Probably No One Left here who REMEMBERS when GE's MSNBC saved Clinton...

[KoKo]

when Geraldo Rivera and others (who later moved over to Fox) had nightly shows with "experts" covering Clinton's Penis! And, those of us who loved the Clintons and knew they had gotten a "raw deal" dutifully made MSNBC our Cable Channel of choice.

ONCE AGAIN...MSNBC stands up to the plate and allows "Tucker, Tweety, Olbermann to go on after the Bushies...***NOW THAT IT'S POPULAR!*** Just like when POLLS of the American People DID NOT WANT CLINTON IMPEACHED..GE now figures that saving his MSNBC lineup from going down the tubes and over to slots for only two (Tweety & Olbermann) at CNBC...the American People's Polling once again saves GE it's ASS and in the RATINGS WARS.

DUPLICITOUS MEDIA! They don't work for US..except when we wear the "costumes" of CONSUMERS and the Polls are so overwhelming that the "Fear Factor" of BACKLASH KICKS IN!

It's really disgusting...seeing this REPLAYED once again.

[NMDemDist2]

1. i didn't know Murdoch ever owned MSNBC

:shrug:

[MonkeyFunk]

2. Murdoch?

MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal and Microsoft. NBC Universal is owned by GE and Vivendi.

[KoKo]

3. .Roger Ailes...who then went over to Head Fox was in charge of MSNBC/CNBC

at the time.

[peacetalksforall]

4. Perhaps Geraldo Rivera led a program that hit on the law more

than the others, all the right wing nuts got on the show to pimp for the architects of the character assassinations and removal from office project. They gave Laura Ingraham a show. When I think about all the right wing operatives who were on the shows repeatedly and who acted below human being level, I would never say that GE helped Clinton. They just happened to have Rivera there and Donahure for awhile. But any right wing that 'they' wanted to be on the show was there.

Do you remember Coulter appearing over and over again? Sitting at his glass table with pubic length skirts and crossed legs a la Basic Instinct ranting against Clinton. She - an operative in the FBI and Starr set-up of Monica. A member of the 'elves'.

I remember learning that Norquist held a Wednesday meeting of all the operatives - you could watch and hear the mantras changing on Wednesdays. Where did he and his operatives disperse them - the the NBCs and the others.

I made a point of finding out who all (I confess it was never really possible to learn them all) these right wing guest-operatives were and it has served me well in assessing what they are saying. I also remember the milquetoast defense of Clinton from the DLC spokespeople and members like Leiberman. That's where my resentment of them started.

I despise the NBCs more than all the others because they were once a great news company and they pretended they still were way, way after the GE and Republican takeover.

[soswolf]

5. I miss having Donahue on n/t

[papau]

6. GE saved "Clinton"? LOL - Jack Welsh hated Clinton/Dems - a brief moment of

quiet on NBC and MSNBC while the tele bill was on the table - but other than that there was no GE saving Clinton that I recall.

[4bucksagallon]

8. Yep GE is no friend of unions or democrats, their management style, Bush would envy,...........

is closer to a dictatorship. Employees have little say in decisions, and mandatory overtime is a fact of life. Now they hire temps from agencies to fill gaps, the temps are paid little and have no benefits, but are tempted by the lure of getting a full time job. GE sucks IMHO.

[primative1]

13. GE was at war with Clinton ...

How can we forget. Clinton was keen on making GE clean up the PCB mess they made in the Hudson. They came soooo close to having to clean it up, even started to run pilot projects, but luckily BushCo came along and all was forgiven.
Six Sigma for all ... its tasty like chocolate


Remember the good old days?
http://www.clearwater.org/news/gepcb.html

[wyldwolf]

7. I seem to remember a little a deal between James Carville and Larry Flynt...

...saving Bill Clinton. Of course, the official story is Clinton had no knowledge of the Flynt report...

[papau]

9. Carville saved Clinton? Flint Report-Spring '99 82 pages on GOP sex scadals hidden by the media.

For some reason there's a DU post claiming a deal between James Carville and Larry Flynt "saving" Bill Clinton via a Flint Report published after the impeachment. How the heck was Clinton at risk - post impeachment - so as to be saved? In effect Flint showed in the Flint Report that Republicans who preached morality during the impeachment trial were hypocrites in their personal lives - so how did this hurt - or help - Clinton - or any Democrat, when the report was ignored by the media?

