Bill Clinton: Classic or Dud?

I hear he's also hit with the ladies...

Clinton is looking better and better every day, no? Best President we had since Truman if you ask me.

or is this wishful thinking?

Personally, for all his qualities, it comes down to this - he deliberately had people killed for electoral advantage. Ricky Ray Rector was crying out for clemency, but Bill didn't want to have a Willie Horton situation on his hands, so Ricky fried.

I'm sure you could argue that Clinton saw that he was better able to help people and put his values and those of the Democratic Party into practice as President, so Ricky was an expedient measure for a greater good. But that's how Clinton kept getting away with ever more outrageous stunts, as they all justified on the basis of something greater. Eventually, that boiled down to simple fear of the alternative.

The Labour Party use the same trick; no matter how bad we are, we're not the Tories. Sorry. Doesn't work anymore. I know you're better than the Tories and I take it as a given. It's the baseline, not the high point of ideological difference. I want to believe something positive, rather than using the same old fear of the right-wing bogeyman to, er, do much of the same things the right-wing bogeymen would have themselves done.

Even then, Clinton wasn't backwards at coming forwards when it came to indiscriminate use of US Military power on the developing world. Admittedly, I think he'd baulk at starting WW3, but again, he's only be less bad here, not 'better' than Dubya. Though if better means no WW3, then that's an important difference I'll admit.

A different question might be: what did Clinton achieve that was progressive? (*Apart from* just keeping Republicans out of the WH for 8 years: not a small achievement, and one reason, I think, why Tad and I like him so).

Judged against Dubya, he's a half-step behind FDR.

How on earth would you know that?

For wasting so many years of his presidency on scandal management, because he couldn't keep his penis in his pants, DUD.

For marring a strong 8 year span of Democratic presidency by not keeping his penis in his pants, DUD.

For fueling the 'culture wars', DUD.

What a waste of talent (his and anyone who worked for him).

I think we did not have them in the UK.

Cockburn:

The Clintons have always excited passions disproportionate to their very modest talents as creative politicians. Looking back across the Nineties at the frenzied Republican onslaughts on the couple, one can only wag one's head in bemusement at the Right's hysteria. Why did they consume so much energy in savaging a pair who had learned conclusively from their earlier upsets in Arkansas that you don't get ahead by offending the powerful, starting with the timber and chicken barons who controlled that backward and impoverished state?

To be fair on Bill and Hillary, beyond some ritual freshets of campaign rhetoric in primary season they have never advertised themselves as anything other than reliable guardians of the basic Business Round Table agenda that defines the programmatic vision of 99.9 per cent of all American politicians....

No one has yet written particularly well about the Clintons, probably because the appropriate tone--Mencken's comic savagery--was devalued by Bill's assailants on the right. Obsessed by Bush, the liberals cannot see Clinton for the light-weight scoundrel he was and have reinvented his terms in the White House as a golden age, whose possible sequel under the aegis of President Hillary Clinton they eagerly await.

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn09292007.html

had to check the date on that

Alex Cockburn doesn't like the clintons, part 235

Cockpunch

the Clintons WERE tailor-made for Mencken though.

timber and chicken barons

I know what career I want to get into. "I am a very prestigious chicken and timber baron. Carriage driver, take me to the Clintons' so they can polish my shoes."

the last time i read mencken's obit of william jennings bryan i sort of wished mencken had lived in a different era so he could've written the exact same thing - only about someone else. bryan was really a great man compared to the shitheads we get these days.

Dud: "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."

Everything else pretty classic.

oh, just classic. from an irish/european perspective, the question looks a little silly.

Dud: "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."

But wasn't this said in the context of Tim McVeigh & the Turner Diaries and Newt wanting to drown Social Security in a bathtub? After all, if you hate the Constitution but love "The Country" then you are at least a dipshit nationalist and probably a proponent of the Unitary Executive--an American Fascist.

The quote works if by "government" he means "system of government" rather than "current administration"

http://www.gopunditgo.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/clintonrage.jpg

"AH KNOW WHAT I SAID. Y'ALL ARE JUST SITTIN' THERE SMIRKIN"

But that was Chris Wallace, whose father obv. did not whip enough.

COCKBURN: POLITICIANS CORRUPT

especially the ones Good Dems come over

Good Dems = people for whom it is more important to wrest control away from the current administration than to look smart

Everything sure is gonna change forever on 1.20.09, YUP YUP

Lots of shit still being wrong = everything stays exactly the same, yup yup yup

"My dislike for him stemmed from his discrediting of something precious to me: the alliance between the anti-war and civil rights movements of which he’d been a vestigial member in the 1960s, and which was my formative politics. The way he cashed that in, lied about whether he was a draft-dodger; the way he smarmily pretended to be more in favour of civil rights than he had been at the time, the way he cheapened everything. He was nothing but a cynical, self-seeking, ambitious thug, and the realisation that this would be the closest that my class of ’68 would get to the top job gave me a terrible sickening feeling."

