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BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Riginslinger Date: 12 Mar 08 - 07:38 PM You would think the wife would rather him hire a prostitute, as long as he paid $5,500.00 and hour for her, so he was sure not to come home with disease. Unless, of course, she's paying the fifty-five-hundred. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 12 Mar 08 - 06:54 PM Which is more disgraceful - a married man hiring a prostitute, or having an affair? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Little Hawk Date: 12 Mar 08 - 06:40 PM Fortunately I never knew enough about this guy Spitzer in the first place to be disappointed by the recent revelations. ;-) Ignorance is bliss, they say. Have another grape, my dear. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,heric Date: 12 Mar 08 - 06:38 PM >Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone considers sexual wandering to be a capital offense.< True, but this is like wandering into a whole other state. Is one to carry on an intimate relationship with somebody who would like to be paying five grand to be somewhere else? Hard to picture. She could be magnanimous and say I forgive you for the first six, but seven and eight were just over the top and I'm out of here. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Bill Hahn//\\ Date: 12 Mar 08 - 05:05 PM There are real tragedies in this case, of course. And, politically, I suppose, the whole affair is one more argument against continuing tax cuts to the rich, even if Spitzer did invest his money here rather than in China.
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: beardedbruce Date: 12 Mar 08 - 04:32 PM Washington Post: What $5,500 an Hour Buys By Harold Meyerson Wednesday, March 12, 2008; Page A19 Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace (and very soon, it seems, from power) raises a host of serious concerns, not least our ongoing and often ludicrous conflation of the personal and the political in matters of morals. But flawed mortal that I am, I confess I keep coming back to one detail as this gloomy tale unfolds: $5,500. That's what Spitzer and his fellow numbered clients were shelling out per hour if they booked the Emperors Club VIP's top-of-the-line providers. I've given serious thought to this over the past day, and I'm not sure that I've even had a sexual fantasy that, if actualized, would be worth $5,500 an hour. Of course, fantasies can involve particular, unattainable persons, and an economist might say that if the client has an obsession that only a certain provider could satisfy, that could drive the price way up. But that doesn't seem to have been the case for Client 9. Of all the details in the transcript of the back-and-forth between Spitzer and the Emperors Club's traffic manager, the one I find most mind-boggling is when Spitzer, just before he hooks up with his hooker, asks to be reminded of what the lady looks like. He's paying $4,300 for this experience and he needs a refresher on her looks? Four grand and change and he can't remember whether he booked tall or short, blond or brunette? We're not talking obsession here. We're talking positional goods. Positional goods are those commodities that are more valuable than their run-of-the-mill counterparts because a special status attaches to them, since only a select few can have them. Since the Web sites on which prostitutes advertise indicate that the average hourly rate is around $300, the Emperors Club maximum rate, which is roughly 18 times higher, could be justified by the particular appeals and skills of its hookers. I haven't conducted empirical research on this one, but let me just say: I doubt it. I suspect that what makes a prostitute worth $5,500 an hour is that she costs $5,500 an hour. The value here doesn't dictate the price. The price, rather, dictates the value. These women are available only to the wealthy; the ability to hire them, like the ability to live on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, means that you've made it. And even if your hour turns out to be a bit disappointing, that's okay, because $5,500 doesn't really mean anything to you -- which just means you've really made it. And there, I suppose, is the thrill. The power of being able to command the world's priciest hooker, like the power of owning the world's priciest real estate, could be a turn-on in itself. The power of dropping thousands and not even remembering what type of woman you've booked: Boy, are you ever something! Whether or not you're getting one terrific woman, the transaction alone confirms that you're one terrific dude. In fairness, Spitzer clearly thought he was also buying one other valuable commodity: secrecy. At those rates, everyone could be trusted to keep quiet. Spitzer, however, clearly forgot what he'd learned in Prosecutions 101, which is that nothing intrigues a prosecutor more than unexplained silence. Federal investigators told the New York Times that they were looking into the governor's cash withdrawals on the suspicion that he might be paying off a blackmailer. (Of course, after the railroading that the Bush-Rove Justice Department gave to Don Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama, currently incarcerated for what look to be no more than misdemeanors, no such investigation is itself above suspicion.) Without Spitzer's "cover-up" -- which in this instance simply meant paying in cash -- the crime, such as it was, would have gone undetected. Clients 1 through 8 were surely in need of some secrecy, too, if not quite so patently as New York's governor. Men don't usually print their patronage of prostitutes on their business cards. But $5,500 buys a lot more than secrecy, and a lot more than sex. It buys a confirmation of status and power. It has all the positional upside of conspicuous consumption, though it remains -- or is supposed to remain -- inconspicuous. There are real tragedies in this case, of course. And, politically, I suppose, the whole affair is one more argument against continuing tax cuts to the rich, even if Spitzer did invest his money here rather than in China. But I keep coming back to price, even though I know it purchased a positional good. $5,500, huh? I need to work on my fantasies. