bill Clinton will be our country’s next President. The election later this year is just a formality. The result has already been decided.
James Morcan (The Orphan Factory (The Orphan Trilogy, #2))
Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
And now she’s a parasite, living off her host. If he makes a mistake, she made the mistake.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Sun Tzu said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,
Bill Clinton (The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade (Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers Book 1))
A whole host of functions that were once performed without the Internet now can only be performed with the Internet. There is no fallback.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
And you hear me, you unelected flunky. I only take orders from the president. Until I hear from him, I’ll be
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
She always said, You boys aren’t rich enough to afford not to pay attention.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
How’ve you been feeling?” “I have a gigantic pain in my ass,” I say. “Can you look and see if the Speaker of the House is up there?
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Baby Kochamma had installed a dish antenna on the roof of the Ayemenem house. She presided over the world in her drawing room on satellite TV. The impossible excitement that this engendered in Baby Kochamma wasn’t hard to understand. It wasn’t something that happened gradually. It happened overnight. Blondes, wars, famines, football, sex, music, coups d’etat—they all arrived on the same train. They unpacked together. They stayed at the same hotel. And in Ayemenem, where once the loudest sound had been a musical bus horn, now whole wars, famines, picturesque massacres and Bill Clinton could be summoned up like servants.
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
You learn to live with the paradox. Meanwhile, you keep looking for chances to push the limits back, to do as much as you can as many as you can, every day. Even on the bad days, there's something good you can do.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and simply think 'first woman president.' We think—for example—'first ex-co-president' or 'first wife of a disbarred lawyer and impeached former incumbent' or 'first person to use her daughter as photo-op protection during her husband's perjury rap.
Christopher Hitchens
If there is nothing else to learn from history, it’s that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led. Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.
Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left)
If we {Federalists] must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures. Under Adams as under Jefferson, the government shall sink. The party in the hands of whose chief it shall sink will sink with it—and the advantage will be all on the side of his adversaries.
Alexander Hamilton (The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton)
All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Sooner or later, every president faces decisions in which the right choice is bad politics, at least in the short term. If the stakes are high, you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn. It’s the job you promised to do.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
If this guy ever had an unselfish thought, as my mama would say, it would die of loneliness.
Bill Clinton (The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade (Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers Book 1))
That boy’s so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Let her work for it.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
In the teams you quickly learn that you have to depend on your teammates to get their job done, while you concentrate on your own part of the mission.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
That’s the biggest reason governments keep secrets. Not because they’re sensitive. Because the secrets are embarrassing
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Obama doesn't know how to be President. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur!
Bill Clinton
this guy ever had an unselfish thought, as my mama would say, it would die of loneliness.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Everyone eligible to vote should be able to do so without unnecessary inconvenience,
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Nobody does anything for nothing.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Even on the bad days, there’s always something good you can do.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I have stood down sadistic drill sergeants, cruel Iraqi interrogators, partisan lawmakers, and the Washington press corps, but my daughter can punch my buttons like no one else.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Nos servimos de la tecnología para volver a formas primitivas de relación humana
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
politics is the art of the compromise,
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
They [442nd Regimental Combat Team] did more than defend America. They helped define America at its best...Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it has so ill-treated.
--President Bill Clinton, quoted in Honor Before Glory
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." That's a job no president can do alone. It's up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Even if nothing illegal occurred, one has to wonder about the political judgment involved. Surely the mere appearance of selling American power and influence to foreign interests should be enough to cause a former US president—and a possible future one—to steer well clear of such potentially
Peter Schweizer (Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich)
The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for. I did not betray our country and my sworn duty to protect and defend it when I went missing to battle what we came to call Dark
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The real people are still there, with their problems and potential, hopes and dreams. It’s just hard for them to make good decisions when their brains are filled, and their spirits broken, with so much
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
On page 603 it is stated that at first Blumenthal could not remember the lunch with me and my wife at which he had loudly impugned two female witnesses against Clinton. This makes it distinctly odd that he should have such have a vivid and detailed but mistaken recollection of the same lunch on page 607.
Christopher Hitchens
All too often, those who rail against “them” prevail over earnest pleas to remember what “we” can be and do together. Our brains have worked this way for a long time. Maybe they always will. But we have to keep trying. That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the “more perfect union.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
On occasion Jobs would use the semi-abandoned Woodside home, especially its swimming pool, for family parties. When Bill Clinton was president, he and Hillary Clinton stayed in the 1950s ranch house on the property on their visits to their daughter, who was at Stanford. Since both the main house and ranch house were unfurnished, Powell would call furniture and art dealers when the Clintons were coming and pay them to furnish the houses temporarily. Once, shortly after the Monica Lewinsky flurry broke, Powell was making a final inspection of the furnishings and noticed that one of the paintings was missing. Worried, she asked the advance team and Secret Service what had happened. One of them pulled her aside and explained that it was a painting of a dress on a hanger, and given the issue of the blue dress in the Lewinsky matter they had decided to hide it. (During one of his late-night phone conversations with Jobs, Clinton asked how he should handle the Lewinsky issue. “I don’t know if you did it, but if so, you’ve got to tell the country,” Jobs told the president. There was silence on the other end of the line.)
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. I have never had to take any of that back, whereas if you look up what most of my profession was then writing about the beefy, unscrupulous 'New Democrat,' you will be astonished at the quantity of sheer saccharine and drool. Anyway, I kept on about it even after most Republicans had consulted the opinion polls and decided it was a losing proposition, and if you look up the transcript of the eventual Senate trial of the president—only the second impeachment hearing in American history—you will see that the last order of business is a request (voted down) by the Senate majority leader to call Carol and me as witnesses. So I can dare to say that at least I saw it through.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
At the time thousands of Africans were dying over control of diamonds sold in shopping malls around the world, U.S president Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, and everyone else was preparing for digital disaster from Y2K
Greg Campbell (Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones)
By the time Bill Clinton left office in 2001, an Operation Other Than War, as Pentagon forces called them, could go on indefinitely, sort of on autopilot - without real political costs or consequences, or much civilian notice. We'd gotten used to it. By 2001, the ability of a president to start and wage military operations without (or even in spite of) Congress was established precedent.
Rachel Maddow (Drift)
One of the great ironies of the modern age,” he begins, “is that the advancements of mankind can make us more powerful and yet more vulnerable at the same time. The greater the power, the greater the vulnerability. You think, rightly so, that you are at the apex of your power, that you can do more things than ever before. But I see you at the peak of your vulnerability. “The reason is reliance. Our society has become completely reliant on technology.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Former president Bill Clinton (born in 1946 and a Yale Law Student of Charles Reich) describes this divide: "If you look back on the sixties and, on balance, you think there was more good than harm, then you're probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican.
Clara Bingham (Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul)
The soldiers closest to the door on each side flip their flashbangs into the apartment and quickly turn away from the threshold. A second later, the stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels and a searing, blinding light. For five seconds, the occupants will be blind, deaf, and unbalanced.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I stroke the hair of my brilliant, strong, independent girl. She is a woman now, with her mother’s beauty and brains and spirit, but she will always be the little girl who lit up when she saw me, who squealed when I’d bombard her with kisses, who couldn’t fall back asleep after a nightmare unless Daddy held her hand.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
You remember when we first took this route?” I ask, recalling our postelection tour before I took the oath of office. “Like it was yesterday,” says Carolyn. “I’ll never forget it,” Danny says. “We were so full of…hope, I guess. We were so sure we’d make the world a better place.” Carolyn says, “Maybe you were. I was scared to death.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian, and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.
