My email group had a raging ongoing flame war as well as the political message boards on aol. I was right in the thick of it all, defending Bill throughout the impeachment*, then on into 2000 where I chastised Al Gore for distancing himself from Bill. After September 11, 2001, I don't know how many times I had to correct people who said "Clinton did nothing" in regard to terrorism. The reason for my strong defense was because I adored and totally believed in him. In them. Bill and Hill, the co-presidents.

The reason I believed in them was because of how I felt when I came face to face with Bill twice on his campaign trails. I was lucky enough to be front row both times and offered a Clinton/Gore sign to hold up (I still have them).
The second is most vivid to me. It was at Mill Creek Park in Portland, Maine. When Bill sprang out of the limo, WBLM played "Let the Day Begin" by The Call and the very air changed. Bill began to shake hands and when he finally made it around to me, I swear time stood still. He grasped my hand in both of his (his hands were dry, warm, and faintly calloused), looked directly at me with those beautiful, smiling eyes and said "Hi! Thanks so much for coming out to support me." I mean, he was "there" with me, in the moment. He was REAL and I BELIEVED in him because of it. Much to my delight, a podium was placed directly in front of me so I had one of the best spots in the park. I wanted to kick the woman with the large sign protesting sanctions on Iraq, or NAFTA or Welfare reform (I forget which but it pissed me off that she was there). How dare she ruin this glorious day!?

In 2003 I started writing to Hillary, begging her to run for President. When I finally woke up and looked at her voting record (thank you, person here on DU who brought it to my attention with links for the lazy) I stopped begging and was actually relieved that she didn't run.

I'm not trying to write a book here. All I really want to say is that finding out your hero is actually covered in slime HURTS, DAMMIT! To have idolized and defended these two makes me feel ashamed and foolish. And now, with each new lie, and with each new dirty deal revealed, I am starting to feel nothing but contempt. It really does feel personal.

I was just wondering if anyone else has felt the same at all?

*I still have a nagging question about the whole Monica ordeal: We all know that Monica sent the infamous blue Gap dress to her mom for safe keeping. How the heck did Monica explain it to her? "Uh, mom? I got some of the President's stuff on my dress. Can you save it in case I'm ever secretly taped and need evidence to support what happened?" I mean, was there a note with the dress? What? Okay, I'm done now.

If you like Joe Lieberman, you'll LOVE the DLC!!!! Here's what Al From had to say about the midterm elections, "...That last point was underscored by Joe Lieberman's re-election victory in Connecticut, which helps solidify the Democratic Party's credentials as a broad, inclusive coalition able to compete for the vital center of American politics." http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=86&su...
WOW! Who wouldn't throw their support to the DLC? If they have it their way, EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT IN THE UNITED STATES WILL BE EXACTLY LIKE JOE LIEBERMAN!

I was always suspicious of the DLC because it seemed to me that their slogan was, "If you want to be electable, try to look as Republican as possible." If I want a Republican in office, I'll vote for a real one, not an impersonator.
I began despising the DLC in 2003, when Al From and Bruce Reed defined the "real soul" of the Democratic Party with their list of "myths":
In their vicious attack against Howard Dean, the DLC also attacked those of us who opposed the war in Iraq.
"...Unlike Gov. Howard Dean, we never forget to give the late Sen. Paul Wellstone credit for coining the phrase, "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." We often disagreed with Sen. Wellstone on the issues, but we always knew he was fighting for the little guy.

But the great myth of the current cycle is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of activists represent the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Real Democrats are real people, not activist elites. The mission of the Democratic Party, as Bill Clinton pledged in 1992, is to provide "real answers to the real problems of real people." Real Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas..."

"...What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home. That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one..."

"...Not only is the activist wing out of line with Democratic tradition, but it is badly out of touch with the Democratic rank-and-file..."

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=...