Ah, Hitch.

It's the only thing in that interview which didn't chilll me to the bone.

what interview

prospect mag interview

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10157

well that was depressing

i'm not sure what that even *was*

^^^ reminiscent

no way is clinton the smartest pres since jefferson

main similarity is they both banged the hired help

not sure what qualifies Jefferson as "smartest" to be honest.

He had some novel political ideas he cribbed from Montesquieu and the Greeks, was the ideal generalist, was our best president-as-writer until Lincoln, and served great wine at dinner. That's enough.

where are the shades?

main similarity is they both banged the hired help

Sally Hemmings did not receive an annual merit raise.

that walrus has not banged that dancing dude, you guys are fucking gross

they've got a nice rapport

jefferson was the best political thinker ever to be pres (except possibly madison), and certainly one of the greatest democratic philosophers who ever lived -- i think that puts him well ahead of anyone who's been president in, like, a hundred years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/26/tony-blair-biopic-peter-morgan

Quaid as Clinton? I don't think I see it.

randy or dennis?

ok, two things

i.

The Clintons have always excited passions disproportionate to their very modest talents as creative politicians. Looking back across the Nineties at the frenzied Republican onslaughts on the couple, one can only wag one's head in bemusement at the Right's hysteria. Why did they consume so much energy in savaging a pair who had learned conclusively from their earlier upsets in Arkansas that you don't get ahead by offending the powerful, starting with the timber and chicken barons who controlled that backward and impoverished state?

To be fair on Bill and Hillary, beyond some ritual freshets of campaign rhetoric in primary season they have never advertised themselves as anything other than reliable guardians of the basic Business Round Table agenda that defines the programmatic vision of 99.9 per cent of all American politicians....

No one has yet written particularly well about the Clintons, probably because the appropriate tone--Mencken's comic savagery--was devalued by Bill's assailants on the right. Obsessed by Bush, the liberals cannot see Clinton for the light-weight scoundrel he was and have reinvented his terms in the White House as a golden age, whose possible sequel under the aegis of President Hillary Clinton they eagerly await.

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn09292007.html

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 4:40 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ii.

the last time i read mencken's obit of william jennings bryan i sort of wished mencken had lived in a different era so he could've written the exact same thing - only about someone else. bryan was really a great man compared to the shitheads we get these days.

― J.D., Wednesday, October 3, 2007 1:15 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fun fact guys i am a descendant of william jennings bryan @_@

NY Times having this fucking war criminal/mass murderer write about Timothy McVeigh on the OKCity anniversary is the height of hilarity.

George Steph called him an....Elder Statesman the other Sunday.

can't imagine a worldview where bill clinton is a major part of the world's problems tbh.

not any more!

(that's why Bam's in the 1600)

it's the start of the 1990s revival ...

from a historic perspective, bill clinton was off the heezy

For . . . being proably the most intelligent president since Jefferson Classic

i believe you're forgetting about president millard fillmore!

that guy was so smart he didn't even need a vice-president.

clinton had to recruit the guy who invented the internet to be his vice-president.

Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson were also pretty damn smart fellows ... so take that attribute for whatever you think it's worth.

Hoover wasn't smart enough to keep from running for president.

I liked how effectively he trolled Republicans

otherwise what a useless fascist he was imo

not to get all gabbneb here, but i still stand behind this 7-year-old post:

This thread should be revived.
Clinton is looking better and better every day, no? Best President we had since Truman if you ask me.

― Tad (llamasfur), Wednesday, October 9, 2002 2:15 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNoN403tXU4

bill clinton was great
for me to poop on

ban cankles

RIP

his rep is downgraded b/c of the role his administration played in setting the stage for our current economic shitbin ... though that's kind of like blaming Eisenhower for everything that went wrong in Vietnam.

Ehhh not quite accurate. The existence of another depression earlier in the century should have warned Rubin, Sumners, et al against the perils of deregulation and gutting Glass-Stegall. Meanwhile not all of Eisenhower's indefensible proxy wars in Third World countries blew up in our faces.

