What has Clinton done while in Office that you disagree with?

While I am pretty young (24) I have my opinions of who was the best and worst presidents that I can remember during my lifetime. I don't need to tell you who I think the worst is. The Best would have to be Clinton. Yes I was born during Carter, but I don't remember him as President. Anyways, I have two things that Clinton did as president that I disagree with.

1. NAFTA-While this is not as bad as other free trade agreements, it does allow for outsourcing to Mexico.

2. The Telecommunications Act of 1996-This allowed media conglamerates like Clear Channel to take over radio and T.V.

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and his undeclared war against Iraq and the Iraqi people.

Clinton was too chicken shit to say "NO" to the military.

Ms. Lewinsky.

That really screwed us up for a while.

It was about republican witchhunts and them waisting time and money that could have been spent doing better things.

I have had that debate with people at least a thousand times. It wasn't about sex. It was about the fact that Clinton misused his power, and COMMITTED a FELONY. If Clinton had come out and said, "Hey, Hillary was out of town and this intern was constantly after me. I got weak, and hey it such and such happened." I would have had no problem with his mistake. To committ a felony to defend it is where he lost me.

I see that you were a disruptor. You criticize Clinton for lying, but you just signed an online agreement not to be a disruptor, but you were one.

Just goes to show you what a bunch of hypocritical liars republicans are.

Just Newt Gingrich and all of the fascists on the house judiciary committee who wanted to take a shot at him.

1) Hell yes I inhaled, and I enjoyed it!

2) Hell yes Monica swallows, and she enjoyed it!

And he should have added "Now mind your own fucking personal lives and stay out of mine" to both statements.

And I didn't care for NAFTA or the Telecommunications Act either.

And he and Hillary should have pushed harder for health care reform. If the 'Pukes didn't like their idea, force 'em to the table and get something worked out.

Somalia

What about that do you disagree with?

Pinning the whole thing on Bush Sr. is about as true as Pinning it all on Clinton.

Bush did send the Marines to intervine, only after the UN's urging due to the failure of their original peacekeeping mission (big suprise). Bush did send in the 1st Marine Division in December of 92, However the Clinton Admin sent in The Special Forces the following summer and the mission shifted from one of Humanitarian support to that of a manhunt for Aidid. This was only after Pakistani troops were massacred by Somalian thugs - these pakistanis were part of the same UN-led mission that Bush sent troops in under.

A lot of people disagreed with Clinton's action of sending in 450 special forces troops to do a mission that was much more dangerous and ultimately costly than the one charged to the 25,000 US Marines. Especially given taht 4 days after the firefight Clinton started withdrawing troops leaving nothing accomplished.

Clinton just had to deal with cleaning up his crap.

The thing that I didn't like about Clinton was the bombing campaign in Kosovo. Yes it ended that war earlier, but he had allies and enemies bombed alike.

PB

he delayed too long in intervening. He wouldn't send in ground troops, so had to rely on bombing -- which means hitting nonmiscreants along with miscreants. But I supported, and support, the bombing -- this is one on which I always disagreed with Michael Moore.

OBL organized the attacks on our troops, or so says the mainstream media.

Clinton was smart enough to pull out before it got real ugly. However he still sucks.

IIRC the Canada-US FTA was Reagan, NAFTA was negotiated under Bush I then implemented during the Clinton era.

It really pissed off the GOP because Clinton had stolen their plan and got it passed.

Clinton may have seen it through, but ..

at the NAFTA signing ceremony September 1993.

http://www.drpsychotic.com/godandcountry/speeches/clinton_nafta_speech.html

Thanks to President Clinton's aggressive pushing of the treaty, with Vice-president Al Gore serving as point-man, including a memorable debate with Ross Perot on the Larry King show, NAFTA was ratified by the Congress.

The House voted 234-200. Yes votes were 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. The Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 61-38 with 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats voting yes.

The most vocal opposition to the treaty came from Perot (giant sucking sound will be our jobs moving to Mexico), labor unions, and Ralph Nader. Thanks to Republican support, President Clinton was able to overcome the opposition from traditional Democrats.

treaties don't take effect until they are ratified by the congress, and President Bush couldn't get any Democratic support to ratify it. That took President Clinton's aggressive pushing.