Christopher Hitchens
One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred 'experience' on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main 'experience' involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency.
Christopher Hitchens
There was a time when that statement, from a president to a House Speaker, would be enough. Those days are long in the rearview mirror.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
hovels.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
the
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
At least a five-minute warning. Give them that, Mr.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
by
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
triumvirate
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.
Bill Clinton (The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade (Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers Book 1))
Office, and Sam’s is to go back to her first
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
afraid
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
was first assigned security protection during the primaries, when I was a governor viewed as a long shot for the nomination.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
On the back cover of his checklist binder is an old cracked decal showing a flying Pegasus circled with the acronym NKAWTG, which means Nobody kicks ass without tanker gas!
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Semper Gumby, he thinks. Always flexible.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Mourn your losses later, after the fight’s over, Sergeant Melton used to say. When you’re in the fight, fight.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
He likes to wear bow ties so we’ll all know how intelligent he is. Personally, I’ve seen Post-it notes with more depth.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
That tells us something, at least. They weren’t true believers, not radicals. This wasn’t ISIS or Al Qaeda or any of their cancerous branches. They were mercenaries for hire.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I put the car in Park and kill the ignition. When I do so, I feel the tidal-wave rush, as I knew I would—the shakes, the post-adrenaline, post-traumatic physical reaction.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
one
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
to
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Oh, and stay out of our elections.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Post-it notes
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
May God bless the United States of America and all who call it home.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Violin Concerto no. 1, featuring Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog,
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
ruthless, yes, but not reckless.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The Wild, Wild West, this cyberterrorism. This new, scary frontier. Anyone sitting on a couch in his underwear could undermine the security of a nation.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I had to teach myself, long ago, that I couldn’t follow my baby girl around and make sure the world was kind to her.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
You boys aren’t rich enough to afford not to pay attention.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Savagery in the quest for power is older than the Bible, but some of my opponents really hate my guts.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
everyone knows—that if you blow the opener, nobody remembers anything else.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I glance over to the corner of the room, where Carolyn Brock winces, a rare break in her implacable expression.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
have any thoughts here?” She looks surprised that I’m asking. “You want to know what I’d do?” “Yes, Liz. You went to one of those
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
When Sun Tzu said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he had a point.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
My chest tightens at the thought of what all this could mean to Lilly. But I have no choice. I made a vow to defend this country, and I’m the only person who can do this.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
approval from the Senate four years
Bill Clinton (The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade (Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers Book 1))
I’d hate to interrupt this witch hunt with a substantive conversation.” I glance over to the corner of the room, where Carolyn Brock winces, a rare break in her implacable expression.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
You correctly predicted the rise of heroin while Bush was in office,” he said. “And people still don’t think to ask why his Yale Skull and Bones fraternity name is ‘Poppy.’ Since Clinton is more heavily involved in cocaine ops than he is Bush’s heroin ops7, the price of coke and crack will probably drop in this country while availability soars. ” Mark agreed. “The Presidency switched parties all right, from a heroin party to a coke party with all the same players involved.” “Except for the kids Bush used and abused,” I said. “Neither Hillary nor Bill believe in pedophilia. From my point of view, that is a major difference between the Bushes and Clintons. Other than that, they’re playing the same DARPA-Sandia Labs computer game.
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
People ask me if it's like that television show The West Wing," says Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's second chief. "But that doesn't begin to capture the velocity. In an average day you would deal with Bosnia, Northern Ireland, the budget, taxation, the environment-and then you'd have lunch! And then on Friday you would say, 'Thank God-only two more working days until Monday.
Chris Whipple (The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Jiang Lijun is not a vice president for the China State Construction Engineering Corporation but a senior officer with the Ministry of State Security. What the hell are the Americans up to?
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
state and national legislative districts should be drawn by nonpartisan bodies to more fully represent the diversity of opinion and interests that is one of the greatest assets of our nation.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
And I know that there are cops who think of themselves as good cops but, even if unconsciously, see a black man in a T-shirt and jeans as more threatening than a white man dressed the same way.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Headed for the exit,” she hears through the earbud. “Teams 1 and 2, go,” she says. “Team 3, hold ready.” “Team 1, that’s a go,” comes the response. “Team 2, that’s a go.” “Team 3 holding ready.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Think how much more rewarding it would be if we all came to work every day asking, “Who can we help today and how can we do it?” instead of “Who can I hurt and how much coverage can I get for it?
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Think of how much more rewarding it would be if we all came to work every day asking, "Who can we help today and how can we do it?" instead of "Who can I hurt and how much coverage can I get for it?
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I asked Hillary why she had chosen Yale Law School over Harvard. She laughed and said, "Harvard didn't want me." I said I was sorry that Harvard turned her down. She replied, "No, I received letters of acceptance from both schools." She explained that a boyfriend had then invited her to the Harvard Law School Christmas Dance, at which several Harvard Law School professors were in attendance. She asked one for advice about which law school to attend. The professor looked at her and said, "We have about as many woen as we need here. You should go to Yale. The teaching there is more suited to women." I asked who the professor was, and she told me she couldn't remember his name but that she thought it started with a B. A few days later, we met the Clintons at a party. I came prepared with yearbook photos of all the professors from that year whose name began with B. She immediately identified the culprit. He was the same professor who had given my A student a D, because she didn't "think like a lawyer." It turned out, of course, that it was this professor -- and not the two (and no doubt more) brilliant women he was prejudiced against - who didn't think like a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to act on the evidence, rather than on their prejudgments. The sexist professor ultimately became a judge on the International Court of Justice. I told Hillary that it was too bad I wasn't at that Christmas dance, because I would have urged her to come to Harvard. She laughed, turned to her husband, and said, "But then I wouldn't have met him... and he wouldn't have become President.
Alan M. Dershowitz
Remembering the words of Ranko, her first teacher, the toothpick jutting out from the side of his mouth, his fiery red, stalklike hair—a scarecrow whose hair caught fire, as he once described himself.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
sixth president leaves you clueless? I will help you. He was John Quincy Adams, and he once said, ‘Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand in the name of spreading democracy.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Her eyes drift up and away, enlarging them, a beautiful copper color. It makes her look even younger. Less of the hardened image she’s trying to project and more the scared kid she must be, underneath it all.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Even with a Democratic president behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a far larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for it. Eminent Democratic luminaries voted against it, including Senators Ernest Hollings, Richard Russell, Sam Ervin, Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton’s mentor) and of course, Robert Byrd. Overall, 82 percent of Senate Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, compared to only 66 percent of Democrats. In the House, 80 percent of Republicans voted for it, while only 63 percent of Democrats did. Crediting Democrats for finally coming on board with Republicans civil rights policies by supporting the 1964 act would be nearly as absurd as giving the Democrats all the glory for Regan’s 1981 tax cuts - which passed with the support of 99 percent of Republicans but only 29 percent of Democrats.