Yeah, so back when the economy was first blowing up ppl were saying "This is Clinton's fault. He passed some housing act in 1996." Didn't he also have a republican senate & congress during this time?

for all his flaws Eisenhower is probably the best post-WWII president actually.

nafta sure was awesome for the american worker

can someone inform me on dennis perrin's views on bill clinton? i'm at the edge of my seat here

clinton as the least-worst post-truman president seems pretty reasonable to me.

Yeah, so back when the economy was first blowing up ppl were saying "This is Clinton's fault. He passed some housing act in 1996." Didn't he also have a republican senate & congress during this time?

well, i was getting at Clinton's appointments of Summers and Rubin and not the wingnut blather about lending to lower-income people.

but yes, had the Congress not been stacked to the gills w/ Republicans after 1994 then it's quite possible that Glass-Steagall wouldn't have been repealed or Phil Gramm's sneaky-ass shenanigans that kept derivatives unregulated.

... or Phil Gramm's sneaky-ass shenanigans that kept derivatives unregulated would never have been passed (i meant to say).

Bosnian blood-red

being the best prez since freaking truman isn't exactly an honor

that wd still probably be LBJ over GHWB

(both killers too, obv, tho not on Truman's savage scale)

morbs i'm betting there is no president ever who qualifies as non-war criminal, yes?

bill pullman?

i was gonna say William Henry Harrison -- b/c he was President for all of, what, a month? -- but then i remembered that he was a general during the War of 1812 and he killed lots of Indians (before he became President).

morbs:
so lbj's good deeds make up for him being 10x the war criminal that clinton was?

false premise

so then you liked GHWB?!?

Nader would have been awesome

^cosign

No Eisbaer, I don't like presidents. I find GHWB marginally less bad than the others from Nixon onward.

they might be war criminals but theyre exceptional war criminals

New PBS documentary on Bubba.

What the film doesn’t do is give viewers a more compelling reason to go back and relive that epoch. The film hits all the familiar Clinton milestones — childhood in Hot Springs, Ark.; abusive stepfather; Oxford; courtship of Hillary Rodham; the Arkansas gubernatorial races; Gennifer Flowers; Travelgate; Somalia; Whitewater; etc. — without exploring the deeper happenings that turned out to have had a more lasting impact on the world.

the fulfillment of Reagan. deserves the hottest place in hell.

so much better than Obama, tho

does Obama get the second-hottest place plus eternal jock itch?

Clinton's worst policies had so many aiders and abettors that it seems wrong to pour all the blame on his head. The great frustration is that most of these allies were repulsive folks like Phil Gramm. And when the electorate turned in 1994, Bill just grinned, turned with them and paddled with the current.

But, as much as I hated it when it happened and cannot conceive the shallowness it implies, it is true that the electorate turned hard right in sufficient numbers to put a solid right wing majority into Congress. As soon as that happened, shit was bound to follow. Bill was just the Weather Vane in Chief during his second term. All the impeachment stuff later on just shows how freaking insane the nation had become.

most ppl opposed impeachment throughout that whole thing, to the point where right-wing pundits began fretting about the imminent end of western civilization, etc.

Didion's great "Vichy Washington" is the elegy for that sad era.

most people were opposed to the impeachment, but an awful lot of the pundit class (and not just the usual right-wing suspects) supported it.

USA pundits tend to nurture their sense of profound personal gravitas, and anything that might be construed as condoning the Lewinsky affair would go against that basic instinct.

It's on.

^^ Sounds like what they would whisper in the halls before a rumble.

What I figure a gr8080 presidency would look like:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/ht_bill_clinton_porn_stars_lpl_120524_wblog.jpg

Excerpt from Sean Strub's new book on Clinton's lousy AIDS policies:

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/01/bill_clintons_lgbt_shame_where_was_he_then/

not sure why more than doubling funding for aids/hiv research or more than tripling funding for aids/hiv care or establishing a permanent office of aids research at the nih is 'lousy' but whatever

The Clinton administration sabotaged HIV prevention and treatment efforts in other ways. One concerned intellectual property rights controlling the use of generic medications around the world. Near the end of Clinton’s presidency, we learned from a leaked State Department memo that former vice president Al Gore had exerted pressure on South Africa to rescind legislation allowing use of generic anti-retrovirals at a vastly lower cost, rather than paying U.S. companies their huge markups. Gore’s senior campaign staff included several people who had been lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry.

mere bag o' shells to Captain Save-a-Bubbas who can't read, apparently

"awesome communicator"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/george-w-bush-bill-clinton-joke-around-like-old-buddies-1.2759571

whatever it takes to derail the '16 Express

http://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971

Will his tombstone say "Felt your Pain?"

