::bangs head against wall::
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by F. U. Shakespeare *
**Selflessness
Re-read JJ’s post – he’s referring to political selflessness, not material. I am not defending JJ’s position, but you’re misstating it.
OK - cheap shot on my part (accurate but cheap). I think he is still trying to build a legacy but that is a different topic.
Popularity with black people
Clinton’s ‘mend it, don’t end it’ compromise did a lot to keep affirmative action alive. What’s so hard to understand about the people who benefitted holding Clinton in high regard? (Again, I personally am not a proponent of most affirmative action programs, so I’m not praising the accomplishment, just explaining the importance).
That actually answers the question. A good PR point for Clinton, but I view it as more feel-good than accomplishment. Peroit had the right idea: education, education, education. The new mayor of New York gets it.
Peace
Bin Ladin is not easy to catch – ask President Bush, who’s had two and a half years.
This I disagree with. Clinton turned down Sudan’s offer to simply hand him over. I believe he was aware of the situation because of a speech he gave very near the end of his term. He said that terrorism would be THE greatest challeng of the next century. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when he said it because it was out of context with the rest of the speech.
Also, can the 1993 WTC attacks be laid at the feet of George H. W. Bush? (OK, now I’m being disingenuous --that was an unfair charge. 9/11 changed the whole focus in foreign policy – see how tempting it is to make imprecise comparisons?)
You’re not being disinqenuous if you want to talk foreign policy. I can find fault with every presedent back to Reagan on Mid East policy. We (US) have a bad habbit of half-assed meddling.
However, Clinton was in office in 1993. The WTC bombing was one of the first Al Queda sponsored events so it was not really predictable. It should be noted that plans to fly into the WTC were found on the laptop of convicted bomber Ramsi Yousef. What I don’t get is the United States turned down Iraq’s offer to turn over Abdul Rahman Yasin, a self confessed participant. Even more bizzar, and I can’t blame Clinton directly, is the fact that the FBI let this person go, knowing he was in on it.
http://www.rense.com/general25/atcs.htm
I add to Clinton’s record on terrorism his parden of the Puerto Rican bombers. They had to promise not to engage in terrorist acts. HELLO.
So you choose to ignore the speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi?
Or do you not consider courting racists a racially divisive act?
Really? I thought that the Healthcare plan failed, and wasn’t enacted. Sure- Clinton proposed a national healthcare plan (which would not have “socialized the entire health care industry” by any means), and it failed. He proposed it because the people said they wanted it. However, the same people also wanted to be able to use their own Doctor- and this, and other reasons - made the cost too high. After the Admin & Congress finally went back to the People and said “OK, here is what the National Healthcare plan you asked for would cost”- “the people” said "no- we don’t want it that * much, thank you". Sure- “anything the government does requires an administration fee above that of the original task”- but so doesanything the insurance industry does* , so overall, it wouldn’t have been that much worse. But indeed- the public asked for a certain national healthcare plan- and then changed their minds after they were told how much it woudl really cost. If “the people” had been willing to give up the now-outmoded idea of seeing “their doctor”, it could have worked. Well- at least as well as it works now in Canada- which has both good & bad points.
Since I get health insurance at wrok, I was only a lukewarm support for the deal.
Even though I lean rather far to the left, I never really liked Clinton. In the 1992 election, I voted for Tsongas in the primaries (yeah, he was totally mush-mouthed, but he had better reasoning capabilities than all the other candidates put together, as a film called “Feed”, a collection of behind the scenes footage of the campaign trail, showed quite handily). It took a lot of sweet-talk on Clinton’s part to get me to vote for him in '92, and it was more out of fear of another 4 years of Bush’s recession than anything else. I would rather have had him than Dole in 96 as well. All the same, I have registered as an independent since '92 because of him.
Clinton sold out the left-wing that had held up the Democratic Party for the previous 60 years. As Michael Moore put it, after listing many of Clinton’s actions, “he was the best Republican President we’ve had in a long time”. It is a sign of the deep partisan divide that currently exists in this country that we left-wing Democrats sold our soul to the devil just to keep the Republicans out of power for as long as possible.
The devil has come to collect. (Sorry, couldn’t resist one Bush-bash 
)
More than any other president before him? What are you talking about? He did less for race relations than any president since Coolidge. Heck, Nixon did more to improve race relations than Reagan did. And Reagan was explicit in his language and his imagery both in fostering a “back in the good old days (when the colored weren’t so uppity)” image of America and in portraying images of crime and poverty as “black” problems.