NAFTA was negotiated by Bush but signed by Clinton. Clinton was a vocal supporter of it.

The pukes were real upset when Clinton sold out the working class, :eyes:.

Here's what I liked:

hands off the net. If he and his administration hadn't taken the measures they did to keep it open and free of regulation, the BFEE & other finite players* would have a much easier time going for a clampdown on information distribution.

*see James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

And as far as healthcare goes, put yourself in his position. His healthcare bill failed with a democratic congress. Could you imagine reintroducing that bill and trying to negotiate it with Newt Gingrich?

Made the US terrorists

Welfare Reform is killing people, especially single mothers in high unemployment areas. Their children are being placed in foster care and the jobs they have to take are abysmal with no heralth care. It is virtual slavery much like sharecropping further destroying inner city families.


Finally, his peccadilloes were simply awful for the Democratic party and for Gore.

His prepresidential support of the iran-contras by letting bush use the arkansas mena airport for drug and gun smuggling in violation of US laws (with Bush-CIA cover for crimes) is a big issue with me ansd is why I do not trust him, his sponsor, the Arkansan Stephens Group, or their other sponsorees Bush and Clark.

Otherwise I liked him a lot dammit.

Having said that, he was far better than the alternative and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for blocking the loons in Congress from the much worse things they would otherwise have done.

So I still think Clinton is great, even with his faults.

regading Nafta and those other acts.

Atfer the first 2 years of his time in office, he had to deal with a pug controlled senate, house, and court. Yes the executive branch is powerful, even more so under Bush 2, but is heavily checked by the other branches.

My favorite things that Clinton did happened in his first 2 years, which included stopping the anti-abortion non-sense and repealing alot of Bush 1's anti-environmental laws.

PB

If the Clinton years taught us anything, it should be that a president is very limited without control of Congress.

The KLA played the western media like a cheap fiddle and Clinton fell for it. And the timing of blowing up that aspirin factory sure had a "Wag the Dog" quality to it.

We should have never been there, Clinton should have pulled all troops as soon as he took office.

To intervine in the slaughter?

One thing that irks me about historical perspectives on UN intervention is the fact that the wars are usually considered solely US actions,

KOREA and Desert Storm are prime examples - The US was acting (albeit not solely) under the wishes the UN Sec Council in Desert Storm. It was only after the UN authorized use of force when major deployments were made and it was only after the deadline set by UN Resolution 678 passed when we began the air war. somalia was the same thing. We carry the biggest stick so we fight the most and then history is eventually revised so that these 'conflicts' are seen as US aggression.

At least Clinton only bomb an aspirin factory. Bush 43 bombed 2 countries and still hasn't hit anything.

1) ending 'welfare as we know it';
2) firing the surgeon general (Elders) for making a reasonable statement;
3) reacting like a lawyer and playing word games rather than telling the grand jury to get screwed when they wanted him to testify about his sex life.

That took real spine, Bill. Real guts. :grr:

...and some of the people he pardoned as he left office I could have done without. The biggest thing was NAFTA. THAT really peeved me.

and welfare reform...later deemed "Welfare Deformed"

Even though I know that this wasn't entirely Clinton's fault, since the GOP were set against the US intervening.

But aside from that, I still think Clinton could have taken a firmer stand. One of the peacekeeping commanders who was there (General Dallaire) was very clear about that, in his book.

Clinton's task force on universal health care, headed by Hilary Clinton, compromised under pressure from the big insurance companies. The resulting proposal was such a mess that Republicans were able to turn public support against it, and the Clinton reform plan died before even coming to a vote. By the time Clinton left office, there were at least 3 million more people uninsured in the U.S. than when he took office.


As a candidate, Clinton also appealed for the votes of gays and lesbians by promising to overturn the ban on homosexuals in the military. As president, he agreed to the miserable "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, which led to an increase in the number of men and women discharged for their sexuality. And to add insult to injury, Clinton signed the bigoted Defense of Marriage Act that outlawed same-sex marriages.