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/13/bill_clintons_odious_presidency_thomas_frank_on_the_real_history_of_the_90s/

dud

More often than not, the ex-president finds himself staying in hotels with nothing resembling a presidential suite; he typically overnights in Holiday Inn Expresses and Quality Inns. His aides say he's the least prissy member of his small traveling party—caring only that his shower has good water pressure and that the TV has premium cable so that he might watch San Andreas or one of the Fast & Furious movies before he drifts off to sleep. When he wakes, he often makes coffee for himself in his room.

http://www.gq.com/story/bill-clinton-health-trump-and-hillary

insert hooker joke here

seriously though, Quality Inn is the way to go, Bill OTM there

When he wakes, he often makes coffee for himself in his room.

well who wouldn't

they put it right there

I never use the in-room coffee machine

you're never gonna be president with a prima donna attitude like that

whatever it takes to derail the '16 Express
http://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 23, 2015 1:50 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They all seem so nice--especially Dershowitz

the inexplicable lib love for him is gonna get a severe test when he gets Trump elected. Hope for a fatal stroke before Labor Day.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/05/politics/bill-clinton-bernie-sanders-protesters/index.html

"inexplicable Dem love for him" you mean. No liberal I know does.

Is this where exiles from the vile election thread gather?

well, based on the author of the revive, it's where vile exiles of the election thread gather. vexiles, if you will.

and morbs’s strawman has got to be reaching wicker-man size by now; i’m surprised he can fit it in his brain

DUD

Saying "blue lives matter" on stage tonight following the mothers who spoke, what a piece of shit.

Did he use that phrase?

p sure he did, the quote was a little weird and I need to watch it again, but he also made it sound like african american men needed to make cops feel safe, if I heard correctly

directly before that he said something about how African Americans feeling safe from the cops so whatever, give him a pass

Ok, wait sorry he didn't actually use the phrase. He said:

"If you're a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where no one's afraid to walk outside, including the people who wear blue to protect our future."

Not quite as bad but I still do not like it. There was also some other weird "lives matter" moment but it was another confusing quote, will try to find it.

Some CNN panelist afterward was talking about how "important" it was that Bill reminded America that Hilary was once an "object of desire." Felt like this was the worst take of the night.

It just came off kind of like he was saying that young African Americans should help make the cops feel safer.

I'm also less inclined to give him a pass on his "lives matter" stuff because of that speech from earlier in the campaign.

He's out of touch, which is why we haven't seen him much on the campaign trail

he's clearly not well

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/135553/bill-clinton-took-part-dnc-speech-memoir

Bill did his job with that speech to the convention about Hillary. You don't have to like his approach to politics to know he is a master of bringing people along to the mindset he wants them to adopt. His mastery of the tools of rhetoric and oratory are evident to anyone who understands those tools.

Lots of backlash from Muslim Americans on Twitter about the 'if you are Muslim and love America and freedom we want you to stay here' comments as well.

Yeah that was slippery and gross as well, same as the statement about African Americans but worse

this is not his era. he is a 70 year old center-right politician from arkansas.

It felt like he was making these really awkward attempts to signal center-right leaning voters that he has their concerns at heart while also sort of sounding like he was taking the liberal position, and it didn't seem to me like it was working in either direction.

is it just me or is "change maker" a really clunky and awful phrase to keep using in a speech?

Not just you. I felt the same way, strongly.

he was trying to shake loose the perception of her as the "establishment" candidate

Saying she's "one of the best change makers" makes me picture her at a cash register deftly flipping through bills and tossing out coins.

she would be rad at that i am sure, if overqualified

"agent of change" would have been 10x more clunky

changeling

Why is "she makes change" a good theme at all for tying together all these otherwise somewhat disparate stories?

yeah i was really surprised "changemaker" was like the headline noun.

changeifyer

maybe could have just said she changes things and done a huge long list of achievements built around repeating the word "change", until everyone just started chanting "change", "change", "change" for a while then eventually stopped.

Should just had John Waite run out and tear the roof down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsL-3fNOt0I

She's a getter doner. Get r done.

It just came off kind of like he was saying that young African Americans should help make the cops feel safer.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Tuesday, July 26, 2016 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It came off to me like he knows exactly how the media works and knew that if he didn't acknowledge police murders that's all people would be talking about today.

yep

Not everyone appreciated the former president’s lingering over his early attraction to the 23-year-old Hillary Rodham. Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host,called it “shocking and rude,” and suggested it diminished Mrs. Clinton’s many accomplishments.

“It was a controversial way to start, honestly, talking about the girl, a girl, leading with this long story about him being attracted to an unnamed girl and thinking about whether he was starting something he couldn’t finish, building her whole political story, for the whole first half of the speech around her marriage to him,” Ms. Maddow said.

