Jeb and Katherine, sitting in a tree...?

December 2, 2000 12:39 AM

Jeb and Katherine, sitting in a tree...? The New York Observer is the first "reputable" publication to examine what's been known in media circles as "The Rumor" (sic): that the other Governor Bush has been engaging in non-political relations with his Secretary of State. Tittle-tattle, yes: but as the column notes, you'd expect Drudge to be putting it in 36-point if it were the other side...
posted by holgate (13 comments total)

More intrigue here.

What's interesting, as the Observer story points out, is the disjunction between "media" people and "readers", and the filtering effect (on all political sides) of the press. I've got a few friends who work at national newspapers in London, and they basically spend their nights at the pub discussing the stories they can't print. (Popbitch, for instance receives much of its content from hacks, as a means of breaking stories they can't get past their editors.)

posted by holgate at 12:53 AM on December 2, 2000

This possibility raises many questions. If I think it was wrong to delve into Clinton's sex life then it must be wrong to delve into someone else's. On the other hand, if they did it to us, let's do it back to them double.

The hypocrisy of the right is well known. On the one hand they praise Family Values and sign off with "God bless america". On the other hand they have affairs, do drugs, and generally not act like saints, which, you know, plenty of people do. Problem is they talk like saints.

So I would be happy to put down my rhetorical guns, if they do first.
posted by chrismc at 9:23 AM on December 2, 2000

The second article in the American Politics Journal is pretty funny.
Nicknaming Bush "Snippy" and quoting a verbal ass-whomping from Christopher Hitchens
"Snippy is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."
>
Other allegations of irregularities in the electoral college madness [1]
1. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia allegedly stopped an investigation into Florida voting irregularities when he was Deputy Attorney General. He was later anointed Justice Supreme by GHW Bush.
2. Prez GHW Bush pardoned a convicted cocaine dealer who contributed $700,000 to Jebediah Bush's campaign.
[1]Source:Amazon.com
posted by Poop(*)Head at 10:04 AM on December 2, 2000

sort of shakespearean, isn't it?

all of it really. this would just make it a better play.

rcb
posted by rebeccablood at 10:10 AM on December 2, 2000

have you seen this email forward?

>A history professor from Uppsala University in Sweden talked about an
>article she had read in which a Zimbabwe politician was quoted as
>saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that
>election fraud is not only a third world phenomenon:
>
> 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the
>third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the
>former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the
>former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).
>
> 2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but
>won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the
>nation's pre-democracy past.
>
> 3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's "victory" turned on
>disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother.
>
> 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a
>district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led
>thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
>
> 5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing
>for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
>near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
>
> 6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
>intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under
>the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
>
> 7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and
>that the self-declared winner's "lead" was only 327 votes. Fewer,
>certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.
>
> 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party
>opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the
>ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed
>district.
>
> 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a
>major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in
>his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
>
> 10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner
>was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime
>positions on the high court of that nation.
>
>11. Imagine that the decision whether the hand recounts should be
>completed and validated rests solely with an official from the
>self-declared winner's party, an appointee of the self-declared
>winner's brother.
>
> None of us would deem such an election to be representative of
>anything other than the self-declared winner's will to power. All of
>us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was just
>another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democratic peoples in some
>strange elsewhere.
posted by palegirl at 10:35 AM on December 2, 2000

If I think it was wrong to delve into Clinton's sex life then it must be wrong to delve into someone else's. On the other hand, if they did it to us, let's do it back to them double.

Absolutely. If there are any credible allegations that Jeb Bush used Florida State Troopers to solicit sexual favors from unsuspecting state employees, let's plumb them to the fullest. If htere are credible allegations that W. has raped anyone, man, woman, child, or longhorn steer, I say hear them out.

Perhaps our Presidents ought to be subject to a Senate confirmation process... like our Supreme Court Justice nominees are.


posted by mikewas at 2:21 PM on December 2, 2000

> 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the
>third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the
>former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the
>former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).

secret police in the US would probably involve the FBI and not the CIA


> 2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but
>won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the
>nation's pre-democracy past.

This has no relevancy whatsoever. These were the rules established before the election


> 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a
>district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led
>thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
>

Except the fact that this wasn't a dirty trick like the message tries to claim, but instead a mistake made by a Democratic official


> 5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing
>for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
>near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
>
> 6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
>intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under
>the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.


Most despised by whom? Fearing for their lives? wtf?

> 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party
>opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the
>ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed
>district.


strongly Democratic counties = most hotly disputed district??


> 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a
>major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in
>his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
>

upholding the law = worst human rights record...


> 10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner
>was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime
>positions on the high court of that nation.
>

all conservative judges are human rights violators?

posted by gyc at 3:21 PM on December 2, 2000

I don't give a crap who's sleeping with whom. Politics develops strange bedfellows; we've known this for centuries. Irregardless, there's more than sufficient evidence to indicate the Florida count has been tainted by republican self-interest. The entire state of Florida should be discounted. The ballots have been compromised. Thousands of people's votes have been kicked out for questionable reasons. The recounts are suspect. The way the ballots have been treated is questionable. We cannot get a fair count. In trying to insure his brother's victory, Jeb has gotten as close to cheating as you can get without being called a cheater. Game over.

Dubya's gonna get the Oval Office when this is all over, and justice as well as the voice of the majority of the people, will have been over-ridden by partisanship, greed, and lies. May the Bush Boys reap what they sow.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:23 PM on December 2, 2000

May the Bush Boys reap what they sow.

In a way, they (or at least one of them) already are. Not even sworn in as the next President yet, Dubyah is sure giving us a great sneak preview of what's to come over the next four years.

I'll say it again: George W Bush is/was a weak Governor. He is not the political "genius" some have taken him for. And who wants to be first on their block to itemize all of the pledges and promises Dubyah has broken over the last say, two weeks that he made in any of the 3 debates?

So much for "getting it done" and "bringing both parties together". Well, actually I'll give him that, although I wasn't expecting signs in front of each labeled "Plaintiff" and "Defendant".
posted by ethmar at 7:36 PM on December 2, 2000

In trying to insure his brother's victory, Jeb has gotten as close to cheating as you can get without being called a cheater.

Umm, if you're not a cheater, then aren't you playing by the rules? And just what has Jeb done? I haven't seen proof of anything.

And don't get me started on that ludicrous e-mail.
posted by CRS at 7:40 PM on December 2, 2000

The entire state of Florida should be discounted. The ballots have been compromised. Thousands of people's votes have been kicked out for questionable reasons.

So, you'd remedy the thousands of votes that have been thrown out by throwing out millions? Interesting solution... ;) I don't think there's any Constitutional provision for throwing out a whole state's electoral votes, for any reason, so while this suggestion does have its appeal, it's not going to happen. I suppose one could lobby Florida to refrain from sending any electors, but somehow I don't think the state would be interested in disenfranchising itself.
posted by kindall at 2:45 AM on December 3, 2000

I love good conspiracy theories! This is most entertaining...
posted by chiXy at 8:59 AM on December 3, 2000