I think Wikipedia's definition is accurate:
"...Moderate and conservative Democratic party leaders founded the DLC in response to the landslide victory of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale during the 1984 Presidential election. The founders believed the United States Democratic Party needed to shift to the right of center to remain viable during the Reagan era. The DLC hails President Clinton as proof of the viability of third way politicians and as a DLC success story. Critics contend that the DLC is effectively a powerful, corporate-financed mouthpiece within the Democratic party that acts to keep Democratic Party candidates and platforms sympathetic to corporate interests and the interests of the wealthy..."

If you're not disgusted yet, go here to read more of Al From's puke inducing drivel:
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_sub.cfm?kaid=86&s...

DLC: Wolves in Democrats' Clothing
by Harley Sorensen
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0105-0...
"...Mr. From would argue with my description of him, but I'd describe him as a kind of agent provocateur, a plant inserted by the Republicans into the leadership of the Democrat Party. His goal: Wreck the party, turn it into the Republican Lite Party..."

March 22, 1933 - Dachau slave labor death camp established

The Hitler regime established the first concentration camp about 15 kilometers northwest of Munich, dedicated on March 20 by Heinrich Himmler. It held about 5,000 prisoners, mostly Communists, Social-Democrats, and homosexuals. Bavarian police guarded the prisoners until April 11, when the SS took over. The slave-labor death camps, so hideous in their reality that Germans didn't want to hear about them, became an efficient tool in silencing opponents of the regime. Dachau was a political camp and the first Jewish detainees were among the best-known political opponents of the Nazi regime. More than 10,000 Jews from all over Germany were interned there after Kristallnacht http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/knacht.html . When the systematic genocide of Jews began, the Jewish prisoners were deported from Dachau and other camps in the Reich to the extermination camps in the East.


Throughout 1933 and 1934, thousands of Communists, Social Democrats and Jews were arrested in various parts of Germany. There was no secret about these arrests. The German people made no effort to stop Hitler's terrorism. They allowed themselves to be brainwashed by his relentless propaganda and regarded their Fuhrer as making heroic efforts to re-establish order and decency.

On May 2, 1933, Hitler dissolved all the German trade unions and within six months he had destroyed the largest and best-organized workers' movement in the world at that time. This catastrophic defeat of the German workers had the worst possible psychological effect because throughout this entire time there was not even a single symbolic act of resistance. Had there been even an attempt at resisting the Nazi's relentless destruction of human freedoms, it would at least have allowed the workers to feel that they had not gone down without a struggle.

Throughout 1933 and 1934, the SS, Gestapo and police, often assisted by fire brigades and emergency services, regularly sealed off specific German housing estates and combed through them house by house for suspected enemies of the state. Local SA groups carried out beatings, arbitrary arrests and spontaneous vandalism, creating an atmosphere of terror and helplessness in working class strongholds Germans had believed to be safe. In this way the Nazi goons smashed any semblance of working class solidarity. The Gestapo built up its surveillance apparatus to make mass resistance impossible. So German people felt an ever-present sense of terror and fear, as if they were living in a country occupied by foreign troops.

The Nazi terror continued, unchallenged:

June 22, 1933: the Social Democrat party, the only opposition party to the Nazis, was banned

July 7, 1933: the elected Social Democrats were expelled from the government

July 14 1933: a law was passed making sterilization compulsory for those considered unfit

July 15, 1933: all political parties were banned except the Nazi party

July 1933: concentration camps were systematized

October 1933: the entire press was now under Nazi control

New laws destroyed editors' and journalists’ independence and expression of personal opinion

The film industries were taken over one by one

November, 1933:

General elections were held for a single-party parliament

The Nuremberg race laws were established

January 20, 1934: ‘Regulation of National Labor’ broke the power of all organized labor within German workplaces

January 30, 1934: the local governments were dissolved without provision for re-election; local commissioners were henceforth appointed by Reich ministers to whom they were beholden

February 1934: the Upper House of Parliament was dissolved

May 5, 1934: the German Protestant Church's ‘confessing synod’ made the ‘Barmen Theological Declaration’ against the totalitarian state; later in 1934, the Catholic Bishop Galen of Munster preached against the Nazi attacks on Christianity in a sermon widely disseminated

June 30, 1934: the ‘Night of the Long Knives' - hundreds of "enemies of the state" were murdered in cold blood

The massacre included several prominent non-Nazis, among them, the leader of Catholic action and two army generals

Among those murdered were socialist revolutionaries within the Nazi party.