But Mr. Clinton clearly wanted to tell Mrs. Clinton’s story through the lens of their courtship and 40-year marriage.

This was an audacious strategy, given that their marriage is one of the most complicated and contentious in modern politics. One of his fiercest declarations — “she will never quit when the going gets tough, she will never quit on you” — could not help but conjure up his history of infidelities. In doing so, he humanized a marriage that has baffled many Americans while also reminding people of his philandering and her compromises.

the hilliad will go down near the top all-time in the annals of first gentlemen nomination speeches i would bet. i didn't know he still had it in him, and judging by those shaking hands there may not be much left. but you go billy boy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bill-clintons-nearly-18-million-job-as-honorary-chancellor-of-a-for-profit-college/2016/09/05/8496db42-655b-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html

poor guy, clearly not well

I've admittedly been feeling a particular kind of disillusioned rage about Bill Clinton lately that can come only from realizing that your parents' basis for loving a politician, and presenting him to you as a great and benevolent figure, boiled down to being of the same generation, being in awe of his charisma, and sharing an enjoyment of Fleetwood Mac. This hollow, opportunistic fucking rapist is the political hero of my parents' generation and it just speaks to how empty our politics got in the past several decades.

tbh he probably only liked one Fleetwood Mac tune

Not going to stan for this education factory mogul but the article says his company "has purchased financially struggling colleges and vocational schools and improved management while boosting profits through expanding enrollment." Which doesn't exactly make him Snidely Whiplash?

"Laureate’s campuses are fully accredited and offer graduating students valid diplomas. Compared with other universities, including its for-profit competitors, Laureate has a relatively low percentage of students who default on their loans, seen as an indicator of student financial success after graduation. A 2012 Senate report on for-profit colleges said that Laureate’s flagship U.S. school, Walden University, was the best of 30 campuses studied and that students there generally 'fared well.'"

Annnnd soooo... ??

Hang on are these reporters insinuating that a corporation has secured a Big Name to sit on their board act as honorary chancellor do next to nothing in order to boost its profile???

Laureate have their issues but they are not egregiously awful. The main problems are one-size-fits-all education programmes and limited teacher engagement. They're better than some others in the sector. Getting Clinton in to sprinkle stardust on generic factory learning is probably more undignified than corrupt - particularly in comparison to Blair advising dictators on post-massacre reputation management.

A corporation whose revenue is mostly international getting the husband of the secretary of state to sit on the board though -- their main gig is taking over colleges in Latin America.

when Clinton went to Azerbaijan to set up bent megabucks mineral deals and sprinkle some of that stardust on crooked despot Aliyev, Hilary was abusing her position. I know it is probably old but I just find it incredible how shamelessly bent they are and how they keep getting away with it.

I've admittedly been feeling a particular kind of disillusioned rage about Bill Clinton lately that can come only from realizing that your parents' basis for loving a politician, and presenting him to you as a great and benevolent figure, boiled down to being of the same generation, being in awe of his charisma, and sharing an enjoyment of Fleetwood Mac. This hollow, opportunistic fucking rapist is the political hero of my parents' generation and it just speaks to how empty our politics got in the past several decades.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, September 6, 2016 10:20 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, though i had the exact opposite experience: my parents loathed Clinton, and i never really understood why until fairly recently. so he committed perjury about a blowjob, so what? the real stuff just isn't as sexy... they're shamelessly opportunistic and have made a lot of money for career politicians. politicians don't make a super good living. the thing that stuck with me was the hypocrisy of accepting millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia for the Clinton Foundation.

AND hillary's silencing of bill's mistresses/victims...

Azerbaijan is a much more clear cut example of bad practice imo.

The State Dept has a negligible role in influencing foreign higher education policy AFAIK. Laureate's ability to throw money into investment is the critical factor in why they have been able to expand so rapidly. It hasn't protected them from criticism either.

I detest him and his oleaginous un-charm. I don't care about "liking" or "trusting" presidents, but Obama's coolness and indifference to both things is his best trait as prez.

The thing about the Clinton Foundation is that in order for there to be "corruption" there, there has to be a basis to believe that there's anything being done with the money other than charity. Getting a donation from Saudi Arabia and using it to build schools or buy AIDS medications or whatever doesn't exactly reek. But the info about the foundation is all over the map, even ignoring right wing sources, from the Sunlight Foundation claiming it is a "slush fund" for the Clintons, to other articles saying their percentage of spending on legit charity is relatively high, to claims about boondoggle spending in Haiti going to connected contractors and not actually benefitting anyone.

