Bill? Is that you?
From the comments over at Ian Welsh’s blog:
We paid for that “prosperity” later …
The “clinton” economy benefited from the initial stimulus of cheap goods imported into the US from the free trade agreements… the exported jobs would take more time, the explosion of consumer credit, greenspan’s irresponsibility in nourishing a huge stock market bubble, and wall street being set lose in a major way on the world’s markets. Workers fell further behind during those wonderful clinton years in wage inequality …. even behind what they were during the republican dominated 80s.
“Both the average wages for non-supervisory workers and the earnings of those in the lowest 10 percent of wage earners,” notes Robert Pollin, “not only remained well below those of the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations, but were actually lower than that even than those of the Reagan/Bush years. Moreover, wage inequality — as measured by the ratio of the 90th to the 10th wage decile — increased sharply during Clinton’s tenure in office, even relative to the Republican heyday of the 1980s.”
http://dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Street0929.htm
Yeah, clinton did a great job with his secretary of treasury deregulating everything in sight, carrying out polices that led to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children, passing welfare reform, increasing the H1-B visa limits, relaxing the limits on media ownership, preventing college students with marijuana possession convictions from getting federal financial aid, and passing The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which helped lead to this wonderful growing police state we live in and increased the amount of inmates by 50% during his reign.
The delusory “healthy” clinton economy was the results of easy credit, the technology boom, the initial benefits of cheap goods from the free trade agreements that he couldn’t do enough of, his abhorrent secretary of treasury, rubin, talking greenspan into exploding the money supply to reflect the “productivity miracle”, and the consequent stock market bubble. In the end, we all saw how real that was when many highly capitalized dotcom companies never developed viable business models and went bankrupt with wall street walking away rich. It was mainly based on bullshit and it started to fall apart even before the abominable bush came into office. And, also, that initial wave of corruption that finally surfaced from enron and worldcom and the like in 2002 or 2003 … that didn’t start the moment bush came into office, it started when clinton was president. It obviously got a lot worse under the worst president in our nation’s history, but the economy did not just start to fall apart in January 2001.
And the children in Iraq who were being slowly starved to death, or having cruise missiles lobbed at them might disagree as to the whole peacefulness of Clinton.
Clinton embellished his foreign policy with “humanitarian” aims and ideals, but in Iraq and beyond, he displayed the customary indifference of US presidents to human rights and the suffering of innocents. On his watch, military aid to Turkey, engaged in a scorched earth campaign against its Kurdish minority, and to Colombia, conducting a dirty war against left-wing insurgents, skyrocketed. The embargo on Cuba was tightened. Global efforts to block the militarisation of space were derailed while a stringent, self-serving neo-liberal economic regime was promoted through NAFTA and the WTO. Hundreds of thousands perished in Rwanda without Clinton lifting a finger, but he found time to bomb a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that his officials falsely alleged was producing chemical weapons.
Wow. It’s a miracle the nation survived.
/snarkfont
What’s really weird is these lefty purity trolls HATE Bill and Hillary more than than they dislike Reagan, Bush, Bush II or Bush III.
I don’t know what they’re smoking but I don’t want any of it.
Run for your lives! Here comes peace and prosperity!
Filed under: Bill Clinton, zombies | Tagged: Bill Clinton, zombies |
The Confluence 
Clinton never had “bots”, media on his side. The people who gave him the 68% approval in spite all the hysteria unleashed against him where people like me, who simply did well during his administration.
You know, due to an adequate stimulus and other policies no one touted for him…
You’re obviously a “low-information” racist.
/snarkfont
I am knitting even as I type this.
You must be filled with inchoate anger, and not thinking clearly.
I don’t know where that one guy got his numbers but every reputable report I’ve seen shows that the gap between rich and poor shrunk in the Nineties.
Under the Big Dawg we had the longest economic expansion in our history, and most of that wealth went to the bottom 20% as people were lifted out of poverty.
Was he perfect? Hell no.
But we could use more like him.
They make the crap up out of nothing. They seem to be excellent liars and perhaps have fooled themselves.
myiq — thanks for replying to all that, I wandered over there today and couldn’t believe they’re still circulating this crap.