Ann Coulter (Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
teachings from Sage Emperor Guan’s Book of Enlightenment. For one, “It is through filial piety, sibling harmony, dedication, trustworthiness, propriety, sacrifice, honor, and sense of shame that we become fully human.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by a group of former Confederate soldiers; its first grand wizard was a Confederate general who was also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. The Klan soon spread beyond the South to the Midwest and the West and became, in the words of historian Eric Foner, “the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.” The main point of the Klan’s orgy of violence was to prevent blacks from voting—voting, that is, for Republicans. Leading Democrats, including at least one president, two Supreme Court justices, and innumerable senators and congressmen, were Klan members. The last one, Robert Byrd, died in 2010 and was eulogized by President Obama and former President Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton called him her “mentor.” The sordid history of the Democratic Party in the early twentieth century is also married to the sordid history of the progressive movement during the same period. Progressives like Margaret Sanger—founder of Planned Parenthood and a role model for Hillary Clinton—supported such causes as eugenics and social Darwinism. While abortion was not an issue in Sanger’s day, she backed forced sterilization for “unfit” people, notably minorities. Sanger’s Negro Project was specifically focused on reducing the black population.
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
There is a reason that the founders of our country put a civilian in charge of the military. Because it is not only about military effectiveness. It’s also about policy, about values, about what we stand for as a nation.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
There is nothing I value more in subordinates than their willingness to tell me I’m wrong, to challenge me, to sharpen my decision making. Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The first two times you heard me speak, I sounded like a fool. I made about as much sense as a top hat on a mule. I wasn’t sure a third attempt would do me any better, So I decided that I’d put my thoughts down in a letter.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
When the Holy Father passed away in 2005, Laura, Dad, Bill Clinton, and I flew together to his funeral in Rome. It was the first time an American president had attended the funeral of a pope, let alone brought two of his predecessors.
George W. Bush (Decision Points)
We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
White voters who feel they are losing a historical hold on power are reacting to something real. For the bulk of American history, you couldn’t win the presidency without winning a majority — usually an overwhelming majority — of white vote. Though this changed before Obama — Bill Clinton won slightly less of the white vote than his Republican challengers — the election of an African American president leading a young, multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening.
Ezra Klein (Why We're Polarized)
New Rule: It's okay for the president to play ball in the house. It's easy to judge and say this scene detracts from the dignity of the White House--until you consider the end zone is between Clinton's semen stain and where Bush OD'd on a pretzel.
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
Yes, NATO’s expansion to the borders of Russia is of great concern to them. But in Russia’s eyes, and of course I mean no disrespect, Juergen—but in Russia’s eyes, when it sees NATO, it sees America. America, first and foremost, and then its allies.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
But Reich would eventually arrive at a more nuanced conclusion: “Bill Clinton operated by sonar. He emits a huge number of policies, ideas, and initiatives and he sees what kind if response he gets. And where he sees an opportunity to move, he moves.
Joe Klein (The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton)
As the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal this DNA sequence, I stood beside President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House... Clinton's speech began by comparing this human sequence map to the map that Meriwether Lewis had unfolded in front of President Thomas Jefferson in that very room nearly two hundred years earlier. Clinton said, "Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." But the part of his speech that most attracted public attention jumped from the scientific perspective to the spiritual. "Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift." Was I, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback at such a blatantly religious reference by the leader of the free world at a moment such as this? Was I tempted to scowl or look at the floor in embarrassment? No, not at all. In fact I had worked closely with the president's speechwriter in the frantic days just prior to this announcement, and had strongly endorsed the inclusion of this paragraph. When it came time for me to add a few words of my own, I echoed this sentiment: "It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God." What was going on here? Why would a president and a scientist, charged with announcing a milestone in biology and medicine, feel compelled to invoke a connection with God? Aren't the scientific and spiritual worldviews antithetical, or shouldn't they at least avoid appearing in the East Room together? What were the reasons for invoking God in these two speeches? Was this poetry? Hypocrisy? A cynical attempt to curry favor from believers, or to disarm those who might criticize this study of the human genome as reducing humankind to machinery? No. Not for me. Quite the contrary, for me the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.
Francis S. Collins (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief)
Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.
Gore Vidal (The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000)
Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Mr. President,” he says, almost like a southern drawl, thick with incredulity. This man could look you in the eye and tell you that the world is flat, the sun rises in the west, and the moon is made of blue cheese, and he’d probably pass a polygraph test while doing so.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That’s a job no president can do alone. It’s up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
From her bag, she removes the cord of rope with a noose on one end. She throws it up over the lowest-hanging branch, a good four meters above ground—about thirteen feet high. It takes her three tries to get the noose end over the branch. Then she raises up the other side of the rope as the noose side lowers down to her. Once she has it in her hand, she slides the straight end of the rope through the noose. Then she pulls down on the straight end slowly, careful to avoid any snags, as the noose end slowly rises again. On the branch, the two sides come together in a knot.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
fascinating discussion of the…cyclical nature of history. Mankind is predictable. Governments mistreat people—their own people and others. They always have, and they always will. So the people react. There is action and reaction. This is how history has progressed and how it always will.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The eight members of Congress on his side are all in safe congressional districts, gerrymandered so cartoonishly that they could probably drop their pants in the middle of the hearing, start sucking their thumbs, and not only would they be reelected in two years, they would also run unopposed.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
A nation not of men but of laws, intoned John Adams as he, among other lawyers, launched what has easily become the most demented society ever consciously devised by intelligent men. We are now enslaves by laws. We are governed by lawyers. We create little but litigate much. Our monuments are the ever-expanding prisons, where millions languish for having committed victimless crimes or for simply not playing the game of plausible deniability (aka lying) with a sufficiently good legal team. What began as a sort of Restoration comedy, The Impeachment of a President, on a frivolous, irrelevant matter, is suddenly turning very black indeed, and all our political arrangements are at risk as superstitious Christian fundamentalists and their corporate manipulators seem intent on overthrowing two presidential elections in a Senate trial. This is no longer comedy. This is usurpation.
Gore Vidal (The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000)
The 1994 Crime Bill, sponsored by Democratic senator Joe Biden, went even further, calling for more juveniles to be tried as adults, the building of more prisons, an end to the Pell Grants that had allowed inmates to earn college degrees while in prison, a “three strikes” provision mandating a life sentence upon conviction for a third federal crime, and a provision making gang membership a crime in and of itself. When Bill Clinton signed the measure into law, he ensured that the pattern of mass incarceration started by his predecessors would continue well past the end of his presidency.
Marc Lamont Hill (Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond)
too often, those who rail against “them” prevail over earnest pleas to remember what “we” can be and do together. Our brains have worked this way for a long time. Maybe they always will. But we have to keep trying. That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the “more perfect union.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
My political adviser, Jenny Brickman, is practically pulling her hair. She doesn’t have security clearance, either, so she doesn’t know the whole story, but her main concern is that she wants me to be seen as a fighter in this hearing. If you can’t fight back, she said, then don’t go. You’ll just be their political piñata.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Only the Democratic Party could produce a string of presidential candidates who oppose school choice and vouchers while sending their own children to lily-white private schools. Only the Democratic Party could hysterically denounce a Supreme Court nominee for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances in the workplace and then applaud a president who was receiving oral sex from a White House intern while discussing deploying American troops with a congressman on the phone. Indeed, only the Democrats could oppose Clarence Thomas, actually block Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg (for marijuana use), and then run Bill Clinton for president.
