Ann Coulter caught lying & Plagiarising

AGAIN.

Admit the truth BBB, you just never liked her. It's the way she bats her eyelashes isn't it?

Luckily, some people don't mind being lied to.
Makes their lives easier.

Certainly helps me sleep at night except of course from '92 to January of '01 but finally I got the best sleep ever as my man George took the helm. Oh wait, that's because the current Chief is honest. I guess honesty is what helps me sleep at night not a pack of lies.




Or is it the vodka? I make my own you know using only the finest potatoes.

Honest? You can't be referring to George Bush, the biggest liar in the history of the presidency.

Mr. Bush is not a liar. What our current president is, is a man who has made some serious errors in judgement which the mealy mouthed whiners wish to pounce upon and spit out again and again while never acknowledging the flaws of their own pathetic heroes. When it comes to great men, and good Presidents, George Bush will be listed in the top 10 ranking, right up there with Grover Cleveland, James Madison, James Monroe, James Buchanan, Theodore Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, William H. Taft, William McKinley and Thomas Jefferson.

No he won't. He'll be right down there with Nixon.

Serious errors in judgement, like making up prevarications about weapons of mass destruction, for instance, but, as you say no lies. Hmmm . . . And anyone who disagrees with you and him are mealy mouths and whiners? Hmm again.

Edgar, Edgar, Edgar. Even your favorite heroine Hillary believed there were WMDs.



And to goodfielder, Nixon is firmly entrenched at dead center of all lists.

The people who despise Coulter have little better to do than try and smear her. If the example they provided is the best they have, they have nothing.

And Edgar, do you want to get into a discussion about the lies told by recent presidents, or were you just hoping to make a quick, unsubstantiated comment and then scurry quickly away?

Sturgis is living in fantasy land. Madison a great president? By what standard? Grover Cleveland--he was a great mayor of Buffalo, where administrative skills were a definite pay-off. In the White House, he provided lack-lustre leadership, although good administrative skills were necessary. Jefferson was very nearly the death of the country with his idiotic policies in regard to the military. We survived the War of 1812 despite the Jeffersonian idiocy of relying upon the militia and a gunboat navy, perpetuated by Madison. Madison was an intellectual genius, next to whom Jefferson was a midget. But Madison also totally lacked self-confidence, and sucked up to Jefferson for all he was worth. Because Washington and Adams built a professional navy, we had something to rely upon. The members of the "gun-boat navy" provided yoeman service--on land, after the Royal Navy sent the gun-boat navy to the bottom in short order. We got our military asses handed to us for most of two years until real soldiers like Winfield Scott and Andrew Jackson brought professional troops and volunteers into the field, and sent the militia home, which is where they ran as fast as they could every time the Brits gave them a dirty look.

James Buchanan ? ! ? ! ? That one leaves me speechless . . .

Hayes and McKinlely were living proof that mediocrity was no impediment to high office. In your entire list, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. is the one man who had any greatness about him, and had i lived then, i'd have opposed every foreign policy he articulated.

What lunacy . . . i'm flabbergasted . . .

Setanta: I am curious. Who were the Presidents you admired, and why? Top five, if there are that many on your list. Thanks.

edit.

Washington, because he was almost obsessed with precedent and his understanding of the extent to which his every deed would take on a "larger-than-life" meaning. For example, while the national government was still in New York, he went to the Congress (the House and Senate then occupied a single hall) to the visitors gallery, and was so disgusted by the pandering of the members to the gallery, that he left and never returned. As a result, no subsequent Presidents have visited the Congress without an express invitation. The Congress is responsible for providing for officers of the executive branch, and had made no provision for legal counsel. Washington, of his own initiative, secured the services of Edmund Randolph to advise him on legal matters, and Congress quickly took the hint, creating the office of Attorney General in the Judiciary Act of 1789. Washington came down firmly on the side of a professional military (he knew from personal experience that the militia were hopeless), and helped to establish the Navy as the most consistently professional service in history (not just our history, history, period). Thanks to Washington and Adams, the Navy survived the War of 1812, despite Jefferson's idiocy, and acquitted themselves well. Those members of the Navy and the Marines obliged to serve in the Jefferson/Madison gun-boat navy ended up fighting on land. At Bladensburg, after thousands of Maryland and Virginia militia ran away, the Navy and Marines stayed to fight the veterans of Wellington's penninsular army, one English officer commenting: ". . . they continued to serve the guns after all of their officers had been shot down and we were among them with the bayonet." At New Orleans, the sailors and Marines served the artillery which devasted the English attacks, and once again English officers commented on the effectiveness and cool courage of the gunners. None of that would have been possible without the sound foundation provided in Washington's administration. Washington was opposed to "faction" (i.e., what we call political parties, which did not then exist as we know them), which was in many respects naïve, but Washington believed firmy in principle, even if it meant that he would appear naïve. He may have been swimming against the tide, but doing so for the best of reasons. He also warned us against "foreign entanglements"--Adams' administration and the follies of alliance and then naval war with Revolutionary France brought home with a vengeance the value of that advice.