On the wage gap — I’ve seen that exact quote from that dissidentvoices guy before. I actually tracked down an analysis from a professor which laid out the rebuttal explanation this way: yes, it’s true that the wage gap widened under Clinton, but what dv’s interpretation ignores is that everyone’s wages were rising at the same time, and significantly. So people across the board were much better off by any practical sense under Clinton.
Sadly, my hard drive crashed a few months ago and I lost all my references. So no cites. But that one perversion of interpretation tells us all we need to know about DV and the commentor who cited him.
Which would you rather be: 1) destitute, homeless, jobless, and without health insurance, but having the satisfaction of knowing the uberrich are slightly less uber-richer than you under Clinton; or 2) economically secure, employed, healthy, with a home, but having to bear the cross of knowing the uberrich are slightly more uber-richer than you with Clinton in charge?
I know which one I’d pick.
Thank you! While statistics about the uber-rich being richer is easy to gripe about, that interests me less than how the rest of us are doing.
Because you are never going to be rid of the uber-rich. Ever. They did not disappear even in the USSR. They had their rolls royces and dachaus, even there. They have always existed, in every society ever conceived, and always will. They will protect themselves, they have the means. It doesn’t matter if you like it. It IS. So forget about them, and focus on the majority:
If most of the country is prosperous, poverty is decreasing, the middle class is growing, etc, as it did under Bill, then I’m thrilled. I could care less if Joe Gazillionare is doing even better than we are.
The rich always get richer. Under the Big Dawg the poor got richer too.
Yup. And no, it wasn’t all “tech boom”, either. Small businesses freaking exploded in the 90’s.
Not to mention that Bill and Al encouraged the development of the internet which encouraged the tech boom.
The wage gap narrowed under Clinton. Period. It’s in all the graphs we see frequently from Dak. Sure, you can find some random professor or possibly even economist who will have some convoluted way to think about things (like all of the 90’s vs. just Clinton’s part), but facts are facts. The gap narrowed.
Well, the problem is that since I can’t find my cites, I can’t check the random prof’s statement. He (I do remember it was a he) may have been talking about overall wealth, and not just wages. Or he may have been talking about specific year-to-year comparisons. I would not want to contradict Dak ever on matters of economics or finance, but I do remember whatever he said was well-documented from reliable sources (or, as reliable sources as we have these days, at least I remember he wasn’t a nutjob or citing the Bible or anything like that).
THe bottom line is, the commentator over at Ian’s was just repeating the laundry-list-meme-lies about Clinton. He also holds Clinton responsible for welfare reform, even though Clinton vetoed the welfare bill at least twice and then only signed it when it showed up on his desk with a veto-proof majority, same with Glass-Steagall (which he also blamed Clinton for).
OT – Hillary wore purple to a meeting with Obama today. Guess Obama couldn’t find a purple tie.
Here is the link:
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//101020/480/urn_publicid_ap_org1d14b8ad62d141a798c489025802cf2d/
Don’t know how to bring the pic here. Sorry.
Love that woman.
He was probably wearing purple underwear. That’s the kind of thing a “fierce advocate” like him would do.
A purple thong?
Leave him alone! Don’t you know he is going to be on Jon Stewart after he campaigns for a bit? I mean c’mon! He can’t be expected to support the disenfranchised! Who do you think he is? Someone with authority?
Asshat.
Hillary 2012
Interesting. The two women in purple (thank-you, Hillary and ??), the men–just suits.
OMG, that was me over there, myiq – as “Mary” (my first name) – I couldn’t believe the hijacking of an important thread.
And my conclusions:
1. Z is not a liberal (as Z admitted)
2. Z repudiates both Clintons (as “neoliberals or something or other)
3. Z does not repudiate Obama (even tho Obama is far to the right of the Clintons) – at least that is a reasonable inference from Z’s failure to answer my direct questions as to whether he/she repudiates Obama
the inconsistency, the illogic, is staggering – if you repudiate the Clintons as not being progressive enough, you simply MUST repudiate Obama
I went to watch the Yankees cuz I couldn’t take it anymore –
Well starting right now I’m gonna be watching the Giants and Phillies, so everybody better behave.