The "not right wing GOP controlled - they just act that way media wanted to destroy Clinton and had known about and ignored Rep. Henry Hyde, Rep. Dan Burton, Rep. Helen Chenoweth -- admitted adulterers all -- being hypocrites. The media did not care about the activities of Rep. Bob Barr. Yet the facts about all the above had made it into minor media - albeit on page A19 on the Saturday edition, but with no talking heads on Sunday and no constant cable news pundit reviews and no national media follow-up stories or editorials defending Clinton by noting the that the GOP were hypocrites in their personal lives.

The Flint Report was written by Hustler's executive editor Allan MacDonell (the investigations overseen a Washington reporter - Dan Moldea) as a consolidation of ignored by national press stories originally coming from Salon, Mother Jones, and local papers. By the time it was printed few cared about white-supremacist-loving Barr's adultery and abortion: Barr's asking his wife, who worked as his secretary, to arrange his lunch dates with his mistress, Jeri Dobbins, who became his next wife; his driving his wife to an abortion clinic, and paying for her abortion, while being rabidly "pro-life" -- it was just not "news" to the national media. Our "left leaning media" just did not care about Rep Ken Calvert being caught with his pants down, a hooker in his car, and a Corona police report that recounts how the prostitute's face was "laying in the driver's lap" while the congressman "was placing his penis into his unzipped dress slacks and ... trying to hide it with his untucked dress shirt."

Indeed we now have a Presidential run by Newt with not one reporter anywhere being able to recall the aide to Newt Gingrich who said they approached the former House speaker's car and spotted "a woman with her head buried in Newt's lap."

Indeed, with our press core non-reporting things like Pennsylvania Rep. John E. Peterson grabbing an 18-year-old's breast in an elevator and greeting a woman lobbyist with a forced "deep throat kiss," when she visited him to say that a mutual friend had died, GOP sex scandals are not allowed to affect elections.

The hearsay in the Flint report - which would be repeated if about a Democrat on MSNBC or FOX or RW talk - - did not get airtime so as to embarrass Rep. Mary Bono, House Whip Tom DeLay and Sen. Tim Hutchinson - indeed Livingston's dramatic fall from power was not a result of the legislative favors that he did in return for sex from lobbyists - the public where not allowed to hear about them. No one discusses documented legal problems by relatives of GOPers like the black spokesmen for the GOP, Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, who is often on TV, and his sister "Chocolate," who was arrested on lewdness charges in a strip club. Heard much about Newt Gingrich's sister's lesbianism?

Flint was indeed lobbied - successfully - but it was by the GOP - like Bonnie Livingston's tears and the GOPer who had friends call to say he'd commit sucicide if outed. But there was no Clinton saving that I can see.

[wyldwolf]

10. There was no "Clinton Saving" that you can see because you're not looing

The investigation leading to the Flynt Report was ongoing duing the lead-up to the impeachment. It was led by Dan Moldea whose research exposed Bob Livingston's adultery and was about to expose Newt Gingrich affair with Callista Bisek. Livingston resigned, Gingrich announced his resignation.

In March of '99, Representative Bob Barr (R-Georgia) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice complaining Larry Flynt, James Carville, and other individuals were engaging in a deliberate and concentrated effort to impede the House of Representatives from fulfilling its duties under the United States Constitution to conduct matters relating to the impeachment of the President, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate.

After the lawsuit was filed, Moldea denied knowing Carville though Carville knows Flynt. Moldea, a long supported of President Clinton, is said to have denied it to protect the Clinton White House.

[papau]

11. Your facts are true - but the saving (?) Clinton was the fact that someone

was employed by the group (doing the public records research and with the plan to publish their results) claimed to not know Carville?

Indeed Moldea was not even head of the investigative side of Flints effort at the end, having resign from the effort half way through it. Since Carville knows the publisher who founded and funded the effort and who had hired the head of the effort, we can be sure that Carville "knew the employee" - rather than knew of the employee - Moldea. Moldea, who supported Clinton just like Carville, and Carville both say the same thing - that they don't "know" each other. That proves they are both are liars - since they're motivated since there must a legal problem worth lying about if Bob Barr says there is a legal problem -right?

As proof of something - what I don't know - this might not even pass the Bill O'Rielly enough here to put into a segment test. Oh wait - I forgot how low the bar is in that Fox News effort to not spin that which may be innocent into proven evil - if its about a Dem. It would get on all the Fox Cable News programs - and right wing talk - and indeed the history is that it did. Barr discussed it himself on TV at the time - but funny how the Barr affair/abortion/lies info was never part of the interview.