Ann Coulter (Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America)
The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population?
Jeffrey Dhywood (World War D. The Case against prohibitionism, roadmap to controlled re-legalization)
And according to a joke that was told many times in 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton were being driven through her hometown when Hillary spotted an old boyfriend pumping gas. "If you hadn' married me," said Bill, "you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant." "If I hadn't married you," replied Hillary, "he would be president.
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
My heart swells when she walks in, the infant with the round face and enormous eyes reaching out to touch my face, the little girl lifting herself on her tippy-toes to kiss me with a PBJ-smudged face, the teenager slicing the air with her hand as she argued the merits of alternative-energy incentives at the state debate finals.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Plus, there is the dynamic that when I run for president I’m going to be the boss, and I’m not sure Bill will be able to handle that. He says he’ll be my adviser and loving husband, but I’m afraid that if I’m elected, he’ll think he’s president again and I’m first lady. If he starts that shit, I’ll have his ass thrown out of the White House.
Edward Klein (Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas)
It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.
Derek Thompson (Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular)
They intended to use America’s absence from the world scene to overthrow the Saudi king, expropriate the wealth of his branch of the royal family and its supporters, reconcile with Iran and Syria, and establish a modern technocratic caliphate using science and technology to raise the standing of the Muslim world to heights not seen in a thousand years.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
I look at Danny and Carolyn, the only other people in the room. It’s time for me to go, alone and off the record. For years I’ve been constantly going, but never alone and never off the record. The Secret Service takes every step with me, and at least one aide is almost always there, even when I’m on vacation. A record is kept of where I am every hour.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Vice President Gore, Richard Clarke, and Madeleine Albright were “strong support[ers]” of the program, joining in President Clinton’s “intense” interest in it.5 Egypt’s most famous terrorist, Talaat Fouad Qassem, was “seized in Croatia, flown to the USS Adriatic, a navy warship, interrogated, then flown to Egypt for [torture and] execution.”6 Egypt’s secret police, the Gihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma, is widely known for its brutal torture regime, “real Macho interrogation . . . enhanced interrogation techniques on steroids” and was used by both Presidents Bush and Clinton.7 Congress attempted to end this program in 1998. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act slipped in a passage making it the policy of the United States not to “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”8 Clinton vetoed the bill in late October,
Andrew P. Napolitano (Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Savagery in the quest for power is older than the Bible, but some of my opponents really hate my guts. They don’t just want to run me out of office. They won’t be satisfied unless I’m sent to prison, drawn and quartered, and erased from the history books. Hell, if they had their way, they’d probably burn down my house in North Carolina and spit on my wife’s grave.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Bill Clinton’s political formula for seizing the presidency was simple. He made money tight in the ghettos and let it flow free on Wall Street. He showered the projects with cops and bean counters and pulled the cops off the beat in the financial services sector. And in one place he created vast new mountain ranges of paperwork, while in another, paperwork simply vanished.
Matt Taibbi (The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap)
laugh. “I don’t suppose that offer of a pardon stands.” She seems embarrassed to even suggest it. How quickly she has plummeted. Walking into this room, expecting to be tapped as the new vice president, the hero of the hour, and now just praying that she can avoid prison. Liz Greenfield returns. This time, I wave her in. Carolyn offers no resistance as the FBI takes her into custody.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
But when Trump emerged from the primary, Bennett characterized those Republicans not supporting Trump as not team players who “suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country.”22 What has changed? If he believed what he wrote in The Book of Virtues that “it is our character that supports the promise of our future—far more than particular government programs or policies,” if he believed what he wrote about Bill Clinton that “a president whose character manifests itself in patterns of reckless personal conduct…cannot be a good president,” how can Bennett support a man who brags about assaulting women and directs his own son to write checks to reimburse his lawyer Michael Cohen for hush payments to a porn star?
Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
The Glock is lighter by a good measure than the Beretta I was trained on, with a better grip, and I’ve heard it’s accurate, but weapons are like cars—you know they have standard stuff like lights and an ignition and windshield wipers, but it still takes a few seconds to figure them out when they’re unfamiliar. So I burn precious moments getting a feel for it before I’m ready to point and shoot—
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
In the corner of the room, the triumvirate of my top aides sits in observation: the chief of staff, Carolyn Brock; Danny Akers, my oldest friend and White House counsel; and Jenny Brickman, my deputy chief of staff and senior political adviser. All of them stoic, stone-faced, worried. Not one of them wanted me to do this. It was their unanimous conclusion that I was making the biggest mistake of my presidency.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The sharks are circling, their nostrils twitching at the scent of blood. Thirteen of them, to be exact, eight from the opposition party and five from mine, sharks against whom I’ve been preparing defenses with lawyers and advisers. I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how prepared you are, there are few defenses that work against predators. At some point, there’s nothing you can do but jump in and fight back.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
This one is for me only. It was taken less than a week before she died. Her face is blotchy from treatments; she has only wisps of hair on her head. Her face is almost skeletal. To most people, this would be hard to look at—Rachel Carson Duncan at her absolute worst, finally succumbing to a ravaging disease. But to me, it’s Rachel at her best, her strongest, her most beautiful—the smile in her eyes, her peace and resolve.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
This brings us to the crux moment in the supposed 'Show Trial' melodrama. Employing the confusing and confused testimony of Jude Wanniski (who he also describes as a political nut-case, if not a nut-case flat-out, and to whom he introduced me in the first place) Blumenthal suggests that I concerted my testimony in advance with the House Republicans, notably James Rogan and Lindsey Graham. Feebly bridging the gap between sheer conjecture and outright conspiracy, Rogan is quoted as saying: 'Hitchens may well have called Lindsey..' I did not in fact do any such thing. Why should my denial be believed? It's not as if I care. I probably should have colluded with them, if my intention was to land a blow on Clinton (which it was) let alone to plant a Judas kiss on Blumenthal (which it was not). But every other fragment of Blumenthal's evidence and description shows—even boasts—that Congressman Graham was essentially punching air until the last day of the trial. That could not possibly have been true, especially in his cross-examination of Blumenthal, if he knew he had an ace in his vest-pocket all along. Only a tendency to paranoia or to all-explaining theories could suggest the contrary. I'd even be able to claim for myself, I hope, that if I'd truly wanted to gouge a deep or vengeful wound I could or would have made a better job of it.
Christopher Hitchens
Consider the recent financial crisis and its link to faulty reward systems. President Bill Clinton's objective of increasing homeownership by rewarding potential home buyers and lenders is one example. The Clinton administration "went to ridiculous lengths" to increase homeownership in the United State, promoting "paper-thin down payments" and pushing lenders to give mortgage loans to unqualified buyers according to Business Week editor Peter Coy.
