Medved is wrong, IMHO, the levels of irrational hatred were about equal for both (and I am especially talking about this for Bush before the Iraq war). However, your letter doesn’t prove it. You might as well have titled this thread “Here’s a list of shit that Bush did that I didn’t like.” Your letter’s relevance to Medved’s argument is tangential at best.
Well, Fang, care to give me the letter for Clinton that balances my letter for Bush? Or is any list equal to any other list, and the fact that yours will have to spend a whole lot of time talking about blowjobs be beside the point?
Medved didn’t really make much of an argument. He simply asserted that hatred for Bush was worse, period. Then he invited Bush haters to call up and spew, which he then held up as proof. It wasn’t very complex.
Cite please?
Here are the Russell 3000 numbers, which aren’t a perfect measure of total market capitalization, but can give you a pretty good idea.
Date Index Cap (trillion US$)
2000.01 761.73 15.5
2000.02 767.72 15.6
2000.03 826.03 16.8
2000.04 797.06 16.2
2000.05 773.99 15.7
2000.06 796.44 16.2
2000.07 781.09 15.9
2000.08 838.61 17.0
2000.09 799.68 16.2
2000.10 788.02 16.0
2000.11 714.47 14.5
2000.12 725.75 14.7
2001.01 749.98 15.2
2001.02 680.52 13.8
2001.03 635.67 12.9
2001.04 686.12 13.9
2001.05 690.63 14.0
2001.06 678.2 13.8
2001.07 665.49 13.5
2001.08 625.26 12.7
2001.09 569.53 11.6
2001.10 582.22 11.8
2001.11 626.15 12.7
2001.12 634.16 12.9
2002.01 625.6 12.7
2002.02 611.89 12.4
2002.03 638.15 13.0
2002.04 608.62 12.4
2002.05 596.29 12.1
2002.06 552.65 11.2
2002.07 508.12 10.3
2002.08 509.55 10.3
2002.09 455.41 9.2
2002.10 490.95 10.0
2002.11 519.75 10.6
2002.12 489.49 9.9
2003.01 476.91 9.7
2003.02 468.15 9.5
2003.03 472.39 9.6
2003.04 510.33 10.4
2003.05 540.22 11.0
2003.06 546.74 11.1
2003.07 558.52 11.3
2003.08 570.02 11.6
Capitalization peaks at $17.0T in August 2000. By January 2001, it’s down to $15.2T, a drop of $1.8T. February 2003 marked the low point of $9.5T, a drop from the peak of $7.5T. Since then, it’s recovered to $11.6T.
So it looks like, from the peak to now, $1.8T drop pre-Bush, $3.6T post-Bush.
Uh … Stoid, even if we did agree. I can’t see what there is to factually debate.
Airman Doors, while it’s obvious that Stoid (and others) hate Bush, he is in office now.
Whether you like him or not (and I voted for him), you have to accept that the current President will get some blame for the current condition of the country (and the world).
People who hate Clinton have had three years to ‘let it go’.
And, Stoid, here’s another interesting item: regarding Medved’s claim that it was only people out of power who were criticizing Clinton: baloney.
Tom Delay publicly accused Clinton of bombing Kosovo to distract from his impeachment:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2079324
And we needn’t get into how Rush Limbaugh spent hours every day blaming Clinton for everything back to the Civil War.
It amazes me how people like Medved can remember so selectively in trying to martyr themselves.
Hentor the Barbarian:
Are you perhaps thinking of the time a military officer at a base in the South stated, “If Clinton comes here, he’s dead?” It was during the time Clinton was trying to allow gays into the military, and was widely reported at the time, although I could only google this cite today.
Sigh. Try again:
September 2002 marked the low point of $9.2T, a drop from the peak of $7.8T.
So is Bush is just as hated or more so than Clinton? Where’s the impeachment then?
Seems like I might have been combining the two. So, have there been similar public statements implying threats of death for Bush? Is a threat of death a good indicator of hatred?
Stoid is at least consistent. She gives credit to Clinton for a strong economy that began before he was elected, and blames Bush for an economic downturn that began before he was elected.
You characterize Clinton’s years as those of “peace and prosperity”. By “peace”, I assume you mean bombing Iraq, Somalia, and Kosovo. By “prosperity”, I assume you mean “none of Clinton’s economic policies (increasing the deficit, preventing welfare reform, a federal takeover of health care) were implemented”.
I would mention the dominant characteristic of the Clinton administration, not as peace or prosperity, but lies. You mentioned the lies about adultery (after denying for years that oral sex is sex), but did not mention the lies about Craig Livingstone, sexual harassment, campaign fund-raising, subpoenaed documents, Iraq, Filegate, Travelgate, etc., etc.
