The only reason you don’t see facts or rational argument on my side is because you are incapable of recognizing it.

You have not offered any facts. I on the other hand have shown where the judge said he knowingly lied and have shown where the judge said that his testimony was relevant to the case (just not in deciding whether or not it goes to jury). I have also shown where the judge elevated it to the Arkansas Supreme Court. There is no spin there. He was facing perjury charges, but decided to plea. You really have nothing left to stand on as each of your points have been debunked.

The only reason you don’t see facts or rational argument on my side is because you are incapable of recognizing it.

I think you’ve got a winning argument there, so keep flogging it.

You do realize you are doing the same thing don’t you? The only problem is you don’t have facts or any rational argument on your side.

More of the same.

Thanks, JohnM. Tell us again how you are right and everyone else is ignorant, stupid and uneducated.

And again and again.

I think you’ve got a winning argument there, so keep flogging it.

CageyCretin Says:

Your rhetoric is not as open and accepting as you would have us believe. “the institution of marriage is and has been historically, traditionally, morally and biologically about heterosexual couples” is the precise stance of the conservative Christians, and particularly the fundamentalists. Precisely the same. That does not mean of necessity that you are a fundamentalist, but it does mean that you espouse the same position for the same reasons…

Thank you for responding with a serious and well thought out post. You make a valid observation that since my views on Gay marriage would suit a fundamentalist Christian that doesn’t necessarily make me a fundamentalist Christian. My support for domestic partner benefits, hate crime legislation and stricter gun laws doesn’t necessarily make me a Progressive. So taking the precise stance on an issue as another group doesn’t necessarily make you a proponent of that group.

I use the term “institution” simply as a common usage. I had no hidden meaning. If you remove institution from my original post and just use the word marriage my post still has my original intent. If “institution” is used as a code word by certain groups I have no knowledge of it.

I think you are getting pretty far afield from the Gay marriage argument by using traditions from other countries that are not related to marriage. But since you brought it up: traditions develop because a society determines that a particular practice or value is the correct way of doing things. We may, and in the cases you cite, do look at some traditions around the world with abhorrence. But are you seriously trying to equate female castration to laws against Gay marriage? No, you are saying some traditions are horrible so we can’t rely on tradition as a supporting argument. I have never heard anyone say, ” You can’t have a traditional best man or matron of honor at a wedding because women are castrated in Africa”. Since this discussion involves Gay marriage in the United States why don’t we stick with traditions in this country?

You took my biological comment out of context. If I wanted to say marriage should only be for procreation I would have said so. My biological reference was to the fact that marriages are, in the main, a method for heterosexual couples to have children in a family environment sanctioned by religious and or Government entity. I have absolutely no problem with heterosexual couples getting married and having no intent to have children. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain that.

You say, “Morals are NOT something that are accepted as absolutes. Cultures have differing morals, and all the sub-cultures within any culture follow different morals.” I couldn’t agree more. Why then are those who morally disagree with Gay marriage attacked as bigots and compared to antisemitism and racists? As long as my religious beliefs don’t violate the law then of course they can be non-bigotry, non-racists, etc. You make an crucial error in your morality argument, however. Morality is not the sole property of Religion. Unless of course you believe an atheist can not be moral. Your assumption that a moral belief is a religious belief is overly broad.

Now let me ask you a few questions. Is it your belief that the Government should never pass a law against some people marrying each other? Is the law against polygamy bigoted? Is it akin to antisemitism? Should a mother and adult son, who cannot biologically have children, be allowed to marry? I am extremely interested in your answer to these questions.

Thank you again for providing a serious response to my post. I hope you take mine in the same light.

You were caught in a lie and you tried to backpeddle your way out of it, but we both know that you were trying to win an argument that you thought I would not call you on. When I did you played that you were mistaken, how convenient.

Bottom line, your boy lied under oath and you continue to defend those lies trying to find technicalities. You can try and argue it was not material all you want, but Clinton decided to plea out of the charges so it would not go to trial. He would not have done this innocence were on his side. Since the judge referred it to the Arkansas Supreme Court she obviously felt that he should be tried for perjury.