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,hg Date: 12 Mar 08 - 04:28 PM Oh alright, I'll be serious because once again nobody gets me! For starters I suspect that accusing him of being a hypocrite is giving him too much credit for having conscience. He is more likely to be a psychopath, which explains why he can say one thing and do an entirely corrupt other thing at the taxpayers expense, and decimate the respect of his daughters with no thought to what it is doing to them. As for his wife, while I do agree that she appeared to die before our eyes during all this, I have to also believe she was complicit because of her own selfish needs. The saddest part to me is the damage that psychopathy does to the fabric of human society from the very edges of it to the core of this family's innocent children who must now make sense out of the decimation of their world and their father's evil and corrupt behavior. Maybe someday someone will figure out that I use distracting responses in response to discussions like these about evil which really have no logical explanation and leave everyone the worse for their having witnessed or been a part of such evil. The issue of prostitution is in fact irrelevant. But don't preach to me Mick. You don't understand me and I doubt you ever will unless we meet. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Amos Date: 12 Mar 08 - 03:54 PM "The New York Times says it's the code name for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in court papers that link him to a prostitution ring, but now anyone can be "Client 9" with T-shirts available online just a day after the scandal broke. From simply "Client 9" with a large lipstick smooch over the top to "Just Call Me CLIENT 9," designers on Web sites like www.cafepress.com and www.zazzle.com are cashing in on reports that Spitzer had hired a high-priced prostitute. "Look like a governor in this stylish CLIENT 9 design," one designer advertises on www.cafepress.com. The two online retail sites allow designers to upload their own graphics to print on products such as T-shirts and mugs." I am glad to see that someone is still endowed with a sense of humor AND an entrepreneurial spirit... A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Stilly River Sage Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:59 PM Maybe he's trying to puzzle out what the call girl looks like and when she will turn up in Playboy. You know that call went out already . . . |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:56 PM Puzzle? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Charley Noble Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:47 PM Gigi- Well, that's the high road and I applaud your use of it. But the rest of us are bottom feeders having way too much fun. And there is a puzzle to solve. Cheerily, Charley Ignoble |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Lonesome EJ Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:15 PM Can't we just talk about Britney like everybody else? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: pdq Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:09 PM So, what would you like the Oprahfied people of America to talk about? Madonna?? Paris Hilton??? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 12 Mar 08 - 02:05 PM Oops! heric, Spitzer's wife wasn't being used, you can be certain of that. The woman earned more than he did as a corporate lawyer (and was quite the shark, from what I've heard) before she took time off to raise her kids and be a political spouse. IMO, she absolutely would not have been there had she not wanted to be. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone considers sexual wandering to be a capital offense. That is an opinion usually held by holier-than-thou, harshly judgmental individuals. I don't know very many people who would immediately end a long term, otherwise pretty stable marriage, over an issue like this. The shame isn't hers, it is his. He took responsibility for it at his press conference, stepped down, and now everybody needs to butt out and MTOB. As I said, no charges have been filed, and he may well have plea bargained his way out of the governor's office. We'll find out eventually. But the personal side of this should no longer fodder for gossips and media whores. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 12 Mar 08 - 01:59 PM "I don't think he is vile. Just deeply flawed." Is there a procedure for calibrating that kind of thing? Where would "evil" and "nasty" fit in? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,heric Date: 12 Mar 08 - 01:56 PM I feel terrible for his wife and wouldn't fault her for any decisions or actions while she may be emotionally stunned, but if I were the wife here, with my wits about me, I would say to him "Even if I haven't made up my mind about staying with you (and maybe I have), you're not using my face at your press conference. You get out of this yourself, buster – don't use me." It makes me think less of him for using her at such at a time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Riginslinger Date: 12 Mar 08 - 12:31 PM Maybe he was just testing them to see if they worked. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Donuel Date: 12 Mar 08 - 12:28 PM $80,000 for a happy ending jeez thats steep. The irony is that when he was attorney general he put in the new banking snooping laws that got him caught. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: SINSULL Date: 12 Mar 08 - 12:23 PM That's what I meant by shell shocked. She usually appears as a beautiful, vibrant woman much younger than her years. Yesterday she looked old and haggard and close to tears with a hint of "I'm going to cut your balls off, you idiot." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: number 6 Date: 12 Mar 08 - 11:46 AM In the interview I saw last evening with Ed Koch ... who considers himself a good friend of the Spitzers stated he saw Silda Spitzer age before his eyes while standing beside her husband ( in Spitzer's news conference concerning this affair). Anyway ... Spitzer is on TV (as I type) declaring his resignation. biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Stilly River Sage Date: 12 Mar 08 - 10:21 AM You can bet that every media outlet is scanning every image they have of Spitzer to see if they have any more information that was originally understood. Like the photo of Bill Clinton greeting a crowd of followers, Lewinski's face stands out like a beacon, where it was once just part of a sea of faces. Just announced: Spitzer has a press conference scheduled at 11:30am this morning. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Bobert Date: 12 Mar 08 - 09:57 AM Ummmmmm, I think we are just looking at the tip of the iceburg here... I'f hate to see this guy's family hurt any more but deep down inside me I think there's alot more to this story... May be time to play "Follow the money"... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Charley Noble Date: 12 Mar 08 - 09:46 AM They call him the Great Pretender -- Pretending that he's still around! At least until he can make a deal with the prosecutor's office. By the way some of us are having great fun working up a new parody of the train song "Wreck of Old Number Nine" on another thread above the line. Gigi- Could I use your line "this could derail it in the long run" in a verse? Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 12 Mar 08 - 08:22 AM According the reports I've been reading from AP & Reuters, his wife is the one urging him not to resign. I'm sure she is shell shocked, but it doesn't look to me like she is abandoning him. Reports seem quite to the contrary. And why would she? Because he has an expensive hooker habit that will now be cured the hard way? No, there are much bigger things in a marriage to overcome than sexual peccadillos. Insiders say the marriage seems pretty solid. Of course this could derail it in the long run, but that is likely due to a betrayal of a different kind--the one Spitzer himself alluded to in his comments to the media. I want him to ride this out. I don't want to see him resign, unless he is indicted. Then he will have to go. I just read his poll numbers were already at Bush levels--35%, and that in the polling done on him since the story broke, it had dropped to 30%. If everybody already hates him, he really doesn't have to resign. Look next door to see just how long one can hang onto the governor seat over a sex scandal. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: SINSULL Date: 12 Mar 08 - 08:07 AM His wife looked more shell-shocked than loyal during his speech. I feel for her and her daughters. The sins of the father... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:38 PM I don't think he is vile. Just deeply flawed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Big Mick Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:34 PM Spot on, Gigi. You know he was touting his "values" to his kids. This must be horrid for them. It just makes him all the more vile, IMO. He needs to go. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:32 PM I feel bad for his daughters--teenagers, I guess. That is what turns my stomach more than anything else--that he would be so calloused and uncaring about what would fall on them when word got out. And he MUST have been playing chicken w/the investigators. How could a guy like that NOT know he was being investigated? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Big Mick Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:29 PM leave it to harpy to turn a corrupt racket, dominated by men who pimp womens bodies, and keep large amounts of the profits, ..... and try to turn it into a womens rights issue. If it were just women using exercising control over their lives, that would be great. But it is naieve to try and characterize this that way........ or manipulative. This thread is not about that issue, and you won't be allowed to hijack it. But you can go HERE and let's have the discussion Mick |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Riginslinger Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:25 PM "But to prosecute prostitution rings while you are using prostitution rings, or to run on a platform of squeeky clean reform and cleaning up the crooks, while you are doing the same thing is a far larger sin." Yeah, and to pay over $4,000.00 for a woman seems to indicate a really low sense of self esteem. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: meself Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:16 PM Re-read McGrath's post - he doesn't suggest anywhere that "these women are controlled by men". Cheez ... so sexist ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,hg Date: 11 Mar 08 - 10:10 PM Hey McGrath...what makes you think these women are controlled by men? Don't you think women can run their own profitable businesses and keep all the profits for themselves? cheez....so sexist.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 11 Mar 08 - 09:41 PM Yup, yet another case of arrogance and absolute corruption of power. Makes you feel doomed, don't it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: number 6 Date: 11 Mar 08 - 09:19 PM GG ... I agree with your post, we do need the 'Elliot Nesses' to clean up the mess ... the tragedy of all this .. and we see more and more of it these days, is when the lawmakers (such as Spitzer) get caught breaking the law, it makes the 'run of the mill' bad guys look good. The innocent lose faith, pay the price. biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 11 Mar 08 - 09:13 PM Yeah, I just read that he has his resignation letter written, he is negotiating a plea deal? Perhaps, it didn't seem clear at the ABC News website. A damn shame the man couldn't control his appetites. What a waste. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 11 Mar 08 - 09:07 PM any woman who can make $5,000 an hour has my admiration! You really think she gets to keep much of that? That isn't how the business works, not even legal businesses. An employee keeping the money she earns? Shocking idea. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Big Mick Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:57 PM Q, are you just ignoring the prime difference? This isn't about powerful men and their sexual appetites. Those men didn't rail about these things, those men didn't make their moral standing their prime reason for political existence. They had affairs. So has a pretty good percentage of the population. Having sex is their business. And if women choose to do the same, more power to their elbow. But to prosecute prostitution rings while you are using prostitution rings, or to run on a platform of squeeky clean reform and cleaning up the crooks, while you are doing the same thing is a far larger sin. Mick |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Charley Noble Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:54 PM Well, I finally came up with a smartass remark. It's not my best but it should do for Spitzer: If you're a member of the Emperor's Club, beware the ides of March! I understand that Spitzer is working on his resignation speech. I wonder if there will be any rhymes. Evidently some agent of the Internal Revenue Service was actually running the Emperor's Club, according to CNN earlier this evening. It wasn't clear from the story whether the agent had infiltrated the Club or was just moonlighting. Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,Guest Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:53 PM It is a great disappointment though, because we need a million 'Spitzer the prosecutor' clones to go after government and corporate corruption the way he tried to do. He had real promise as a prosecutor and a politician. He would have been an excellent US attorney general, IMO. Perhaps he can weather this, and still have a career. I truly hate to see a brilliant mind like that just get shut out because of his attraction to playing with fire. I could give a shit about the call girls. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:49 PM Lyndon Johnson was another high roader. His mistress was Alice Glass. The story is that she broke it off because she opposed the war. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:43 PM Every politician takes that Puritan forefathers high stance. The opposition tries to knock him off the pedestal. Hypocrisy is the name of the game. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: number 6 Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:37 PM I apologize for the cut and paste, but it pretty well says it all ... the demise of Spitzer's out of his act of hypocracy is pretty well sumed up in this Associated Press article by Samantha Gross ... "As attorney general, he once broke up a call-girl ring and locked up 18 people on corruption, money-laundering and prostitution charges. He ruthlessly investigated the pay packages of Wall Street executives and was so familiar with shady financial maneuvers that he rose to become the top racketeering prosecutor in Manhattan. But in the end, it appears that Spitzer may have been done in by the same behavior he built a career out of prosecuting. In fact, it seems he was tripped up by some of the very financial accounting methods he used so successfully against multibillion-dollar Wall Street firms." biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Ebbie Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:36 PM There is a thought 'out there' that says that what one concentrates on dictates the actions one will take. Perhaps - just perhaps - in the course of researching and prosecuting sex operations, Spitzer became enamored of it. Kind of like folowing what one knows best. I have thought the same of those sleazy televangelists and 'reformers' who fall prey to what they consider forbidden. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Big Mick Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:28 PM Nope, harp, you don't have the right to change what the thread is about. If you want to start one on that subject, I think it would be great. This one's name says it all. Q, don't minimize this. For this man to get on a pedestal and proclaim himself the moral keel of the working families, the beacon of integrity, and the prosecutor of the evil ones taking advantage of us all, and make it the center of his reason for running, all the while acting in the opposite way, ...... this is the absolute definition of hypocrisy. I could care less that he got laid. This ain't about his private life. Its about being an advocate for one thing and doing another. Mick |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: meself Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:25 PM I'm getting scared - and I'm not even a politician ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,harpgirl Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:20 PM This thread is now about women who are smart enough to get paid $5,000 an hour for sex and not about stupid male politicians who fear women and their power. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:15 PM I don't know enough about Spitzer's record as a prosecutor or governor, not being a Noo Yawker, to give him a thumbs up or down on performance. It is unfortunate that his private life had to be exposed. Some people are better than others at keeping their lives secret. Eisenhower had a long time mistress, Kay Summersby, who was his driver-secretary, but the press didn't play it up until after he quit the spotlight. Jesse Jackson fathered a child with his mistress. Lucy Mercer was F. D. Roosevelt's long time mistress. John Kennedy had a whole passel of them. When Newt Gingrich was Speaker, Calista Bisek was his squeeze. Etc., etc., and so forth. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: Big Mick Date: 11 Mar 08 - 08:11 PM That is another whole debate, harp, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I also don't think it is as cut and dried as some would have it. I don't like thinking of a woman's body (or anyone's for that matter) as a commodity. I think organized crime interests would dominate. In fact it really wasn't women that he was supposedly busting, but those that use women. But that is another thread. This thread is absolutely about a hypocrite who needs to forfeit his career and reputation for his hypocrisy. Mick |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: GUEST,harpgirl Date: 11 Mar 08 - 07:58 PM Oh, and any woman who can make $5,000 an hour has my admiration! Just another bunch of men trying to control women and keep them from having power (sexual and financial in this case). If men had any buckeyes they'd make prostitution legal. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Spitzer - The Great Disappointment From: pdq Date: 11 Mar 08 - 07:52 PM "During his two terms as state attorney general, before becoming governor, Spitzer broke up at least two prostitution rings in New York City, including a 2004 case that led to the arrest of 18 people at an escort service." Perhaps he did such a good job that he was forced to have someone sent from LA. |