I think what makes me most uncomfortable with the Clintons is the seemingly constant blurring of the lines between the foundation and global initiative and the Clinton's political activities and their friends' business activities, with so many of the same people of their circle involved with all of the above. For example Huma Abedin simultaneously having a part-time role with Clinton at State while also getting a salary from the Clinton Foundation, working for Douglas Band's consulting company AND working as Hillary Clinton's personal assistant.

yet she wasn't being paid a salary + bennies to stay married to Weiner. Weird.

Obama's coolness and indifference to both things is his best trait as prez.

agreed

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Croc0idVIAAbCMO.jpg

Same for the Gates Foundation. I don't have much of an issue with companies like Laureate offering a commercial alternative to established domestic universities but it gets pretty fishy when corporate charity promotes the privatisation of primary education in the guise of benevolence, like with Bridge.

Xps

he needs a cigarette in his right hand imo

in love with the all black everything w/ white shoes look. been doing that for years myself

yet she wasn't being paid a salary + bennies to stay married to Weiner. Weird.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 6, 2016 11:47 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when you have one really bad job, the other jobs seem a little better

that obama photo showed up in my timeline with the caption "listens to Skepta once"

lol i saw "Goes to Berghain once" and "Obama looking like a guy that only texts you after 2am"

@tinyrevolution
It's hard to believe now, but long long ago Bill Clinton was considered to be good at politics

http://nypost.com/2016/10/04/bill-clinton-slams-obamacare-as-craziest-thing-in-the-world/

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a49240/bill-clinton-obamacare/

You beat me to it.

to be honest, he's not entirely wrong. There's a gap where you get fucked pretty hard by lack of subsidy and the price increases of healthcare plans. I'm not sure it effects that many people but it kills me.

Third year in a row of paying $4500ish for zero benefit as a small business owner or ~12% of my take-home each year. Each year I've had a $5500 deductible and used a couple hundred of it. As a small business owner, the idea that it protects me from major health events is questionable - if I'm in the hospital or out of work for more than a few days I'm fucked no matter what. Good luck to the hospital getting me to pay $5500 or $55000. I could save $50/month for an even more useless bronze plan but that seems even more insane.

I think I'm going to roll the dice next year and pay the penalty. It makes more sense to put the excess (3400ish) into a Roth IRA so that I have some 'retirement' savings at the ages where medical issues become more likely.

he is definitely not entirely wrong. He's describing my situation (employer plan costs have skyrocketed on all three fronts -- premiums, co-pays and deductible), and a lot of people I know on exchange plans can't really afford to use them. MY PORTION of my employer plan is now something like $1200/month for my family, with $50/$70 copays and I think a $4000 deductible that I so far have barely touched.

What Bill is doing politically is another question. Maybe he's trying to signal to people fed up with Obamacare, but it's not clear what he's signaling since Hillary is basically campaigning on just tweaking/improving Obamacare.

oh, even Pierce says he's mostly right.

dumb politics tho -- "craziest thing ever" soundbite -- and that's all that matters.

i doubt the Trumpies have the wherewithal to exploit it, however

Just to be fair, the original ACA bill anticipated that there would be an initial surge of sick people buying insurance while the healthier people would enter the system more slowly until the tax penalties for non-participation grew enough to make it too painful to refuse to buy insurance. To offset this predictable problem the ACA projected subsidies to the insurance companies, similar to its subsidies to states for their new Medicaid recipients.

The difficulty has been that subsequent republican-controlled Congresses have deliberately underfunded those subsidies by a large amount, so that the insurance companies, which had set their pricing according to the original subsidies, have been forced to make up the shortfall by raising premiums rapidly. This makes the system unstable, allowing the Republicans to point at the problems they've caused and say the ACA is a disaster.

Clinton is doing an impression of the Clinton from the Simpson where Kodos takes over his body pic.twitter.com/dZQHu49k0F

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 4, 2017

to be clear this means nothing. Really read it and soak in how wholly vacuous and silly this is. pic.twitter.com/Qgh5uCRVzz

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 4, 2017

Holy shit was that colbert interview a joke (unsurprisingly). hearing clinton support the me too movement felt smug af

Highly recommend the Chapo discussion of his new "spy thriller," just unreal

Nice will do

Didn't want to bring this up in the SCOTUS or politics thread because they don't deserve to be derailed, but there are a lot of weird resonances between the Kavanaugh hearings and Clinton, particularly because Kavanaugh was involved in pursuing Clinton in one of the most nakedly cynical political maneuvers in modern memory, and yet at the same time, Clinton is probably a rapist and democrats gave him a complete pass at the time and most decidedly did not "believe women," and he's never been forced to reckon with any of that.

