Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Time	Event
12:18a	Edwin Yoder, an old-fashioned progressive... Edwin Yoder, an old-fashioned progressive columnist, said Washington was being overtaken by ethical cleansersIn a column on the Nussbaum-Altman meeting, he said: I wish someone would begin by explaining to me why it is so very wicked for White House staff to want information from elsewhere within the executive branch about charges and rumors concerning the president Robert Fiske found the contacts between the White House and the Treasury Department to be legal, but that didnt stop the smearing of Nussbaum and AltmanBack then, all our political appointees needed to be read their Miranda warnings three times a dayBernie Nussbaum resigned in early March; he never got over my foolish decision to ask for an independent counsel, and he didnt want to be a source of further problemsAltman would leave government service a few months laterThey were both able, honest public servants In March, Roger Ailes, a longtime Republican operative who had become president of CNBC, accused the administration of a cover-up with regard to Whitewater that includes land fraud, illegal contributions, abuse of power suicide cover-uppossible murderSo much for the credible evidence of wrongdoing standard William Safire, the New York Times columnist who had been a speechwriter for Nixon and Agnew, and who seemed determined to prove that all their successors were just as bad as they were, was especially avid in his unsupported assertions that Vinces death was linked to illegal conduct by Hillary and meOf course, Vinces prada black bags suicide note had said exactly the reverse, that we had done nothing wrong, but that didnt prevent Safire from speculating that Vince had improperly kept records damaging to us in his office We now know that a lot of the so-called information that fueled the damaging but erroneous stories was fed to the press by David Hale and the right-wingers who adopted him for their own purposesIn 1993, Hale, the Republican municipal judge in Little Rock, was charged with defrauding the Small Business Administration of $900,000 in federal funds that were supposed to have been used to make loans to minority businesses through his company, Capital Management Services (a later GAO audit indicated he had defrauded the SBA of $3Instead, he gave the money to himself through a series of dummy corporationsHale discussed his plight with Justice Jim Johnson, the old Arkansas racist who had run against Win Rockefeller for governor in 1966 and against Senator Fulbright in 1968Johnson took Hale under his wing, and in August put him in contact with a conservative group called Citizens United, whose principals were Floyd Brown and David BossieBrown had produced the infamous Willie Horton ads against Mike Dukakis in 1988Bossie had helped him write a book for the 1992 campaign entitled Slick Willie: Why America Cannot Trust Bill Clinton, in which the authors gave special thanks to Justice Jim Johnson Hale claimed that I had pressed him to lend $300,000 from Capital Management to a company owned by Susan McDougal, for the purpose of kelly handbag giving it out to leading Arkansas DemocratsIn return, McDougal would lend Hale more than $800,000 from Madison Guaranty, enabling him to get another million dollars from the Small Business AdministrationIt was an absurd and untrue story, but Brown and Bossie peddled it hardApparently, Sheffield Nelson also helped, by pushing it to his contact at the New York Times, Jeff Gerth By March 1994, the media was wringing its hands about some documents shredded by the Rose firm; one of the boxes that held the papers had Vince Fosters initials on itThe firm explained that the shredding involved material unrelated to Whitewater and was a normal procedure involving papers that were no longer neededNo one in our White House knew about the routine destruction of unneeded records unrelated to Whitewater at the Rose firmMoreover, we had nothing to cover up, and there still wasnt a bit of evidence to indicate that we did It got so bad that even the highly respected journalist David Broder referred to Bernie Nussbaum as unfortunate for allegedly tolerating arrogance and abuse of power that led to the all-too-familiar wordsinvestigation, subpoena, grand jury, resignation that had echoed through Washington again this past weekBroder even compared the war rooms that managed our campaigns for the economic plan and NAFTA to Nixons enemies list Nussbaum was unfortunate, all right; there would have been no investigation, subpoenas, or grand jury if I had listened to him and refused to give in to the demands for an vintage hermes independent counsel to clear the airBernies real offense was that he thought I should abide by the rule of law and accepted standards of propriety, rather than the constantly shifting standards of the Whitewater media, which were designed to produce the very results they professed to deploreNussbaums successor, longtime Washington attorney Lloyd Cutler, had a justifiably good reputation in the Washington establishmentIn the coming months, his presence and advice would help a great deal, but he couldnt turn the Whitewater tide Rush Limbaugh was having a field day on his show, wallowing in the Whitewater mudHe claimed that Vince had been murdered in an apartment Hillary owned, and that his body had been moved to Fort Marcy ParkI could not imagine how that made Vinces wife and kids feelLater, Limbaugh falsely charged that journalists and others working on or involved in Whitewatergate have been beaten and harassed in Little Rock Not to be outdone by Limbaugh, former Republican congressman Bill Dannemeyer called for congressional hearings on the frightening number of people connected to me who had died under other than natural circumstancesDannemeyers grisly list included my campaign finance co-chairman, Vic Raiser, and his son, who had died tragically in a plane crash on a trip to Alaska in 1992, and Paul Tully, the political director of the Democratic Party who had died of a heart attack while working on the campaign in Little RockI had delivered eulogies at both funerals, and later appointed Vics