For instance, you insist that a judge’s explicit order — worded the way you demand — would be required for you to accept that the Lewinsky testimony was immaterial to the Paula Jones case (despite that being the almost universal interpretation of the Summary judgment) yet no such explicit pronouncement is required for you to decide that the testimony amounted to perjury, despite a complete lack of judicial statements to that effect.

So I get it. You see what you want to see, and you’re comfortable picking and choosing which standards of proof apply, and when, in order to rationalize them.

If that was the point you were trying to make, congrats. you made it.

Oh, and…

“By the way your, I was mistaken claim I guess that can be considered an acceptable admission of lying.”

No, you stupid prick. A lie is a knowing falsehood. A mistaken understanding is not the same thing. To try to conflate the two concepts is to demonstrate further your disingenuous approach to what you term “debate”.

Let’s see… JohnM is not only fully bead-welded to his beliefs, however deluded they may be, he’s also dishonest and prone to moral relativism.

Great all-around package there.

The judge showd that she clearly felt that it was material because she sent the matter to the Arkansas Supreme Court. Your inablility to grasp this borders on delusion.

She did not say it was not material, she said that Jones did not provide enough evidence to prove her own case so it would not go to a jury. The Lewinski information was material to the Paula Jones case. The only reason Clinton never had to go to court on this was becuase we plead to a lesser charge and agreed to surrender his ability to practice law.

By the way your, I was mistaken claim I guess that can be considered an acceptable admission of lying.

You fail to realize that since your credibility is near zero, this assessment does nothing to bolster your arguments.

You also failed to note that I acknowledged that my earlier claim that Judge Wright ruled on perjury was mistaken. Perhaps you failed to note this on purpose, because it gives you dubious leave to continue criticizing that claim, or perhaps you simply suffer from poor reading comprehension. Either way, your utter lack of both graciousness and honesty come shining through once again. The funny thing is, when you say,

Your inability to admit you were lying when you clearly have been caught is very much like Clinton

you expose your own… what should we call it? Lies? Nah, let’s be more charitable than you are capable of being and say it’s a mistake. Because you obviously missed it when I recognized my mistaken claim above — otherwise you wouldn’t keep pretending that I “lied” about my claim. And you certainly wouldn’t claim that I was unable to admit it.

Because that would essentially mean that YOU have been pwned. But rather than make a bold, self-aggrandizing claim to that effect, I’ll leave that judgment to other observers of this exchange.

But as for your original, elaborate web of distraction you spent most of yesterday afternoon building…

All you have to back up your accusation of perjury is your own interpretation of the testimony and the cases. You have no court ruling in the affirmative, no conviction, nothing but your own spin and paranoia.

In interpreting President Clinton’s testimony the way you do, you are forced to ignore the critical requirement that such false testimony be material to a proceeding in order to be considered perjury, and you are forced to ignore it time and time again as it’s been presented to you over and over. This sloppiness, again, may be intentional or it may be simply a reflection of what passes for your intellectual activity.

Your cherry-picked quotes from Judge Wright say nothing about the false statements being material, simply that they were false. So to recap: in the statements you pulled, you read things that aren’t there, yet in the statements I pulled, you fail to read things that ARE there.

Interesting type of selective reading comprehension you exhibit there, JohnM.

But nice try at revisiting the thread the next day to try to get in the last word.

Contempt of court citation
In April 1999, about two months after being acquitted by the Senate, Clinton was cited by Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright for civil contempt of court for his “willful failure” to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. For this citation, Clinton was assessed a $90,000 fine, and the matter was referred to the Arkansas Supreme Court to see if disciplinary action would be appropriate.[12]

Regarding Clinton’s January 17, 1998, deposition where he was placed under oath, the judge wrote:

“Simply put, the president’s deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. (Monica) Lewinsky was intentionally false, and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false….” [12]

You see she never ruled that he did not commit perjury (which you said she did)she referred it to the Arkansas Supreme Court for possible disciplinary actions. You have been owned and shown to be a proven liar, just admit it.

And all he does is provide us with some entertainment, as a sad, right-wing clown, pretentious, arrogant and always, always wrong.

Wow you really have a hard time reading your own quotes, you are not very bright. She is not saying that his behavior with others is not material, she is saying that the plaintiff did not prover her individual case. At no point did she it was not material. Your inability to admit you were lying when you clearly have been caught is very much like Clinton. good job.