The one thing I will say is that I think the democrats would react very differently to Clinton if it were today, whereas the Republicans have not evolved one bit.

democrats gave him a complete pass at the time

you mean Democrats like Joe Lieberman?

New series of Slow Burn seems even-handed and is intriguing for those of us perhaps too young to dig what was happening at the time. And like the Nixon series, lots of resonances with what's happening today.

whoah I take that back I thought Lieberman had been the lone Dem "guilty" vote in the Senate but apparently I was wrong. huh.

I'm also thinking of the complete failure to take Broadrick seriously. I don't remember who specifically went on the record about it in terms of politicians, but certainly in liberal/democratic circles in general my memory is that she was dismissed.

I don't entirely disagree with your analysis but I think it's expressed in maybe overly dramatic terms. He did have *some* reckoning with it - I mean he was impeached and it's haunted his career ever since, including his wife's career, and he got called out on it by a sitting Senator fairly recently for ex. It's true he's not as much of a pariah in the Democratic party as he probably should be. I don't know who in the party genuinely likes him at this point, he's clearly become an albatross as the years have passed, and yet they can't seem to fully reject his "star-power" or whatever.

I mean, he's not just "not a pariah," he was a major power broker in the party at least until fairly recently -- hard to say whether it was the Obama victory or the Trump victory that finally diminished his status, but it continued well after he was president. People of my parents' generation still seem to carry the idea that he was wrongfully accused.

Hillary's loss severely damaged her and Bill's standing in the party. And trends in the party are moving very far away from their policies and legacies so I don't think there's going to be any comeback either. Probably some handwringing when they die about their squandered potential.

People of my parents' generation still seem to carry the idea that he was wrongfully accused.

I don't think this is the case w my parents but yeah ugh boomers

oh look

https://www.yahoo.com/news/juanita-broaddrick-glad-believe-her-024811948.html

So are you saying that means it didn't happen or that it doesn't matter because she's a bad person.

not saying either of those things? it just popped up in my newsfeed, so you're not the only one seeing the parallels/differences

Broaddrick's story strikes me as extremely credible fwiw

at the same time, her position about Dr. Ford is a mixture of predictable and gross

yeah I think it's gross too but I found her story very credible when I finally gave it a chance a few years ago. And his pattern of behavior is supported by other women.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/white-house-government-shutdown.html

Lengthy shutdowns can be disastrous for the White House for other reasons.

The last time a shutdown went on for this long, President Bill Clinton put himself on the long road to impeachment when he courted a young intern named Monica Lewinsky in an empty corner of the West Wing. Nonessential employees had been sent home, unpaid interns were brought in to work, and the rest is bitter history.

The Obama administration barred interns from coming to work during a shutdown, and the Trump White House’s new class of interns has not yet started, according to a senior official.

omg

Here’s a provocative alternate reality that, with the benefit of time, is just starting to come into focus: All those joyful Democrats who tearfully celebrated the generation-shifting results of the 1992 election would likely be better off today if Bill Clinton had lost and George H. W. Bush had been reelected.

...BEFORE WE GET TO WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, let’s review what actually was. We’ll start with a pop quiz for Democrats: Name the three most important domestic achievements of the Clinton administration.

Chances are you’ll say a booming economy — the byproduct of responsible financial stewardship that converted record budget deficits into healthy surpluses. If you lean centrist or buy into pollster sabermetrics, you might mention welfare reform, which finally neutered the devastating if cynical tactic Republicans had used to paint their Democratic opponents as defenders of lazy “welfare queens.” Or maybe you’ll cite the assault weapons ban of 1994, a high-water mark for gun control that no pol of that persuasion has managed to come close to since, despite the numbing frequency of mass shootings.

Follow-up question: Which achievements from the Clinton years still hold up today?

Do you need more time?

I tried this exercise with several presidential historians and public policy pros, and the most common answer turned out to be “very little.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2018/07/10/bill-clinton-had-never-been-president-democrats-would-better-off-today/qsYmCo7ZEYpQr8fOZSkRLM/story.html

even better than no Clinton: no Clintonism.

I don't know if a Poppy Bush reelection or Dole beating Clinton would have, respectively, stymied the Rush-infused growth of alternative conservative media and moderated the party's excesses. Some kind of Democratic overcorrection to Reaganism was preordained.

That was a good read, but even assuming a Dem-controlled Senate I don't doubt Poppy would've gotten some Thomas-esque cranks onto federal courts, if only to appease the right wing; eight years of Clinton appointing judges was a good thing.