I had no problem with the idea that Reagan opposed Affirmative Action or other practices developed in the 20 years that preceeded his election. All policies should be open to examination and some people will, inevitably, disagree with them. However, the problems they attempted to address were real and Reagan did not merely claim that the policies were the wrong way to address the issues, he claimed that the issues did not exist.
My problem with your statements continues to be your parenthetical comments. If you have a quote for Reagan refering to “crime and poverty as ‘black’ problems”, well bring it on. Or any reference he made to “back in the good old days (when the colored weren’t so uppity)”, again, bring it on. In fact he never did either, like I said before, just because you don’t like things Reagan did is no reason to attribute perceived wrongs to him.
How did he court racists? From this link it would appear that the answer was not at all. Unless you want to claim that to campaign anywhere in the south is to court racists. And now for the obligatory lengthy quote:
I doubt you have health insurance at work. More likely, you belong to an HMO. There’s a big difference between health insurance and health maintanance packages (Yes, an HMO is technically insurance). I could go on a serious bender against HMO’s. An HMO represents about $6,500 of your income. You would be much better off getting the money, and then buying a $3,000 insurance policy. You could go to the doctor quite often on the remaining $3500. HMO’s and lawsuits are the 2 major contributor’s to high health care costs. If your company prints out your benefits package, go back and see what percentage increase per year it has gone up.
Sorry for the rant, not trying to smack you down. HMO’S are a touchy subject with me. I would be thrilled if there were legislation that evened out personal insurance options from state to state. HMO’s are nice to belong to, but they are not to our long term benefit.
Yep, under Hillarycare, decisions about your medical care would have been made by faceless government bureaucrats interested primarily in meeting financial targets. Instead, under the free-enterprise system, decisions about your medical care are made by faceless corporate bureaucrats interested primarily in meeting financial targets. It is only by the narrowest of margins that we escaped the obvious evil of Socialism.
Yes, but if the faceless corporate bureaucrats made a profit you could invest your retirement funds in it and lessen the screwing from Scocial(ist) Security.
I also like the fact that Clinton at least attempted to reach out to gays and atheists, and acknowledge them as Americans . . . Unlike most—umm, any other—Presidents.
I didn’t approve of his military actions either, but surely you don’t think Clinton was as much of a hawk as George W.?
Magiver, given what’s happened to the stock market over the last 2+ years, I don’t know if that was a whoosh or if you actually meant it. If you’re sincere, you’re still saying that a company’s making a profit by bureaucratically denying you medical care is a good thing.
And did I say that he was at any point? And is it relevant to the OP? Then answer to both is a resounding “no”.
Geez, man - calm down. I asked a question, and yes it’s relevant. Have a little too much caffeine today?
What? Did I sound pissed? I’m not pissed, just a pedant. Did you get your answer though?
If you pay any attention to people like Greenspan you would know the stock market was overvalued. It was pushed over the edge by 9/11. There will be 1 less airline in the future because of it.
As for denied health care, that is a function of your insurance policy. It HAS to have limits or it wouldn’t be insurance. :smack: You have to think past the “it isn’t fair” mentality and look at the realities of life. You can’t go to your insurer and expect a billion dollar transplant. It would bankrupt the pool of money for everybody else. Somewhere there is a line drawn because there has to be.
And don’t feed me any nonsense about profit unless you are working for free. My doctor went to college, then medical school, and then suffered through residency. I, for one, insist he get paid for his services based on his skill. The same thing applies to your HMO. If you want to discuss chartered profits, like a utility, then I’ll listen.
If the government had nationalized all health care you would still have regional HMO’s PLUS an administrative fee. Not to mention the impossible task of fighting the government when you don’t like their decision.
Yeah, you sounded pissed. Sorry if I misinterpreted.
magiver, you’re not drawing a distinction that matters between how governmental and corporate bureaucracies would handle health care, except to indirectly agree that the corporations have more incentive to cut costs, which can only be meaningfully done by cutting services. Yes, for a given budget, you’ll get worse service from an HMO simply in response to their basic incentives - and that can only get worse in a recession and stock market collapse like we have now. The current approach to cutting costs by the HMO’s is more along the line of eliminating certain customers entirely than by withholding services, as a result of many horror stories and corporate attitudes about cutting their own costs, but are we better off that way?
Tell us, since you’re on that kick, do you think you could get any worse service from your HMO than you do now? Is it any easier fighting that bureaucracy than a government one?
At no time have I argued, nor would I, against serious regulation of private health care, and can happily agree that such might be the best approach - but the Republican ideology now holding sway disagrees; branding anything of the sort as “socialized medicine”. Take up your quarrel with them, not with me.