James Monroe was not a great leader, and he was fortunate to serve in prosperous and peaceful times. He is probably best summed up by reference to the Hippocratic oath's opening injunction: "First, do no harm."

Andrew Jackson is not necessarily someone whom i admire, but his place in American political history is monumental. He took the disaffected fragments of Jefferson's Republican Party (which had become known as the Democratic-Republican Party), and, organizing from the ground up in Tennessee, created a national political party which was the power in the nation until 1860. When the White House was occupied by someone not a Democrat, it was because the Democrats lost, and not because their opposition won. This was true even in 1860. Lincoln in the debates in Illinois had ham-strung Douglas on the issue of slavery. The party was split between Douglas and John Breckenridge. The combined total of Douglas' and Breckenridge's popular votes would have buried Lincoln--the Republicans did not win (Lincoln was a minority President) so much as the Democrats lost. Jackson's assaults on the Bank of the United States were less praise-worthy, but his charge that the institution had become a slush-fund for the Federalists were accurate, and the country did not suffer economically, despite the dire warning of the northeast coast financiers and bankers who stood to lose the most. His "popping" of the specie circular bubble demonstrated that he understood the economic principles in operation, and knew how to keep a lid on runaway speculation and over-the-top overcapitalization of banks and credit institutions. I don't necessarily admire him, but i do consider him one of the most effective incumbents in that office.

Lincoln was politically very saavy, on the stump. In Washington, he was less sure, but his overriding obsession was the war, and he played his cards close to the cuff and very cannily. It is difficult to assess him, as it seems likely he would have been too much of a babe in the woods had he served in time of peace. The political hacks in the Senate would have had him for lunch. His greatness is assured for obvious reasons. When he learned not to "micro-manage" the Army, and stood between the Special Committee on the Conduct of the War and the Department of War, he provided first Henry Halleck and then Grant the leeway they needed to fight the war effectively. Initially, though, he was more of a liability than an asset to the military. When it comes to leadership, i'd place only Washington and FDR in the same category as Lincoln.

From Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the American political landscape is most notable for its aridity. That was the great era of the political machine, the "smoke filled room" and the age when loyalty to the machine meant eventual appointment to the Senate, the nastiest old boys club in our history. Direct election of Senators has gone a long way to resolving that problem.

Cleveland enacted more reform than all previous Presidents combined. And he also had all the charm and diplomacy of a viper. By the end of his term, he had managed to piss off both political parties, the unions, the civil service, the veterans and the farmers. For that alone, he deserves passing mention as unique.

Theodore Roosevelt was without doubt one of the canniest natural politicians who has ever held the office. The "foward policy" espoused by him and his friend Henry Cabot Lodge would make him a darling of the neo-cons and the PNAC. Washington ran unopposed in both terms. Monroe was unopposed in his second term. Leaving them aside, however, Roosevelt polled the greatest plurality (proportionally) in the history of the nation. He had an ability to display "the common touch" without surrendering an iota of his aristocratic background. His life story reads like something Horatio Alger would have written had he ever written about rich boys. I admire him, and i despise his foreign policy.

His younger cousin Franklin Roosevelt had much the same ability to be an aristocrat to his finger tips and comfortably reach out to the "common man." For his leadership, he deserves to be remembered. For his bullying and regal treatment of the Congress and the courts, he deserves criticism.

I like Harry Truman, i don't think he was a great man. I do think he was "a little man" who rose to an occassion as few of his ilk ever do.

I'm not terribly impressed with the lot which has come after. Lyndon Johnson was a pool room brawler type of politician of the highest order. I don't consider him admirable, but Kennedy's program of civil rights and social security disability and survivors benefits simply could not have been passed without LBJ. He knew where all the bodies were buried, and he was an even bigger bully than FDR. He was far less sure on foreign policy, and he allowed himself to be carried along into the Vietnam debacle--and it broke his heart.

I will be courteous, and refrain from comment on the last seven incumbents.

Set
Set, well, whadda da ya know? I tend to agree with you. Does that make you rethink your choices?

BBB

BBB

Re: Set


No, although it does impress me with your intellectually discriminating perception . . . <big wink> . . .

Thanks, Set. That was a good read.

I think you need to start sharing that vodka. I definitely need some of whatever you're having.