At least on the SDMB, irrational Bush-haters must outnumber irrational Clinton-haters by dozens to one.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan’s partial list, though much of it is the sort of shenanigans common to virtually any Administration, is a good reminder that the disgust towards/opposition to Clinton stemmed from far more than his lying under oath about a White House peccadillo. The “forgetfulness” of his defenders is coming to match that of the Nixon apologists who still refer to the Watergate scandal as though it was nothing more than covering up an office break-in.
“At least on the SDMB, irrational Bush-haters must outnumber irrational Clinton-haters by dozens to one.” More like 2 or 3 to 1. But remember who’s in office now (and who has supplied plenty of fuel for hatred).
The point of all this should be that irrational hate-spewing is largely ineffective and just leads to more of the same from semi-loonies on the other side. Medved probably had in mind the sort of endless yammering about Bush’s supposed stupidity, Nazi behavior etc. that you can find coming from the same sort of people that years before were speculating about Clinton’s drug and financial deals, murders in Arkansas and so on.
Give it a rest.
If you can’t make hay out of Bush’s policies, you’re just not trying hard enough.
bri:
You didn’t come back to the Estrada thread to defend your silly statements, and now you’re taking 'em here? C’mon.
Excellent point.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Shodan *
Not exactly. I give credit to Clinton for smart fiscal policy that helped grow and maintain the economic boom, and I blame Bush for insane fiscal policy that grows and maintains the economic downturn. Presidents don’t have everything to do with it, but they certainly don’t have NOTHING to do with it.
You and I both know the distinctions between these incidents and Iraq, and I’m not going to let you drag me into that. I do not consider any and all uses of American force to be war, unacceptable or equivalent, and I doubt you do either.
That’s because none of these things strikes me as anything particularly significant. Certainly not anything like the lies told by GW&Co.
Please keep in mind when you make your weak little lists of inflated and unproved accusations, that despit being under the most powerful and hate-motivated microscope that any president has ever had to endure, for almost the entirety of both his terms, pretty much nothing of any weight was ever unearthed against Clinton or his administration. Certainly nothing like Iran Contra, legacy of the most beloved Republican president of the last century.
My statements weren’t silly. You’d have to be a little more specific than a drive by insult, but maybe that’s too much for you?
The other day a judge, (no I don’t know where or who…a state judge though, I think I read it on WSJ online) said that “when choosing between the law and his conscience, he’d go with his conscience.” That in a nutshell is judicial activism.
You then when on and spouted some nonsense about how at the turn of the last century (100 years ago) there was CONSERVATIVE activism. Um…so what? You never said what your point was.
Besides, what in my above writing, did you disagree with? Was Estrada not claimed to be “highly qualified” by the left leaning ABA? Is that a silly statement even though it’s true? Who appointed you arbiter of “silly (but true) statements”. I bet you’re a fat ugly bitch! There, no how’s that for drive by insults?
Come on back to the Estrada thread, stop hijacking this one, and answer my questions over there.
Nice try. First of all, I happened to like Clinton better than I like Bush. So I’m afraid I wouldn’t be the best person to give you a list on that. But second, you missed the point. I was trying to say that your letter did not actually counter the argument that Medved was making. Medved’s argument was “The level of irrational hatred for Bush is higher than the level of irrational hatred for Clinton was.” If you were trying to refute Medved’s argument, you could have argued “This is how I would measure the level of irrational hatred for Clinton, this is how I would apply the same measure to Bush, and thus you can see that Clinton’s is greater than/equal to Bush’s.” That would have been an argument, not a rant.
**
Looks like you took the bait.
"By “prosperity”, I assume you mean “none of Clinton’s economic policies (increasing the deficit, preventing welfare reform, a federal takeover of health care) were implemented”. "
This is false. Clinton increased taxes in1993 and restrained military spending and both had a major impact on the reduced deficits during his administration. This in turn led to lower interest rates which increased investment and growth. It’s also important to note that the economy really took off in terms of productivity growth only in the mid-90’s. Clinton also took political risks for free trade (especially NAFTA) something which Bush has conspicuously failed to do. His team also helped prevent total disaster during the financial crises in Mexico and East Asia. There were also a number of smaller initiatives like the expansion of EITC which cumulatively have had a fairly significant impact.
I don’t know what the argument here is. Everyone knows that “Your partisan hacks hate my favorite president more than my partisan hacks hate your favorite president”. It’s self evident.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Stoid *
**And I respond…
He also told one caller that they were “imagining” things when they said that this administration tries to characterize dissent as America-hating or unpatriotic.
Do you happen to have a cite for this claim? Who in this administration has called anyone “unpatriotic?”