Why does this man hate AMERICA?

Why is this man second guessing our Commander in Chief when we have troops in harms way? Doesn't he know we're at WAR? Does he want America to lose? Why does he hate America? He's guilty of TREASON! He's giving aid and comfort to the enemy with his seditiuos talk! Why can't he blindy follow OUR LEADER like he expected the rest of us to when it was his trained monkey in the whitehouse? He must have Obama Derangement Syndrome.

-- IaintBacchus Friday, March 13, 2009 09:05 AM PDT

Rove is ODiouS.

No, really?

Karl Rove, lie? Who'd have suspected?

-- JoeMommaSan Friday, March 13, 2009 07:58 AM PDT

Karl Rove engage in politicization!?

You've GOT to be kidding!

National Debt

You actually understate how bad the mess Bush made by leaving out that Clinton had actually balanced the budget and left him with a potential surplus.

-- EWilson Friday, March 13, 2009 07:49 AM PDT

This is how those "economics" work:

1. Spend all your savings,

2. Quit your job, and,

3. Your income will INCREASE.

You know, the one who was blowing the whistle on the Diebold election fraud? Oh, yeah, that's right, he suddenly died! Can't wait to hear Rove's testimony before the Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary and Don Siegelman. Why do I keep hearing Pink Floyd in the back of my mind?

"Clinton is also culpable, failed in his role as the final check against a runaway Congress, and used it as an opportunity to get what he wanted regardless of how hard it was going to go on the middle class after he left office."

Oh, no doubt. I'm glad that's settled, then.

It's one of those points which kinda demonstrates the guy's political prowess. Even when he was doing the wrong thing, he sure was SLICK about it.

As I said, he bragged about it and still does. And he negotiated changes to CRA in exchange for passing it. So he knew what the bill contained when he signed it. He isn't stupid.

But you're right, Congress passes legislation, not the President. Clinton didn't write the Modernization Act or Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Gramm did, so he's responsible for the contents. But Clinton is also culpable, failed in his role as the final check against a runaway Congress, and used it as an opportunity to get what he wanted regardless of how hard it was going to go on the middle class after he left office.

I'm kind of a fair-weather "Slick Willie supporter," and you're absolutely right about the deregulation bill being passed during his administration. There is the one major hassle that: the PRESIDENT doesn't pass laws.

The CONGRESS passes laws.

Now, yes, perhaps he could've vetoed the bill, and perhaps that would've been a good thing for us, but you and I both know that he WANTED that bill passed, and no one other than the beltway insiders had *any* idea at all what was going on at the time.

The public (and media) were a bit distracted by the failure of our electoral process, and the bill was something like 1000 pages long. Clinton knew he was out in a month--there's no way he read that bill.

I blame Clinton for plenty--from China's MFN trade status to maintenance of foolish and counterproductive sanctions on Iraq. From the murder of 80 Americans by the FBI and the military to the aid he provided for an ethnic-cleansing program in Kosovo...

Clinton was certainly no angel, and, in a world where justice was served EQUALLY, he'd have been hanged as a war-criminal, if for nothing other than the missile attack on a Sudanese pharmaceuticals plant that ended up destroying their ability to produce antibiotics for sick children.

HOWEVER...

Clinton didn't pass that Modernization Act. Phil Gramm DOES deserve far more credit for it than Clinton does.

Believe me, I am in no way trying to excuse anything Bush did or didn't do during our 8 Years In Hell.

I just think we all need to realize that this was a joint effort between 4 presidents, and that it took a hell of a lot longer than 8 years to create this mess. If we are looking to the past for clues on how to build for the future, we need to go all the way back to Kennedy and Eisenhower.

The Clinton Years are not a good example for us to follow - and anyway we can't, because you can only dismantle our manufacturing infrastructure once, and only create an economic bubble like we had once every 70 years or so. If Obama is going to be our Roosevelt, Clinton was our Hoover.

Certainly :)

He passed the legislation.

I know that the reason that Clinton supporters give for that happening is that most of the bills were veto-proof, and that Phil Gramm was actually responsible. That argument carries little weight for 2 reasons -

One, it's not like he went down kicking and screaming. What he did, in fact, was set a price for deregulating the securities markets and banking industries - further expansion of the CRA. As long as more people who couldn't pay were given mortgages, he was fine. And while CRA wasn't directly responsible for all of the expansion of the sub-prime market, it did create the market for bad paper that eventually blew up into the crisis we face today.

Two, he bragged about deregulating banking and securities then and still does today. Not the behavior of a man who was forced to sign bad legislation by an opposition Congress. He's proud of what he did to this country, makes no apologies for it, and in fact blames Bush for everything that's happened since he left office.

Frankly, I find his behavior (and Hillary's during the campaign) revolting. Both of them are way too smart not to see the relationship between the legislation passed in the 90's and the situation we are in today.

Clinton gave MFN status to China and that has been removing manufacturing jobs from our economy ofr the last decade. But that was at the end of his Presidency and had a far greater impact on the economy in this century than the last one. The surplus was a function of higher employement, higher payrol taxes, at least as much as it was a function of Capital Gains revenue. Of course the first thing the next Presedent did was cut Capital Gains and eliminate Dividend taxes altogether. So if as you argue, the Clinton surplus WAS a function of capital gains then the next guy made it top priority to ensure we'd have a big decicit.

And those two wars he left "off the books" for 5 years should be compared with a long expensive vacation taken on a credit card rather than a home mortgage because it did nothing to improve the country and the money was spent elsewhere. The home mortgage analogy would apply more closely to the stimulus program being practiced by the Obama administration. That will improve infrastructure and get more money moving around in our economy rather then Iraqs.

I will give you this. It was plain in 2000, when both candidates were arguing over a surplus that they didn't even have yet and with a Federal Debt already over $5tn, that nobody was planning to make any hard decisions.