Monday, July 08, 2002

Oh, and while I'm here, this springs to mind as a useful example of the new right-wing spin:

This, even though the matter was investigated and no charges were filed by the SEC. While Bush's actions may have been technical violations, they were not uncommon, and were generally considered "fairly trivial" by the SEC.


Now, as most people who actually know anything about the issue and aren't playing spin doctor could tell you, the SEC was very clear to point out that the issue was not settled and that Bush was not exonerated; they just weren't persuing it at the present time. The right seems to be taking this as an admission of innocence on the part of Bush, however, and that just goes to show that any claim they have as to a superior grasp of the facts and a more honest attitude towards politics and politicians is simply yet more spin.

Once again, however, they're deliberately obfuscating the real issue. The real issue is not to show that Bush pulled off some neat insider trading (which he almost certainly did) and that "technical violations" are not necessarily minor ones (especially in the case of securities fraud, where it's all about "technicalities); the real issue is that he was both beneficiary of and party to the same sort of fraudulent and unethical practices that are bringing down huge corporations and (lest we forget) costing thousands of people their jobs completely out of nowhere.

Then again, anybody who spouts this:

This, of course, forgets that they spent the eight years of the former Narcissist-in-Chief's administration defending every kind of dishonesty, corruption and vileness, and at the same time claiming a moral high ground; that such incessant investigations were wrong, and harmful to the country.


...probably doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, considering that all that "dishonestly, corruption and vileness" was pretty much made out of whole cloth by the same people who are desperately defending Bush now. That's the difference, Mr. DiBenedetto: the former assertions were nonsense, whereas this investigation is based on fully documented evidence of the sort that the Republicans would have killed for four years ago. The Republicans had to catch Clinton in a perjury trap in order to get their party-line impeachment off the ground, whereas all the Democrats have to do is do a little digging into the "MBA president's" business dealings. The sad part is that it doesn't look like Bush's exploits are anything special; they're just par for the course.

And, of course, the whole reason anybody even knows this guy exists is because, yes, Instapundit linked to him. Just in case anybody had forgotten about the ol' Echo Chamber and Instapundit's big publicity gong.





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