Max H. Bazerman
I picked up the large lapel button richly worked in purple, green and yellow plastic. 'January 1997,' it announced, 'Day of Visionaries.' Beneath the slogan was a portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And next to him, sharing the billing as it were, was a same-size picture of our newly elected President. And below was the official logo of the inauguration committee. I’m sorry, but that’s too much. Much too much. I can tune out the Chief Executive when he drivels on about building a bridge to Newt Gingrich. I can be shaking a cocktail or grilling a lobster when he intones that 'nothing big ever came from being small.' I can be receiving a telephone call in a foreign language and still keep up with him when he says that the future lies before us, and the past behind, and that we must light the torch of knowledge from the fountain of wisdom (or whatever). As Orwell once remarked, after a point you stop noticing that you have said things like 'The jackboot is thrown into the melting pot,’ or 'The fascist octopus has sung its swansong.' Motor-mouth and automatic pilot and sheer flatulence and conceit supply their own mediocre, infinitely renewable energy. But this cheap, cheery little button turned the scale. It’s one thing to be bored, or subjected to boredom. It’s another to be insulted. This is a pot of piss flung in the face. What does it take to get people disgusted these days?
Christopher Hitchens
She hears the men near the front of the open-air space, where they are tending to the wounded, shouting at one another, blaming one another in a language she doesn’t understand. But she understands panic in any tongue. She lets her heels click loudly enough for them to hear her coming. She didn’t want to preannounce her arrival lest there be an ambush awaiting her—old habits die hard—but likewise she finds no advantage in startling a group of heavily armed, violent men.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Hillary’s act as a jilted wife was a deliberate “division decision.” Knowing the Clintons and social engineering tactics, the illusion was created to separate her from Bill in the public eye so that she would eventually run for President as intended. Just as Bill went into the office of President as a “Democrat” to make the public feel they had a change from “Republicans” leading them into the New World Order, Hillary would be the illusion of change from male Presidents.
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by President Bill Clinton, America had been losing jobs, manufacturing capability and other advantages America once held to subsequent “free trade” agreements. America, always playing by the rules, was being economically ripped off for decades by nations who did not value rules like America did. China and the rest of Asia had a particularly strong stranglehold on American manufacturing and the supply of rare earth minerals.
James Rosone (Prelude to World War III: The Rise of the Islamic Republic and the Rebirth of America (World War III, #1))
The Chinese—in their program called the Belt and Road Initiative—have been pouring in development investments here and in other poor countries around the world. Publicly, the Chinese government says it’s just a way for them, as a growing world power, to share their good fortune and knowledge. Privately, Zeppos and others have received classified briefings depicting the Chinese’s real goal: securing resources, allies, and possible future military bases so China can never again be isolated and humiliated as it so often has been in its long history.
Bill Clinton (The President's Daughter)
Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Now give me the key to Augie’s handcuffs.” Jacobson draws back. “Sir?” I don’t repeat myself. A president doesn’t have to. I just meet his eyes. Jacobson was Special Forces, just as I was a long time ago, but that’s where our similarities end. His intensity is not born of discipline or devotion to duty so much as it is a way of life. He doesn’t seem to know another way. He’s the type who falls out of bed in the morning and bangs out a hundred push-ups and stomach crunches. He is a soldier looking for a war, a hero in search of a moment of heroism. He hands me the key. “Mr. President,
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Congress has never since effectively asserted itself to stop a president with a bead on war. It was true of George Herbert Walker Bush. It was true of Bill Clinton. And by September 11, 2001, even if there had been real resistance to Vice President Cheney and President George W. Bush starting the next war (or two), there were no institutional barriers strong enough to have realistically stopped them. By 9/11, the war-making authority in the United States had become, for all intents and purposes, uncontested and unilateral: one man’s decision to make. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Rachel Maddow (Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power)
Among the first to call and congratulate me on my election victory was President Clinton. “Bibi, I’ve got to hand it to you.” He chuckled. “We did everything we could to bring you down, but you beat us fair and square.” Quintessential Bill, I thought. He wasn’t telling me something I didn’t know, but here was the president of the United States admitting without batting an eyelash to a brazen intervention in another country’s elections. Clinton’s frankness was refreshingly politically incorrect. You could see how the famous Clinton charm carried him through a myriad of minefields. I let it go and said I looked forward to working with him.
Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi: My Story)
Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. It reminds me of the old political joke: Why do you take such an instant dislike to people? It saves a lot of time.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
social workers today are hardly radicals; few engage in social and political action even of a reformist nature. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed legislation that “end[ed] welfare as we know it,” there was little organized protest from the social work profession. Although the act terminated a 60-year-old entitlement to assistance for low-income children and their caretakers that social workers had helped to create and had defended vigorously for decades, NASW endorsed Clinton for reelection with little reference to the issue. In marked contrast to past generations, the protests of radical social workers received scant attention inside and outside the profession.
Michael Reisch (The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States)
Show me,” I say. “I want to see this thing.” “The virus?” “Yes, Casey, the virus. The one that’s going to destroy our country, if you weren’t sure which virus I meant.” Everyone’s on edge, frazzled, an air of desperation in the room. “Sorry, sir.” She drops her head and goes to work on a laptop. “I’ll use the smartscreen,” she says, and for the first time I notice that the whiteboard is really some kind of computer smartboard. I look over at the smartscreen. A long menu of files suddenly appears. Casey scrolls down until she clicks on one. “Here it is,” she says. “Your virus.” I look at it, doing a double take: Suliman.exe “How humble of him,” I say. He named the virus after himself.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Goldman Sachs hoards rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock and jacks up commodity prices around the globe so that poor families can no longer afford basic staples and literally starve. Goldman Sachs is able to carry out its malfeasance at home and in global markets because it has former officials filtered throughout the government and lavishly funds compliant politicians—including Barack Obama, who received $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs in 2008 when he ran for president. These politicians, in return, permit Goldman Sachs to ignore security laws that under a functioning judiciary system would see the firm indicted for felony fraud. Or, as in the case of Bill Clinton, these politicians pass laws such as the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that effectively removed all oversight and outside control over the speculation in commodities, one of the major reasons food prices have soared. In 2008 and again in 2010 prices for crops such as rice, wheat and corn doubled and even tripled, making life precarious for hundreds of millions of people. And it was all done so a few corporate oligarchs, the 1 percent, could make personal fortunes in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite a damning 650-page Senate subcommittee investigation report, no individual at Goldman Sachs has been indicted, although the report accuses Goldman of defrauding its clients.319
Tim Wise (Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America (City Lights Open Media))
In a burst of refreshing honesty, Mary Frances Berry, an African American and former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, wrote in a Politico online discussion: “Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats.” Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added, “There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”17
Kirsten Powers (The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech)
At the same time that he was devising a response to the Afghanistan incursion, Carter had to confront a much more acute crisis in Iran, where he had brought the greatest disaster of his presidency down upon himself. In November 1977, he welcomed the shah of Iran to the White House, and on New Year’s Eve in Tehran, raising his glass, he toasted the ruler. Though the shah was sustained in power by a vicious secret police force, Carter praised him as a champion of “the cause of human rights” who had earned “the admiration and love” of the Iranian people. Little more than a year later, his subjects, no longer willing to be governed by a monarch imposed on them by the CIA, drove the shah into exile. Critically ill, he sought medical treatment in the United States. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned that admitting him could have repercussions in Iran, and Carter hesitated. But under pressure from David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the head of the National Security Council, Zbigniew Brzezinski, he caved in. Shortly after the deposed shah entered the Mayo Clinic, three thousand Islamic militants stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and seized more than fifty diplomats and soldiers. They paraded blindfolded US Marine guards, hands tied behind their backs, through the streets of Tehran while mobs chanted, “Death to Carter, Death to the Shah,” as they spat upon the American flag and burned effigies of the president—scenes recorded on camera that Americans found painful to witness.