widow, Molly, old omega watches as chief of protocol Jerry Falwell outdid Dannemeyer by releasing Circle of Power, a video about countless people who mysteriously died in Arkansas; the film implied that I was somehow responsibleThen came Falwells sequel, The Clinton Chronicles, which he promoted on his television show, The Old Time Gospel HourThe video featured Dannemeyer and Justice Jim Johnson, and accused me of being involved with cocaine smuggling, having witnesses killed, and arranging the murders of a private investigator and the wife of a state trooperA lot of the witnesses were paid for their testimonials, and Falwell sold a great many videos As Whitewater unfolded, I tried to keep some perspective, and to remember that not everyone was caught up in the hysteriaFor example, USA Today ran a fair story on Whitewater that included interviews with Jim McDougal, who said Hillary and I didnt do anything wrong, and Chris Wade, the real estate agent in north Arkansas who supervised the Whitewater land, who also said we were telling the truth about our limited involvement with the property I could understand why right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Bill Dannemeyer, Jerry Falwell, and a paper like the Washington Times would say such thingsThe Washington Times was avowedly right-wing, financed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and edited by Wes Pruden Jr whose father, the Reverend Wesley Pruden, had been chaplain of the White Citizens Council in Arkansas and an ally of Justice Jim Johnsons in their lost crusade against civil rights for black fendi spy bl (3 Comments | Comment on this)
12:19a	She'd never had a chance to wear it, because... She'd never had a chance to wear it, because she'd had to dress so dowdy in CharlestonHow lucky, after all, that she'd had all those clothes made before she went to CharlestonWhy, there were a half dozen dresses that had hardly been on her backEven without the trim that Rhett had taunted her into removing, they were much prettier than anything she'd seen on anybody in SavannahScarlett was preening as Jerome handed her up into the hired carriage to sit across from her grandfatherThe ride to the south end of town was silentPierre Robillard's white-crowned head nodded, half-sleepingIt jerked upright when Scarlett exclaimed, "Oh, look!" There were crowds of people on the street outside the iron-fenced classical building, there to watch the -5 arrival of Savannah's elite societyJust like the Saint CeciliaScarlett held her head arrogantly high as a gucci backpack liveried attendant helped her from the carriage to the sidewalkShe could hear murmurs of admiration from the crowdsWhile her grandfather slowly stepped down to join her, she bobbed her head to set her earbobs flashing in the lamplight and cast her train from over her arm to spread out behind her for her entrance up the tall, red-carpeted steps to the Hall's door"Ooooh," she heard from the crowd and, "aaah," "beautiful," "who is she?" As she extended her white-gloved hand to rest on her grandfather's velvet sleeve a familiar voice called out clearly, "Katie Scarlett, darling, you're as dazzling as the Queen of Sheba!" She looked quickly, in a panic, to her left, then, even more quickly, turned away from Jamie and his brood as if she didn't know them, and proceeded at Pierre Robillard's slow, stately pace to mount the stairsBut the picture was seared into her mind Jamie had his tiffany jewellery left arm around the shoulders of his laughing, bright-haired untidy wife, his derby hat tipped carelessly on the back of his curly headAnother man stood at his right side, illuminated by the street lampHe was only as tall as Jamie's shoulder, and his overcoated figure was thick, stocky, a dark blockHis florid round face was bright, his eyes flashing blue, and his uncovered head a halo of silver curlsHe was the very image of Gerald O'Hara, Scarlett's Pa Hodgson Hall had a handsome, serious interior, appropriate to its scholarly purposeRich, polished wood panelling covered the walls and framed the Historical Society's collection of old maps and sketches Huge brass chandeliers fitted with white glass-globed gaslights hung from the tall ceilingThey cast an unkind, bright, bleaching light on the pale, lined aristocratic faces below themScarlett sought instinctively for sacs hermes some shadowShe felt panicky, as if somehow she was aging rapidly, as if old age were a contagionHer thirtieth birthday had come and gone unnoticed while she was in Charleston, but now she was acutely aware of it Everyone knew that once a woman was thirty, she just as well be dead Thirty was so old that she'd never believed it could happen to herIt couldn't be true'Scarlett," said her grandfatherHe held her arm above the elbow and propelled her toward the receiving lineHis fingers were cold as death; she could feel the cold through the thin leather of the glove that covered her arm almost to her shoulder Ahead of her the elderly officers of the Historical Society were welcoming elderly guests, one by oneI can't! Scarlett thought franticallyI can't shake all those dead cold hands and smile and say I'm happy to be hereI've got to get awayShe sagged against balenciaga dix motorcycle her grandfather's stiff shoulder"I'm not well," she said"Grandfather, I feel ill all of a sudden "You are not permitted to feel ill," he said"Stand straight, and do what's expected of youYou may leave after the ceremony of dedication, not before Scarlett stiffened her spine and stepped forwardWhat a monster her grandfather was! No wonder that she'd never heard her mother say much about him; there was nothing nice to say"I'm so happy to be here Pierre Robillard's progress along the lengthy receiving line was much slower than Scarlett'sHe was still bowing stiffly over the hand of a lady halfway along when Scarlett was finishedShe pushed her way through a group of people and hurried to the door Outside, she gulped the crisp air with desperation Her train glittered in the lamplight on the stairs, on the gala red carpet, stretching up behind her as if it were floating free in chanel black tote bag the (Comment on this)

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