Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Culise]

Similar half-remembered news stories from my youth about the same thing in the Balkans. And the same thing in Afghanistan. I think Cruise Missiles were to Clinton what Drone Strikes are to Obama: the newest and best way to have an impact without risking US troops.

Clinton wasn't a saber-rattler. But that doesn't mean he wasn't doing things. He just did them without all the public fanfare of support building that we've kinda come to expect from presidents post-9/11 engaging in overseas operations. In that respect, I think Obama is a lot like Clinton. They're more than willing to take calculated military action. They're just not going to crow about it or make it a central part of their public administration track record, unless it's something monumental like killing Bin Laden.

Indeed, I'll definitely second that.  More than that, though, Clinton's big diplomatic coups were the Dayton Accords and Camp David Accords, not to mention his administration's behind-the-scenes work with the British and Irish to further what became the Good Friday Agreement.  These all contrast with what is less considered, in particular the the near-invasion of Haiti, the actual invasion of Kosovo (where he not only set a precedent for but also one-bettered his successor George W. Bush by not even trying to seek actual UN approval, instead pulling clauses to support his intervention without the risk of a Russian or Chinese veto), or the disastrous attempt at an intervention in Mogadishu that managed to get immortalized in film. 

[scriver]

The good thing about Thatcher is that she is remembered for more then being a woman.  The bad thing about Thatcher is that she is remembered for being a reactionary radical less than human.

Fixed that for you.

[DJ]

Clinton's big diplomatic coups were the Dayton Accords

Yeah, thanks for that, now our country is hobbled for eternity, never able to make any sort of political progress. And just when the war was about to resolve itself.

Also mad props to Hillary for braving sniper fire here more than a year after the actual war ended.

[sluissa]

I'm amazed no one has brought up Libya yet.

It's been brought up. There was a very good NYT article a few pages back that went into very good detail of the whole situation. Basically Hillary screwed the situation up, convinced Obama to go along with it, claimed credit when it looked like they'd won, (Pure Dubya moment) and now after the real scope of the situation is revealed and how bad things have actually gotten, she's pushing the blame on Obama. "I just went along with the President's decision."

I'll refrain from gender references since apparently that offends some people (even though she advertises herself in that way heavily). So I'll just say, this is an exact repeat of Dubya. A shadow of a former president with an axe to grind over an unfinished job by a predecessor running on the platform of "I'll be just like my predecessor was, except better."

Given that Obama has had a fairly low approval rating for a while now, and Bill is most known for cheating on her, I'd say her predecessors are not the best thing to bank on, all things considered. At this point she needs to HOPE for her vs. Trump because almost anything else is going to be iffy. I can see people getting behind Rubio to fight her. I can even see people getting behind Cruz, as he's mostly refrained from the public craziness this cycle. I can't see widespread support and I can even see a "Anyone but him" effect going on if Trump is the nominee.

[Lord Shonus]

Given that Obama has had a fairly low approval rating for a while now, and Bill is most known for cheating on her, I'd say her predecessors are not the best thing to bank on, all things considered.

The presidency of Bill Clinton is widely regarded, with quite a bit of justification, by Democrats as a Golden Age, and if he were allowed to run he'd probably win in a landslide. A huge percentage of Hillary's support base back her because they hope for a return.

[RedKing]

Anyway, don't misunderstand me:  Clinton isn't great just because they called her terrible.  I just need to look up reliable sources.  But I'm super leery of the vitriol now, it seems suspiciously one-sided.  Clinton supporters say Sanders' platform is too extreme to get enacted, whereas a certain Sanders supporter *in this thread* keeps saying Clinton "only gets votes because she has a vagina".

Next time I see it phrased so baitingly, I'm reporting.  I'm sick of that feud, and people have been banned recently for far less.

come at me bro

And no, Clinton supporters say Sanders' supporters are racist/misoygnist/Communists/lazy/ignorant/"Bernie Bros"/do I need to fucking go on? Don't act like this is a one-sided street. It's a long fall from that moral high horse.

My complaint with Clinton is not that she is female. It's with her character and her questionable track record. Now, I *do* have a problem with the narrative put forth by some Clinton surrogates that women in particular should vote for Clinton primarily on the basis of her gender. And if you want to deny that narrative is being pushed, I can post a fuckton of links for you.

I want my first time with a woman president to be something special.  Someone who will transform me into a more complete and mature citizen.

And yet you're supporting Clinton? *snnrk*

I want to save this quote and bring it up four years from now, after President Clinton begins ordering drone strikes on a resurgent Occupy movement.

Given that Obama has had a fairly low approval rating for a while now, and Bill is most known for cheating on her, I'd say her predecessors are not the best thing to bank on, all things considered.

The presidency of Bill Clinton is widely regarded, with quite a bit of justification, by Democrats as a Golden Age, and if he were allowed to run he'd probably win in a landslide. A huge percentage of Hillary's support base back her because they hope for a return.