William E. Leuchtenburg (The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton)
From my experience, I perceived Bill and Hillary to share a strong friendship and business relationship. Since I knew them both to be bisexual8, the media hyped ‘affairs’ could not be what they appeared. I called them a “perversion diversion” from the real crimes Bill and Hillary were guilty of. Hillary’s act as a jilted wife was a deliberate “division decision.” Knowing the Clintons and social engineering tactics, the illusion was created to separate her from Bill in the public eye so that she would eventually run for President as intended. Just as Bill went into the office of President as a “Democrat” to make the public feel they had a change from “Republicans” leading them into the New World Order, Hillary would be the illusion of change from male Presidents.
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
While the party of Obama has little in common with that of JFK, for a better comparison, try exploring the Communist Party USA’s website (CPUSA.org), and you’ll be stunned at the resemblance between it and today’s Democratic Party. You might also take a moment to thoughtfully reflect on the Democrats’ candidates who in recent decades were either elected, or nearly elected, as president: Bill Clinton, a serial sexual predator; Al Gore, by many accounts a raving lunatic; John Kerry, who betrayed his fellow Vietnam vets and his country;10 Barack Obama, a deceitful, America-hating, Far-Left radical; and Hillary Clinton, accurately described by Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient William Safire as “a congenital liar.”11 Whatever
David Kupelian (The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture)
From my perspective, those who were actively laying the groundwork for implementing the New World Order through mind conditioning of the masses made no distinction between Democratic and Republican parties. Their aspirations were international in proportion, not American.1 Members were often drawn from, among other elitist groups, the Council on Foreign Relations. Like George Bush, Bill Clinton was an active member of the CFR, as well as a Yale Skull and Bones graduate. Based on numerous conversations I overheard, Clinton was being groomed and prepared to fill the role of President under the guise of Democrat in the event that the American people became discouraged with Republican leaders. This was further evidenced by the extent of Clinton's New World Order knowledge and professed loyalties.
Cathy O'Brien (TRANCE Formation of America: True life story of a mind control slave)
In the incongruous role of the insurgent party-builder, he made crystal clear the whole host of inferences we have drawn from the experiences of Monroe and Polk: that innovation, however orthodox, is inherently destabilizing; that the purely constructive leadership project is an illusion; that the affiliated leader cannot assume independent ground without ultimately embracing the role of the heretic; that the only way ever to be president in your own right is to become yourself a great repudiator and set yourself directly against the bulwark of received power; that political disruption parallels presidential significance. Roosevelt's insight was not simply that new achievements do not rest securely on old foundations, but that to save the handiwork of his presidency he would have to reconstruct its political base.
Stephen Skowronek (The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton)
At one point during his second term, agents say Clinton managed to lose the plastic authenticator card with the codes he would need to verify his identity to launch nuclear weapons. “He has to keep those codes with him at all times, at all costs,” says a former agent. “With the codes, the White House Communications Agency can set up communications through the nuclear football and hit the satellites.” Retired general Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in his book Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior that in Clinton’s last year in office, the required codes for launching a nuclear strike were missing for months. “This is a big deal—a gargantuan deal—and we dodged a silver bullet,” Shelton wrote. As the Secret Service sees it, Hillary and Bill Clinton have a business relationship, not a marriage.
Ronald Kessler (The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents)
Have a seat,” I say inside the Roosevelt Room. Ordinarily we’d do this in the Oval Office. But I’m not having this conversation in the Oval Office. He unbuttons his suit jacket and takes a seat. I sit at the head of the table. “Needless to say, Mr. President, we were elated with the results from yesterday. And we were grateful that we could be a small part of your success.” “Yes, Mr. Ambassador.” “Andrei, please.” Andrei Ivanenko looks like he could play someone’s grandfather in a cereal commercial—the crown of his head bald and spotted, wispy white hair along the sides, an overall frumpy appearance. The look works well for him. Because beneath that harmless-seeming exterior is a career spy, a product of Russia’s charm school and one of the elites in the former KGB, shipped off later in life to the diplomatic arena and sent here as ambassador to the United States.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
The girl enters the room wearing work boots, torn jeans, and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt bearing the word PRINCETON. She is waif-thin, with a long neck, prominent cheekbones, and narrow eyes spread apart in a way that suggests eastern Europe. Her hair is in one of those styles I’ve never understood, the right side of her head shaved in a military buzz cut with  longer hair hanging over it, down to her bony shoulders. A cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker. She scans the room, but not the way most people who enter the Oval Office do. First-time visitors soak it all in, eagerly devour all the portraits and knickknacks, marvel at the presidential seal, the Resolute desk. Not her. What I see in her eyes, behind the impenetrable wall of her face, is pure loathing. Hatred of me, this office, everything it stands for. But she’s tense, too, on alert—wondering if someone will jump her, handcuff her, throw a hood over her head.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day. There’s a real cost to this. It breeds more frustration, polarization, paralysis, bad decisions, and missed opportunities. But with no incentive to actually accomplish something, more and more politicians just go with the flow, fanning the flames of anger and resentment, when they should be acting as the fire brigade. Everybody knows it’s wrong, but the immediate rewards are so great we stagger on, just assuming that our Constitution, our public institutions, and the rule of law can endure each new assault without doing permanent damage to our freedoms and way of life.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
It astounds me that the media is ignoring Noriega’s extensive ties into this country, from his education at the School of the Americas4 to his well known involvement with Bush and the CIA in the cocaine business. Can’t people see that this so-called War on Drugs is no more than the CIA eliminating their competition while they take over the industry worldwide?” I paused to reflect. “If people don’t wake up soon, we’ll have a drug lord running this country.” “We already do,” Billy said, unjamming his stapling machine. I laughed. “I’m referring to Bill Clinton. In 1984, I was at the Swiss Villa Amphitheater in Lampe Missouri5 where Bush and Clinton were talking about their New World Order. Bush was really pleased with how well Clinton’s Mena cocaine operation was funding the New World Order effort, and he assured Clinton he would be rewarded politically. In those days, the groundwork for NAFTA6 was established to open the border to ‘free trade of drugs to equalize our economies,’ and Clinton was right there in the midst of it all. It was already determined that Bush would be put in the office of President at the same time Salinas was put in as President of Mexico so they could usher in NAFTA.