All those joyful Democrats who tearfully celebrated the generation-shifting results of the 1992 election

The euphoria of displacing Reagan's successor definitely went to people's heads. I remember listening to a call-in the local community-owned volunteer-run lefty radio station (KBOO) on the night of the election and hearing all the callers speculating about what marvels would soon be delivered by our new "progressive" president. For the first and last time in my life I called in to a talk show -- to say on-air that while Clinton would certainly be an improvement over Reagan, the USA had never elected a truly progressive president, hadn't now, and if they expected him to push hard for a left-progressive agenda that Clinton would soon disappoint them.

The party still exists in the shadow of Reagan and the Clintons. Any real rebuilding work is only just starting, if it is to succeed at all.

A Bush win in 92 election is a weird thing to fantasize about. The incumbent President only got 37% of the vote.

there's a lot of debate over how much perot affected the outcome of that election but i think it's fair to assume bush wouldn't have done as badly (at least) without him in the race.

was there a more progressive democrat who could plausibly have been elected in 1992? (or 1996, assuming a second term for bush.)

(aimless -- surely FDR qualifies as a progressive president?)

i remember Clinton's election pretty clearly and I remember the elation as well, to feel like we'd thrown off the mantle of Reaganism finally. Obv. in retrospect that seems suspect but at the time it felt like something. Much in the same way that it felt like something when Obama was elected, and now in retrospect we have to accept that there was still a rapid expansion of executive power, broad misuse of FISA and the patriot act, and drone bombings. Presidential elections seem to only ever get incremental progressive gains, I don't know why, when you can clearly go very far down the fucking toilet with ease as the Trump administration has demonstrated.

FDR qualifies as a progressive president?

FDR was a non-ideological pragmatist faced with a nation in an existential crisis. He was wiling to try radical new ideas, only because the old ideas had failed catastrophically. As one of his top advisors (I forget who) complained, FDR's Brain Trust was desperately trying to save capitalism, but the capitalists hated them intensely.

and FDR wanted to balance the budget AND do Keynesian spending stuff

and nuke people and lock up the japanese.

truly a renaissance man

"and nuke people" was the guy who came after him, to be fair

the development vs the use

i tend to think Roosevelt would've used it as well

the actual Progressive movement gave us eugenics and prohibition. nukes seem very progressive in that sense

there's a lot of debate over how much perot affected the outcome of that election but i think it's fair to assume bush wouldn't have done as badly (at least) without him in the race.

I think there's consensus, though, that Clinton would have won with or without Perot. If you throw Perot's 19,743,821 votes back into the mix, Clinton would have only needed a little over 35% of them to win the popular vote.

Which doesn't, admittedly, take into account: 1) the electoral college, 2) how Perot affected the debates (quite a lot, at least one of them), and 3) the fact that Perot hated Bush and zeroed in on him the whole way.

But I assume Clinton would have won a plurality of Perot's votes--who were mostly, as I remember it, people angry at Bush for breaking his tax pledge and various other things--making at least the first point moot.

Perot's spoiler effect was essentially nil - he ended up drawing support evenly from each candidate.

Everyone would have used nukes

Not long after Clinton unpacked his things in Chappaqua, his successor was presiding over a sputtering economy, increased poverty, and yawning deficits.

I feel like there was an important historical event that's being elided there... can't quite put my finger on it....

For whatever it's worth, in 1996 when Perot's votes dropped from 19% to 8% - the Republican vote went from 37% to 40%, Clinton's vote went from 43% to 49%.

^^^ exactly

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ross-perot-myth/

maybe he'll end up in prison. that'd be p cool.

A friend and I were talking about the convention yesterday: going to take a wild guess that WJC is kept well hidden from view this year.

and what of Lucretia?

there might be a video tribute to Epstein and Weinstein if Biden's the nominee, ya never know

The woman from the bombastic Blood, Sweat & Tears song? I don't know.

Bombastic Rodham

Don't forget the time his spouse met personally with Putin at his private compound before taking $500,000 for a speech to Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Oh, wait, that was the Clintons. https://t.co/NMwY76eJF5

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 23, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/YsfBoQf.png

I see how this is generated -
https://www.kapwing.com/explore/bill-clinton-album-challenge-meme-template

- but where does it originate? Did he pose with actual LPs originally - when, and what were they?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bill-clinton-swag

According to this the original is a photoshop to begin with (from an onion piece from 1999!) so no, he never posed with any records

In the onion article they are all Joan Jett lps

The image definitely has that janky onion photoshop feel

Yes. In fact I originally thought it was fake - thanks for confirmation.