Except that it really wasn't. I was old enough to be politically aware during the 90's. There was some tense shit going on, and everyone started losing their minds with millennialism (before that referred to a whole generation of people) and conspiracy theories and black helicopters and FEMA death camps and certain people going far enough down the rabbit hole that they blew up a Federal building. Or an Olympic park. Or sniped abortion doctors.

Economically, it was a boom era, but that had far less to do with Clinton himself, and far more to do with the birth of the Web. The growth of the Internet and the Web was almost single-handedly responsible for the economic boom of the latter 90's (and its resultant flame-out). I'd wager that the same kind of boom cycle would have occurred under most Presidents in that situation. But in repealing Glass-Steagall and passing free trade bills that made it easier than ever to offshore labor (and profits), he also laid the groundwork for the kind of hypercapitalist globalism that's steadily gutting this country, and which Trump and Sanders are a reaction to (Trump from the Pat Buchanan right-wing school of anti-globalization [close the borders but leave the wealth in place], and Sanders from the Noam Chomsky left-wing school of anti-globalization [redistribute the wealth but leave the borders open]).

Hillary is much more akin to the Thomas Friedman "radical centrist" school of pro-globalization, and I think the events of the last 15 years have discredited Friedman to the point of being a laughing-stock.



EDIT: In other news, Clarence Thomas spoke during oral arguments for the first time in ten years. TEN YEARS. This may be the first recorded instance of a puppet speaking only *after* the puppeteer has died.

[smjjames]

I thought Trump was closer to the [close the borders and redistribute wealth] camp than the [close the borders but leave wealth as it is] camp, though not to the same degree as Sanders. I mean, that's part of his whole appeal, Trump's and Sanders's views on the economy have a good deal of similarities, mostly in the bashing trade department though.

[RedKing]

Trump wants to end a lot of free trade deals and clamp down on offshoring and corporate inversions (that would be the close the borders part) but doesn't seem to care if the wealth stays concentrated at the top. He just wants that wealth to remain bottled up in the US, so that any "trickle-down" benefits would take place here. Which isn't a half-bad thing, at least for American workers. But trickle-down is a weak effect, and doesn't help this country if the wealthy can just move their assets and investment capital offshore. Stopping corporations from doing it is a big step, but the wealth that investment capitalists reap from US-based investments would then just get funneled outside the country to higher growth markets like China. And blocking *all* capital from leaving the US is not something you're likely to see out of any Presidency, even Trump or Sanders.

EDIT: And I haven't seen Trump talking about raising taxes on the wealthy (other than hedge fund managers -- I'm guessing some fund managers made a mint betting against Trump's failed ventures in the past, and this is payback).

I haven't seen anything to indicate that Trump is calling for pulling out of the WTO or anything like that, whereas Sanders supported Ron Paul's bill in 2000 to pull out of the WTO.

[mainiac]

It's been brought up. There was a very good NYT article a few pages back that went into very good detail of the whole situation. Basically Hillary screwed the situation up, convinced Obama to go along with it, claimed credit when it looked like they'd won, (Pure Dubya moment)

Cute.  You reference the NYTimes article and then without transition, you give your opinion in the next sentence.  One could leap to the conclusion that you are saying that your opinion is what the NYTimes article says.  Of course you dont outright say that's what the article contains, you just wink wink, nudge, nudge imply it.  The article describes the case for intervention as a calculated risk in a complicated situation.  For instance:

She could hardly tell Qatar to stand down if the United States was unwilling to step in with lethal assistance of its own, one State Department aide said, “because their answer would be, ‘Well, those guys need help — you’re not doing it.’” Her view, often relayed to her staff, was that to have influence with the fractious opposition and Arab allies, you had to have “skin in the game,” Mr. Ross said.

and now after the real scope of the situation is revealed and how bad things have actually gotten, she's pushing the blame on Obama. "I just went along with the President's decision."

I remember Clinton during the Bengazi hearings saying that she was proud of her involvement in Libya.  That was October 2015.  Quite a bit after the bloom was off the rose in Libya.

For shits and giggles, here's the spin Clinton put on her time working with the Obama administration  three months ago:

Look, I have made clear that I have differences, as I think any two people do. I was very proud to serve as President Obama’s secretary of state. I think we made a good team. We largely agreed on what needed to be done to repair our alliances to get our country in a position to deal with the wars that had been inherited and to take on some of the new challenges we faced.

One could of course argue that this is just empty political bullshit.  You could say she wants to play up her closeness to Obama for political reasons.  But I find it very telling that the people who say Clinton will say anything are themselves willing to fabricate an alternate reality in which to attack her.