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
What happened to factual, down-the-middle reporting? That’s hard to even define anymore, as the line between fact and fiction, between truth and lies, gets murkier every day. We can’t survive without a free press, dedicated to preserving that fine line and secure enough to follow the facts where they lead. But the current environment imposes serious pressures on our journalists, at least those who cover politics, to do just the reverse—to exercise their own power and to, in the words of one wise columnist, “abnormalize” all politicians, even honest, able ones, often because of relatively insignificant issues. Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
This is not a hypothetical example. In the middle of the nineteenth century Karl Marx reached brilliant economic insights. Based on these insights he predicted an increasingly violent conflict between the proletariat and the capitalists, ending with the inevitable victory of the former and the collapse of the capitalist system. Marx was certain that the revolution would start in countries that spearheaded the Industrial Revolution – such as Britain, France and the USA – and spread to the rest of the world. Marx forgot that capitalists know how to read. At first only a handful of disciples took Marx seriously and read his writings. But as these socialist firebrands gained adherents and power, the capitalists became alarmed. They too perused Das Kapital, adopting many of the tools and insights of Marxist analysis. In the twentieth century everybody from street urchins to presidents embraced a Marxist approach to economics and history. Even diehard capitalists who vehemently resisted the Marxist prognosis still made use of the Marxist diagnosis. When the CIA analysed the situation in Vietnam or Chile in the 1960s, it divided society into classes. When Nixon or Thatcher looked at the globe, they asked themselves who controls the vital means of production. From 1989 to 1991 George Bush oversaw the demise of the Evil Empire of communism, only to be defeated in the 1992 elections by Bill Clinton. Clinton’s winning campaign strategy was summarised in the motto: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Marx could not have said it better. As people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their national consciousness and integrate them into the political system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists could still sleep soundly in their beds. As a result, Marx’s predictions came to naught. Communist revolutions never engulfed the leading industrial powers such as Britain, France and the USA, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was consigned to the dustbin of history. This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
From Hillary Clinton, I have learned all kinds of things. How to be confident, brave, unfailingly empathetic, future-focused, tough, and gracious. She and I have had countless adventures over the past twenty-five years and who knows what else lies in the future, but I am still certain about one thing. Hillary Clinton would have been an exceptional President of the United States. Maybe one of the best presidents. I say that with even more conviction and resolve today than when I believed it as a starry-eyed young woman. The overarching quest of her public life has always been how to help every man, woman, and child reach their full potential. That purpose drove every policy rollout, every bill in the Senate, every speech she delivered, every town and country she visited, every book she wrote. Her focus was always how to give each child the opportunity to grow and flourish, every parent the tools to raise healthy, educated children, every person the right to live in dignity, every worker the protections and rights to succeed and thrive. As president, she would have reached across the aisle and forced divergent opinions to the table to help all Americans. She would have served her country, not herself. Maybe it won't happen in her lifetime or mine, but I'm confident that history will remember her as one of the American Greats.
Huma Abedin (Both/And: A Memoir)
During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat was invited to spend more time in the White House than any other foreign leader—thirteen invitations.303 Clinton was dead set on helping the Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace. He pushed the Israelis to grant ever-greater concessions until the Israelis were willing to grant the Palestinians up to 98 percent of all the territory they requested. And what was the Palestinian response? They walked away from the bargaining table and launched the wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks known as the Second Intifada. And what of Osama bin Laden? Even while America was granting concessions to Palestinians—and thereby theoretically easing the conditions that provided much of the pretext for Muslim terror—bin Laden was bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen, and was well into the planning stages of the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. After President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, bringing American troops into direct ground combat with jihadists half a world away, many Americans quickly forgot the recent past and blamed American acts of self-defense for “inflaming” jihad. One of those Americans was Barack Obama. Soon after his election, Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he delivered a now-infamous speech that signaled America’s massive policy shifts. The United States pulled entirely out of Iraq despite the pleas of “all the major Iraqi parties.”304 In Egypt, the United States actually backed the Muslim Brotherhood government, going so far as agreeing to give it advanced F-16 fighters and M1 Abrams main battle tanks, even as the Muslim Brotherhood government was violating its peace treaty with Israel and persecuting Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community. The Obama administration continued supporting the Brotherhood, even when it stood aside and allowed jihadists to storm the American embassy, raising the black flag of jihad over an American diplomatic facility. In Libya, the United States persuaded its allies to come to the aid of a motley group of rebels, including jihadists. Then many of these same jihadists promptly turned their anger on the United States, attacking our diplomatic compound in Benghazi the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2012—killing the American ambassador and three more brave Americans. Compounding this disaster, the administration had steadfastly refused to reinforce the American security presence in spite of a deteriorating security situation, afraid that it would anger the local population. This naïve and foolish administration decision cost American lives.
Jay Sekulow (Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore)
I will always be grateful to have been the Democratic Party’s nominee and to have earned 65,844,610 votes from my fellow Americans. That number—more votes than any candidate for President has ever received, other than Barack Obama—is proof that the ugliness we faced in 2016 does not define our country. I want to thank everyone who welcomed me into their homes, businesses, schools, and churches over those two long, crazy years; every little girl and boy who ran into my arms at full speed or high-fived me with all their might; and the long chain of brave, adventurous people, stretching back generations, whose love and strength made it possible for me to lead such a rewarding life in the country I love. Thanks to them, despite everything else, my heart is full. I started this book with some words attributed to one of those pathbreakers, Harriet Tubman. Twenty years ago, I watched a group of children perform a play about her life at her former homestead in Auburn, New York. They were so excited about this courageous, determined woman who led slaves to freedom against all odds. Despite everything she faced, she never lost her faith in a simple but powerful motto: Keep going. That’s what we have to do now, too. In 2016, the U.S. government announced that Harriet Tubman will become the face of the $20 bill. If you need proof that America can still get it right, there it is.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
Bannon thrived on the chaos he created and did everything he could to make it spread. When he finally made his way through the crowd to the back of the town house, he put on a headset to join the broadcast of the Breitbart radio show already in progress. It was his way of bringing tens of thousands of listeners into the inner sanctum of the “Breitbart Embassy,” as the town house was ironically known, and thereby conscripting them into a larger project. Bannon was inordinately proud of the movement he saw growing around him, boasting constantly of its egalitarian nature. What to an outsider could look like a cast of extras from the Island of Misfit Toys was, in Bannon’s eyes, a proudly populist and “unclubbable” plebiscite rising up in defiant protest against the “globalists” and “gatekeepers” who had taken control of both parties. Just how Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty figured into a plan to overthrow the global power structure wasn’t clear, even to many of Bannon’s friends. But, then, Bannon derived a visceral thrill anytime he could deliver a fuck-you to the establishment. The thousands of frustrated listeners calling in to his radio show, and the millions more who flocked to Breitbart News, had left him no doubt that an army of the angry and dispossessed was eager to join him in lobbing a bomb at the country’s leaders. As guests left the party, a doorman handed out a gift that Bannon had chosen for the occasion: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” imprinted above an image of a honey badger, the Breitbart mascot. — Bannon’s cult-leader magnetism was a powerful draw for oddballs and freaks, and the attraction ran both ways. As he moved further from the cosmopolitan orbits of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood, there was no longer any need for him to suppress his right-wing impulses. Giving full vent to his views on subjects like immigration and Islam isolated him among a radical fringe that most of political Washington regarded as teeming with racist conspiracy theorists. But far from being bothered, Bannon welcomed their disdain, taking it as proof of his authentic conviction. It fed his grandiose sense of purpose to imagine that he was amassing an army of ragged, pitchfork-wielding outsiders to storm the barricades and, in Andrew Breitbart’s favorite formulation, “take back the country.” If Bannon was bothered by the incendiary views held by some of those lining up with him, he didn’t show it. His habit always was to welcome all comers. To all outward appearances, Bannon, wild-eyed and scruffy, a Falstaff in flip-flops, was someone whom the political world could safely ignore. But his appearance, and the company he kept, masked an analytic capability that was undiminished and as applicable to politics as it had been to the finances of corrupt Hollywood movie studios. Somehow, Bannon, who would happily fall into league with the most agitated conservative zealot, was able to see clearly that conservatives had failed to stop Bill Clinton in the 1990s because they had indulged this very zealotry to a point where their credibility with the media and mainstream voters was shot. Trapped in their own bubble, speaking only to one another, they had believed that they were winning, when in reality they had already lost.