People the world over were shocked at the mass bloodshed, but no reaction within Germany or elsewhere challenged the Nazi terror.

August 1934: Hitler became Der Führer as well as Chancellor; a plebiscite of the German people formally ratified his dictatorship
The German people had allowed this reign of terror to seize control of the entire nation without any significant resistance or expression of outrage.

The same thing can happen to any people who do not begin early to resist the attacks on their liberties.

Norman D. Livergood

(Not in order by Date)

MY FAVORITE from September 22, 1998

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Keeping his public focus on international events, President Clinton renewed a global call to arms against terrorism yesterday and attacked the idea that it is mainly an American problem of American making.
"This is a threat to all humankind," Clinton said in a 21-minute speech to the opening of the 53rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. The hundreds of delegates gave Clinton a RARE STANDING OVATION as he was introduced in the cavernous hall at U.N. headquarters.

http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/sep/09...

November 6, 1998

New York -- A U.S. Federal Grand Jury in New York on Nov. 5 issued an
indictment against Usama Bin Laden alleging that he and others engaged
in a long-term conspiracy to attack U.S. facilities overseas and to
kill American citizens.

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/11/981106...

August 21, 1998

Events Leading Up To Clinton's Order To Strike Back
Last 13 days extraordinary for a president facing personal crisis

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/21/... /

WASHINGTON -- Dozens of U.S. cruise missiles struck targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan on Thursday in what President Clinton described as an act of self-defense against imminent terrorist plots and of retribution for the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa two weeks ago.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/...

August 20, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Edgartown Elementary School

Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

1:55 P.M. EDT

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/download...

August 24, 1998

Did Bill Clinton Smooth the Way for Bin Laden to Become the World's Most Successful Terrorist?
Osama Bin Laden, Bill Clinton, Bosnia and Fundamentalist Muslims
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources

http://www.bannerofliberty.com/OS8-98MQC/8...

August 27, 1998

LOW GAS PRICES -- Bill Cohen, of Ohio Public Radio, reports that many vacation drivers are being pleasantly surprised by gasoline prices under a dollar a gallon. The average price for self-serve regular is now $1.02 a gallon. Gas prices were low when the summer began, but continued to fall right through the peak driving season. (3:30)

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1...

CLINTON DECLARES HIS WAR ON OSAMA BIN LADEN
(American Patriot Fiends Network)

On August 20th President Clinton launched scores of Tomahawk cruise missiles against alleged terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. (alleged???)

Sudan's president Omar el-Bashir strongly protested this act of terrorism perpetrated by Americans on the sovereign state of Sudan. He is pressing hard to show the world that the only thing America took out was a pharmaceutical factory that produced half of the country's medicine supply. Its main products were drugs used to combat malaria and tuberculosis. The president went on to say that Sudan would launch a complaint with the United Nations since the U.S. violated international law in its attack on a sovereign nation.

http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/1998/08/clint...

See all from the Google search here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%...

measures.

Election Fraud
Free Speech Zones
9/11 lies, coverups and politicization
WMD lies
Use of American military personnel as cannon fodder
Murder of thousands of innocent Iraqis
Valerie Plame
Katrina
Cronyism
Fascism
Illegal Wiretapping
and PISSING ALL OVER THE CONSTITUTION IN GENERAL

are not enough to impeach, WHO IS WILLING TO BE A TRUE PATRIOT AND GIVE BUSH A BLOWJOB?

I would do it myself, but I'm allergic.