And no, Clinton supporters say Sanders' supporters are racist/misoygnist/Communists/lazy/ignorant/"Bernie Bros"/do I need to fucking go on? Don't act like this is a one-sided street. It's a long fall from that moral high horse.

And when they show up, you can argue with them.  However it's not generic strawmen on the internet who slander Clinton.  It's people in this thread.  You can find someone out there who will say anything.  Treating them as representative of your opponents is extremely disrespectful.

Economically, it was a boom era, but that had far less to do with Clinton himself, and far more to do with the birth of the Web. The growth of the Internet and the Web was almost single-handedly responsible for the economic boom of the latter 90's (and its resultant flame-out).

I could think of a few things I would put above the internet in terms of economic boom generation.  Surge in manufacturing productivity, rising investment, producer price deflation.  One of these, a major one, is something Clinton is responsible for.  Clinton lead the charge to reinstate sound fiscal policy after the profligacy of the 80s.  This change in policy path freed up capital for private sector investment.  Because this was happening during the boom of an economic cycle it allowed for stable, low interest investments to be profitable.  By shifting the capital supply curve like this, you raise the equilibrium level of capital.  This lengthens the economic boom because of the time people spent employed creating those machines and buildings.  And this raises long term economic outcomes because those machines and building increase later productivity.  And we know it was more then just a bubble because productivity per worker hour and capital dollar were rising quickly, not what you would see in a bubble.  There was a bubble but that was on the side of a broader economic recovery and reinvestment.

Of course this isn't to say that Clinton was responsible for the entire 90s boom.  Presidents have a lot less control over that then people think.  But he did help things along which a lot of presidents dont do.

Oh, and in case anyone has forgotten.  Bernie Sanders is a neoCannanite and wants to ritually sacrifice children to Baal.

[Frumple]

... I get you (hopefully) think that last bit is tongue in cheek, m, but for those of us that don't actually get what point you're trying to make with it (besides some kind of tit-for-tat, which is... not something you need to be doing), it's pretty distasteful. Especially considering the whole jewish thing. Maybe stop?

[RedKing]

Economically, it was a boom era, but that had far less to do with Clinton himself, and far more to do with the birth of the Web. The growth of the Internet and the Web was almost single-handedly responsible for the economic boom of the latter 90's (and its resultant flame-out).

I could think of a few things I would put above the internet in terms of economic boom generation.  Surge in manufacturing productivity, rising investment, producer price deflation.  One of these, a major one, is something Clinton is responsible for.  Clinton lead the charge to reinstate sound fiscal policy after the profligacy of the 80s.  This change in policy path freed up capital for private sector investment.  Because this was happening during the boom of an economic cycle it allowed for stable, low interest investments to be profitable.  By shifting the capital supply curve like this, you raise the equilibrium level of capital.  This lengthens the economic boom because of the time people spent employed creating those machines and buildings.  And this raises long term economic outcomes because those machines and building increase later productivity.  And we know it was more then just a bubble because productivity per worker hour and capital dollar were rising quickly, not what you would see in a bubble.  There was a bubble but that was on the side of a broader economic recovery and reinvestment.

Of course this isn't to say that Clinton was responsible for the entire 90s boom.  Presidents have a lot less control over that then people think.  But he did help things along which a lot of presidents dont do.

I won't even try to seriously argue that one, cause you can bury me in economic arguments that I lack the capacity to adequately analyze.
 
Yes, there was a lot more money available in the 90's to invest.
Yes, that contributed to the dot-com boom.
No, I don't know that it was a good thing in the long-term. Lots of money meant companies like Google could explode overnight (although Google was mostly a child of the 2nd wave of dot-coms), but it also created a ton of waste and speculation. Pets.com, anyone? Flooz.com? eToys.com? We're talking hundreds of millions (in some cases, low billions) of dollars of investment capital that evaporated with nothing to show for it. And the growth of the Internet greatly enabled offshoring of service jobs.



EDIT: mainiac claims that Clintonistas making ad hominems is a strawman, then proceeds to light the straw on fire.
10/10 would read shitpost again.

[mainiac]

EDIT: mainiac claims that Clintonistas making ad hominems is a strawman, then proceeds to light the straw on fire.

Yes.  Of course you would say that.  You support the evil pagan child killer.

Hey man, it's like dangling catnip and then acting surprised when the cat wont leave you alone.

[RedKing]

No, it's more like dangling catnip and then the cat proceeds to go take a shit in your sneakers.

Seriously though, what Frumple said....there's tongue-in-cheek, and then there's "Oh, I'm just burning this cross and wearing this white hood ironically, so it's okay." You're starting to veer towards the latter.

[Bauglir]

wait, how in god's name could anybody take mainiac's claims about infant sacrifice seriously? at worst they're a satirical parody of arguments that nobody's making, which is a far cry from the irony defense

[penguinofhonor]

Hey, you can never tell with Clinton supporters.