Your rhetoric is not as open and accepting as you would have us believe. “the institution of marriage is and has been historically, traditionally, morally and biologically about heterosexual couples” is the precise stance of the conservative christians, and particualrly the fundamentalists. Precisely the same. That does not mean of necessity that you are a fundamentalist, but it does mean that you espouse the same position for the same reasons.

It would be enlightening as to what you mean by “The institution” of marriage. What does that qualifier mean? Why is it there? Why could you not just say “marriage”? Why “Intsitution”? The qualifier is completely nonsensical without an explanation of what you mean by it.

However, you claims to historically and traditionally are BOTH incorrect: whose history, whose tradition (and traditions are actually relevant to sub-cultures within greater cultures, and divergent among them)? Neither history nor tradition indicate that something is correct (indian suttee for one example, female castration at puberty in parts of Africa, as another, but one could create quite an extensive list of ‘traditional’ or ‘historical’ activities and ideas that are, clearly, not ‘good’ things, yet were carried on and on based on the “tradition and history” argument).

“Biologically” only has merit for the sake of procreation. Is your contention that the purpose of marriage is to procreate? If that is the case, then you MUST be against ANY marriage that does not and specifically CANNOT produce children (for example, infertile people should not marry under this definition, as they cannot procreate). Also, any marriage that is not producing children out of choice is also breaching this requirement.

And that leaves us “morally”. Hmmmm.. WHOSE morals are you referring to? I believe that I have already indicated the likely source of your opinion here (and it IS just your opinion). Morals are NOT something that are accepted as absolutes. Cultures have differing morals, and all the sub-cultures within any culture follow different morals. And to some, morals are even flexible (see current republican politicians and murderers for some examples). Even within a religion there are differences in morals (the Catholics vs the Mormons vs the Babtists vs every other christian sect — in fact, it is MORALS that tend to be THE dfining differences between the various christian sects). So — it is a particular religious view that you hold that makes the determination.

Do you believe that because your opinion on marriage is based on your religious beliefs that it, somehow, simply cannot be bigotry (since it is religiously based)? Is THAT the position you are coming from?

His private life is his private problem. I don’t care if he was in argentina or on pluto thats his and his wife’s problem, and making it another trivial moral issue isn’t going to put a dent in the greater problems that are the real incumbents.

Politicians don’t get what this means to the average person I think. They are intoxicated with their power, and think we don’t notice. We do, and we need to know that their personal moral problems aren’t going to affect their judgment when it comes to non trivial not central to the beltway issues. The beltway is the hollywood of government, today’s parties are little more than film studios with marketing aspirations well beyond their competencies. The stuff the next few generations are going to be facing are going to require sterner stuff than were seeing so far. Conservatives with their ‘god, blind respect for the institution, and childish morality’ don’t get it. Liberals with their ‘trivial progress, mindless change, and simplistic morality’ don’t get it.

Its not about character anymore, its about aptitude, but without character the aptitude may not be there.

Why, thanks, sweetie! ;) Goodnight!

She went around the world and kept his secret while her cad/sham of a husband was lying to his constituents. — Game Of Life

***********************************************************

Hate to burst your little misogynistic bubble, GOL…but the news reports indicate that his wife is not only an heiress, she was apparently the one who bankrolled most of his first gubernatorial campaign.

“Gotta keep the money rolling in”? With all due respect, it sounds to me as if he might have been using her just as much as — or possibly even more than — she might have been using him! Sanford also claims that this is the first time he’s been unfaithful to her, which seems to contradict your claim that “she knew he was a cheater”. True, maybe this is just another lie on his part — only he and his wife know that for certain. Granted, I find it hard to fathom why any woman — and especially a woman who would appear to have her own means of support — would willingly choose to stay with a man who’s been unfaithful, but the fact that she seems to have a very traditional belief system probably has something to do with it. In any event, it’s her life and she was the only one who was entitled to decide what was best for her to do in this case — as well as being the one who would have to accept the consequences of those decisions (which may have included the decision to deny the existence of the affair until this was no longer possible). I agree that she’s probably not quite the innocent victim that the reports seem to depict her as being — I happen to believe that nearly everyone contributes to their own suffering in at least some small way, even if only by being too passive or too trusting — but the facts seem to dispute your apparent insinuation that she’s nothing more than a gold-digger.

Well done, my dear.