Me too – I’ll be quite happy with my new hometown (well, I’m in the East Bay) team, the Giants, teaching my old hometown team, the Yankees, a thing or two. I like those Giants a lot. A lot better than Z and Pepe, that’s for sure.
That’s what irritates me. Someone like Arthur Silber is consistent, but the rest of these so-called “radicals” can never explain why they don’t have an equal problem with O, H, and Bill. Since it seems like they pretty much should hate them all equally and they can’t even begin to explain why they don’t, it seems like it goes a bit deeper than ideology.
http://b4bmorenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-244-accomplishments-of-president.html
beware the latest Obama propaganda going viral.
Naturally, half the shit on the list is mundane as hell. The other half full of near half-truths/deceptions.
LOL
Jeebus! There was enough Kool-aid in that list to give us all diabetes.
That’s not new at all. It comes from Politifact and there are a few people on DU who post nothing but this several times a day in response to anything.
100’s of piles of shit is still shit.
IT is the new talking point. Mika on Morning Joe was peddling this s**t today. Her attempt was soooooooo sad that Joe Scarborough pretended to be on Obama’s side to have some debate (honestly!) . I think he realized that the show would be really embarassing otherwise.
Hmmm….I seem to remember Greenspan kept raising the interest rates to try and slow the Clinton economy down.
And the Wall St clowns changed their own rules for taking the dot com companies public. Which was pointed out in that Matt Taibbi RS article about Goldman Sachs.
Not that I don’t think Greenspan is a complete jerk…..but that is another topic.
I seem to remember Greenspan kept raising the interest rates to try and slow the Clinton economy down.
no doubt about that. Trying to derail Bill and that way Greenspan could lower them for Bush 2….
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is back – courtesy of Barack Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/20/us/politics/AP-US-Obama-Gays-In-Military.html?_r=1&ref=aponline
The national Dems don’t want the LGBT issues to be resolved – just as the Repubs don’t want the abortion discussion to go away.
Oh, and send money. We care, we really care.
If LGBTs achieve full equality, some of them might drift over to the GOP because of economic issues.
We can’t have that shit.
It is mostly our money they worry about losing. The LGBT community funding for the party is way disproportionate to our numbers. Has been for at least 30 years.
Under Howard Dean the DNC took down the help desk for LGBT. The desk was designed to help various gay organizations at the state level fight anti-gay petitions and initatives. With that saved money he added staff fundraisers who exclusively targeted our community. IOWs – the DNC wanted our money but not our issues.
And we can see the results, Obama, who is fine with their lifestyle choice, at least the (in his mind) minority of them that don’t proselytize.
DT, in my experience the only men who tend to worry about gays “proselytizing” are men who are uneasy that they might be tempted if they did.
Yep, that’s my experience too WMCB.
I am reminded of the saying about Blacks voting for Rs – like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders . It’s officially applicable to gays now.
I guess he doesn’t remember all of the homeless during the Raygun administration. Unfortunately when all of the nasties broke out from the deregulation of the markets Bill Clinton was consumed with impeachment or no longer the president. The next administration did nothing to fix it and did squander what benefit we had. I do agree that the deregulation went too far under Clinton and was unfortunately totally abolished in the next administration. It is also of note that from a foreign policy perspective that was the only time that foreign governments gave positive marks to the US. I believe the agreements in Ireland were somewhat notable. I believe the genocide in Rwanda took place over 6 weeks. I don’t know what could have been done in such a short amount of time. However, the genocide was stopped in the Balkans because Clinton circumvented the stalling by Russia in the UN and went to NATO instead. I wonder why the writer doesn’t remember the genocide in the Balkans? Clinton bombed the aspirin factory because of the intelligence he was given fighting the same terrorist group that eventually bombed us. I don’t recall anyone claiming that the intelligence was driven to configure to some sort of policy agenda such as it was subsequently was under Dubya. However, since that does seem to be a rather blatant mistake, Clinton and the next president, Dubya, should have figured out that our intelligence wasn’t worth a pot of piss
re: Intelligence: Clinton thwarted the New year 2000 terrorist plot. W dismantled the whole program as soon as he got in.
Same with FEMA. Bill built it up to a great organization, W purposely gutted it, calling it an entitlement.