Discussing the elected politician players involved in the impeachment and failed conviction effort might "impede the House of Representatives from fulfilling its duties under the United States Constitution to conduct matters relating to the impeachment of the President, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate"?

That doesn't pass a first amendment laugh test.

[wyldwolf]

12. Moldea himself writes it

Your facts are true - but the saving (?) Clinton was the fact that someone was employed by the group (doing the public records research and with the plan to publish their results) claimed to not know Carville?

Of course he claimed not to know Carville. You know as well as I do that in high power politics if someone is accused of accepting illegally obtained records, they're going to deny it. However, Moldea doesn't deny meeting with one of President Clinton's attorneys on June 26, 1998. In addition, Larry Flynt never denied knowing Carville and Carville wrote favorably about Moldea, and in friendly terms, in his book, And the Horse He Rode In On (pp. 104-105).

The fact is, Moldea himself says Flynt saved Clinton and it is detailed in his book, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer.

[papau]

14. "Flynt saved Clinton" is a bit self-serving given he is praising his own work - I do

not agree that Clinton was Saved - or that Clinton needed to be saved.

The votes to convict were never there. Perhaps Moldea/Flint helped prevent even a majority of the Senate voting to convict by turning a vote or two - if so - great.

[wyldwolf]

15. What do you not want to believe? That Flynt was involved or Carville was?

Because, honestly, I know there is an anti-Carville faction on DU who don't want to credit him with anything. If that isn't you, no need to comment. - but let's stick to the point: Did the research of Moldea and others inlisted by Larry Flynt head off calls for Clinton's removal from office?

From a 1999 entry from Kausfiles:

In early 1999, while the Clinton impeachment was pending before the Senate, Republicans charged that Flynt was blackmailing anti-Clinton congressmen. This came after Flynt's investigator, Dan Moldea, told the Washington Times, "We have a lot of these guys, dead bang, and the evidence is clear. But they haven't been going on TV, or on the floor of Congress, shooting their mouths off, trying to take the moral high ground against Clinton. And as a consequence, we're throwing it back in the river." If a Republican "hasn't been shooting his mouth off," Moldea said, "we let him go."

And, come to think of it, Gingrich was kind of uncharacteristically subdued during the impeachment mess, wasn't he? ...

Further, Moldea's book actually details which GOP Senators gradually backed off their desire to see Clinton removed after the circumstances of Bob Livingston's resignation and the revelations about Bob Barr on January 11.

[papau]

16. I disagree w/ Carville on how much in the center to be- but I like him -but let's review the history

The conviction vote requires 2/3rd majority or 67 votes - and no Democrat voted to convict on either article, so no conviction was possible,

Article One: Perjury before the Grand Jury

Which of these GOPers voted to not convict based om Flints work and threat to publish?
* Chafee, John (R-RI)
* Collins, Susan (R-ME)
* Gorton, Slade (R-WA)
* Jeffords, Jim (R-VT)
* Shelby, Richard (R-AL)
* Snowe, Olympia (R-ME)
* Specter, Arlen (R-PA)
* Stevens, Ted (R-AK)
* Thompson, Fred (R-TN)
* Warner, John (R-VA)


Article Two: Obstruction of Justice

Which of these GOPers voted to not convict based on Flints work and threat to publish?
* Chafee, John (R-RI)
* Collins, Susan (R-ME)
* Jeffords, Jim (R-VT)
* Snowe, Olympia (R-ME)
* Specter, Arlen (R-PA)



I suggest we will never know, nor will we ever know if a Dem might have broke ranks and vote to convict and end their career, if Flint had not threaten to published.

I also suggest that conviction was extremely unlikely, with or without Flint's work.

I also suggest there were others with the info and about to publish - we didn't need Flint except to fund the movement of hearsay to proven fact - which he did after the votes - and I thank him for that. Indeed I have no problem crediting Flint with holding the yeas to 45 on Article one and 50 on Article 2 - meaning the GOP couldn't even come away with a majority on even one accusation. That last fact - no majority - may well be Flints accomplishment - or if you like Carville's accomplishment.

I just do not see the above having anything to do with "saving Clinton" when there was not one Dem vote to convict.

I don't think we are disagreeing all that much. I simply reject the idea that Flint "saved" Clinton - and I am fine with the idea that Carville, Flint, et al are to be credited with helping Clinton - as are most Dems to perhaps a lesser extent - Dems from the left, right, and center of the Democratic Party.