Joshua Green (Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency)
Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.” In order to evoke the spirit of Dead Poets Society, Clow and Jobs wanted to get Robin Williams to read the narration. His agent said that Williams didn’t do ads, so Jobs tried to call him directly. He got through to Williams’s wife, who would not let him talk to the actor because she knew how persuasive he could be. They also considered Maya Angelou and Tom Hanks. At a fund-raising dinner featuring Bill Clinton that fall, Jobs pulled the president aside and asked him to telephone Hanks to talk him into it, but the president pocket-vetoed the request. They ended up with Richard Dreyfuss, who was a dedicated Apple fan. In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most memorable print campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white portrait of an iconic historical figure with just the Apple logo and the words “Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly engaging was that the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon, Dylan, Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others caused people to pause, puzzle, and maybe ask a friend to put a name to the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard Feynman, Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart. Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who had taken risks, defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a different way.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our time have involved allegations of white men gang-raping a black woman-- first the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987 and later the false rape charges against three Duke University students in 2006. In both cases, editorial indignation rang out across the land, without a speck of evidence to substantiate either of these charges. Moreover, the denunciations were not limited to the particular men accused, but were often extended to society at large, of whom these men were deemed to be symptoms or 'the tip of the iceberg.' In both cases, the charges fit a pre-existing vision, and that apparently made mundane facts unnecessary. Another widely publicized hoax-- one to which the President of the United States added his sub-hoax-- was a 1996 story appearing in USA Today under the headline, 'Arson at Black Churches Echoes Bigotry of the Past.' There was, according to USA Today, 'an epidemic of church burning,' targeting black churches. Like the gang-rape hoaxes, this story spread rapidly through the media. The Chicago Tribune referred to 'an epidemic of criminal and cowardly arson' leaving black churches in ruins. As with the gang-rape hoaxes, comments on the church fire stories went beyond those who were supposed to have set these fires to blame forces at work in society at large. Jesse Jackson was quoted was quoted in the New York Times as calling these arsons part of a 'cultural conspiracy' against blacks, which 'reflected the heightened racial tensions in the south that have been exacerbated by the assault on affirmative action and the populist oratory of Republican politicians like Pat Buchanan.' Time magazine writer Jack White likewise blamed 'the coded phrases' of Republican leaders for 'encouraging the arsonists.' Columnist Barbara Reynolds of USA Today said that the fires were 'an attempt to murder the spirit of black America.' New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said, "The fuel for these fires can be traced to a carefully crafted environment of bigotry and hatred that was developed over the last century.' As with the gang-rape hoaxes, the charges publicized were taken as reflecting on the whole society, not just those supposedly involved in what was widely presumed to be arson, rather than fires that break out for a variety of other reasons. Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam said that society in effect was 'giving these arsonists permission to commit these horrible crimes.' The climax of these comments came when President Bill Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said that these church burnings recalled similar burnings of black churches in Arkansas when he was a boy. There were more that 2,000 media stories done on the subject after the President's address. This story began to unravel when factual research showed that (1) no black churches were burned in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was growing up, (2) there had been no increase in fires at black churches, but an actual decrease over the previous 15 years, (3) the incidence of fires at white churches was similar to the incidence of fires at black churches, and (4) where there was arson, one-third of the suspects were black. However, retractions of the original story-- where there were retractions at all-- typically were given far less prominence than the original banner headlines and heated editorial comments.
Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Society)
When Bush and Clinton were talking in 1984, Bush told Clinton ‘when the American people become disillusioned with Republicans leading them into the New World Order, you, as a Democrat, will be put into place.’ I expect that Clinton will be our next President based on that conversation I heard.” “This is serious information!” Billy looked up from his work. “Its no wonder the Feds are worried about your revealing what you know.” “There are a lot of people who know what I know7,” I assured him. “And even more are waking up to reality fast. People with Intelligence operating on a Need-to-Know are gaining insight into a bigger picture with the truth that is emerging. They gain one more piece of the puzzle and the Big Picture suddenly comes into focus. When it does, their paradigms shift. Mark and I are also aware of numerous scientists waking up to the reality of a New World Order agenda who are furious that they’ve been mislead and used. These people are uniting with strength, and the New World Order elite will need to play their hold card and switch political parties. Watch and see. Clinton will appear to ‘defeat’ Bush according to plan, while Bush continues business as usual from behind the scenes of the New World Order.” “Who do you think will follow Clinton?” “A compliant, sleeping public mesmerized by his Oxford learned charisma.” Billy looked up from his work again to clarify his question. “I mean into the Presidency.” “Hillary?” I smiled half-heartedly. “Seriously, she is brighter than Bill, and is even more corrupt. Knowing her, she’d probably rather work behind the scenes, although she may be used as another appearance of ‘change’ since she’s a woman. That’s just speculation based on how these criminals operate. They want to keep their power all in the family. I did see Bush, Jr. being conditioned, and trained for the role of President at the Mount Shasta, California military programming compound in 19868. He’s not very bright, though, so I don’t know how they could possibly prop him up…
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
What are the implications of ethnic identity for multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies? Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Tampere, Finland, has probably researched the effects of ethnic diversity more systematically than anyone else. In a massive, book-length study, he measured ethnic diversity and levels of conflict in 148 countries, and found correlations in the 0.5 to 0.9 range for the two variables, depending on how the variables were defined and measured. Homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland show very low levels of conflict, while highly diverse countries like Lebanon and Sudan are wracked with strife. Prof. Vanhanen found tension in all multi-ethnic societies: “Interest conflicts between ethnic groups are inevitable because ethnic groups are genetic kinship groups and because the struggle for existence concerns the survival of our own genes through our own and our relatives’ descendants.” Prof. Vanhanen also found that economic and political institutions make no difference; wealthy, democratic countries suffer from sectarian strife as much as poor, authoritarian ones: “Ethnic nepotism belongs to human nature and . . . it is independent from the level of socioeconomic development (modernization) and also from the degree of democratization.” Others have argued that democracy is particularly vulnerable to ethnic tensions while authoritarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Tito’s Yugoslavia can give the impression of holding it in check. One expert writing in Foreign Affairs explained that for democracy to work “the party or group that loses has to trust the new majority and believe that its basic interests will still be protected and that there is nothing to fear from a change in power.” He wrote that this was much less likely when opposing parties represent different races or ethnicities. The United Nations found that from 1989 to 1992 there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths each. Of these, no fewer than 79, or 96 percent, were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states. Only three were cross-border conflicts. Wars between nations are usually ethnic conflicts as well. Internal ethnic conflict has very serious consequences. As J. Philippe Rushton has argued, “The politics of ethnic identity are increasingly replacing the politics of class as the major threat to the stability of nations.” One must question the wisdom of then-president Bill Clinton’s explanation for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia: “[T]he principle we and our allies have been fighting for in the Balkans is the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity.” That same year, the American supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, was even more direct: “There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)