The problem for the NAACP and Obama is that this political stunt, overused, doesn’t work on those who have already deemed this Administration has failed. The only folks this hate BS incites is those who have truly suffered real or perceived discrimination and that to me, same as in 08 Obama campaign, is exploitation of an identity group pure and simple. My view, you could probably find racist in any group even in the NAACP and their report, all unacceptable no matter the group.
Buster Posey draws first blood.
Giants 1-0
What BS that Clinton was the cause for 50% increase of inmates………they might want to go look at Mississippi this week. Many counties have gathered for a meetup, because the government wants to cut out
programs, and close the hosptials. Families are pissed because they know exactly where their mentally ill families will end up: prison.
I don’t know where these people who write such bullshit go for psychiatric help, but I will gurantee you it’s not prison.
You have been hitting them out of the park, myiq. Thank you!
djmm
Buster Posey strikes again with an RBI double
Giants lead 2-0 after three
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Not Our Problem: The Obama Team Punts on Foreclosure Fraud
I don’t usually do more than glance at the cover of huffpoo to see what they are sensationalizing each evening so I didn’t bother to read the actual article but, at least for right now, the main headline and accompanying unattractive photo of Obama are more of what I would expect to see on drudge.
Oh and the article is placed right over the little article on how Obama’s attorney general was successful in getting the DADT freeze lifted….of course that’s not his fault either, although I am still waiting for them to use the “it’s Bush’s fault” on this one.
With ignorant yet popular HuffPo community commenters like Imago defending Obama:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Imago/dont-ask-dont-tell-tempor_n_770737_64442337.html
“Obama’s administration has NO CHOICE in these matters:
He has to operate on multiple fronts: legislative, judicial, regulatory and in public relations, if he wants the matter to be settled.
…Public Relations. All of this is complex and given the opposition tactic of over simplification and the public’s general unwillingness to study matters like this with the level of intensity required, this is the toughest battle.
WHAT OBAMA DOES NOT WANT: The assumption by those in the military that DADT is dead until it really, really is. If this is not done with care- Boom!”
Kool-aid is a helluva drug.
Phillies make some noise, come up empty.
Giants 2-0 after 3 1/2
I notice more quarters are tying Clinton to the Congressional turnover in 1994. Clinton took some hits because of unpopular actions, but this was the Congress that had the infamous House checking scandal. Congress was laid bare as corrupt and guys like Gingrich seized on it.
This year, Congress is in trouble because they followed Obama’s legislative agenda, which amounted to take any POS legislation and slap the words “Health Care Reform” or “Recovey Act” on it.
Tea partier in Alaska runs against Obama
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/g-o-p-ad-in-alaska-hits-obama/?src=twt&twt=thecaucus
Just thought about it: Is Dan Choi out again?
Sounds like it. I love Dan.
As of a half hour ago, he tweeted “my enlistment process continues” and encouraged anyone who wants to serve to continue to sign up and be open.
Fucking Giants
They’re like Dems, never fail to disappoint. Come on Giants, get off your butts.
They got one back. Pitching change.
Phillies 4-3
Could be a long night…
My liver can’t take this.
Posey… jeebus
So far so good…..
Whew… I need a drink.
Sweet.
Whoa
They did, they did win………champs tomorrow.
(Comment deleted)
If you want to comment here you need to be polite.
This is ain’t Burger King – you don’t get it your way.
This is OUR blog. If you don’t like the way we do things then start your own damn blog. I’m sure there are at least two or three people out there that are truly interested in reading your opinion.
Now if you want to try commenting again go ahead, but this time be polite.
Hahahaha … as expected lambert, this is the punk shit that you like to pull just like when you kicked me off of your blog a month after I gave you money. You’re all about one-way attacks and nothing about debate.
Z
Lambert? That’s correntewire. Different blog.
So confused… typical.
You had your chance to be polite but didn’t listen.
Go be rude to Spammy.
BTW – Lambert banned me too
Oh wow! From Ian Welsh’s blog:
Should I be insulted or should Lambert?
That would be a pretty good trick writing numerous posts under two different aliases at two different blogs for over two years (lambert has been writing a lot longer than that.)