Destructive logging in old-growth forests--suspended during Bush Sr.’s term, was resumed due to a loophole in an industry-environmentalist agreement supported by Clinton.


Rather than fight the Republican controlled congress, he caved a few months prior to the 1996 election and agreed to the Republicans welfare "reform" legislation, which tore up decades of government assistance to the poor.


Clinton pushed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limited appeals in death penalty cases, expanded the number of death penalty-eligible crimes, prohibited fundraising for vaguely defined "terrorist" organizations, and loosened rules against the deportation of legal immigrants (foreshadowing Bush’s USA PATRIOT Act).


Add to that eight years of bombing and sanctions against the people of Iraq which resulted in hundreds-of-thousands of deaths (as opposed to the tens-of-thousands in the actual invasion of Iraq); and the rejection of a brokered peace deal to end the Balkan conflict, as well as lying about genocide to promote the war and directing the military to bomb civilian targets in Serbia with no military value.

The Repubs have that down to a science. He was not a perfect President seems to me people are just discussing issues they disagreed with him on.

cry "Bashing! Bashing!" and reach for the smelling salts.

Why, Bill Clinton wouldn't do anything as HEINOUS as trying to unduly influence Democrats, would he????

Welfare Reform
Weakening of Civil Liberties
NAFTA

It's an eye opener.

I am not kidding either!

Hopefully the sun will set on that piece of feel-good do nothing legislation.

Being weak in the face of the 1993 WTC bombing...sending cruise missiles towards a few tents in Afghanistan & attacking an aspirin factory in Sudan after Kenya terrorist acts by OBL...not accepting OBL when offered to him by Sudan on a silver platter...committing perjury...questionable looking last-minute pardons...

..

But the most convincing list would be one you compile for yourself.
A suggested start, but not the only approach, would be to answer the following:

-What hurdles did Al Gore have to overcome in 1999 due to Bill Clinton?
-Why was Gore circling the drain before the first vote was cast?
-Why did Gore loose his home state and Clintons home state in 2000? http://www.multied.com/elections/2000map.html
-Why did Gore do poorly in most, if not all, the states where Clinton campaigned for him?
-Why did Gore loose so many historically Democratic states?
-Why was victory left contingent on winning the state governed by his opponents’ popular brother?

Keep in mind this is about Bill Clinton, not President Bush.

As you can see the dimensions of your own analysis could make this list very long.

I think it is great that Right Wingers join this site to troll. They bump up the mebership numbers and google rating, thx guys.

"What hurdles did Al Gore have to overcome in 1999"-(2000)
A rigged Florida Vote

"Why was Gore circling the drain before the first vote was cast?"
drain ?? First vote ??

"Why did Gore loose his home state and Clintons home state in 2000?"
gee you tell me, why did Bushee loose the Popular Vote in 2000

"Why was victory left contingent on winning the state governed by his opponents’(crooked) popular brother?"
where all the votes weren't counted.

"As you can see the dimensions of your own analysis could make this list very long."

nah, I don't think so

and R-slug oops slag, If you must have my critic of Clinton
he was to soft on (R) - shitheads
and he could have done more to stop the media from being whored
out and monopolised

..n some Osama chocolate mints too...

I saw Ross Perot on the Larry King show when Perot was thinking of running or had announced. He said that NAFTA was a bad idea and that after NAFTA were signed, we'd all hear a big sucking sound as jobs were sucked down to Mexico. It made sense to me then. And that's what in fact happened.

Yes, I know that Perot has moved his company down there, as well. But when one company goes that route, they all have to go, if they want to survive. America can't compete with no costs for environmental concerns, low wages, no OSHA, etc.

what Bush did and is doing.

Bush is 100 times worse than Clinton, in part because he is taking this country at breakneck speed in the same rightward direction Clinton was more slow and methodical in taking us. I don't want the Democratic Party to make that same mistake again. If we replace Bush with for example Lieberman, that would only slow down the pace of the rightward shift.

Is it because he is a democrat? We still pay for his mistakes even though he is out of office.

He gutted Welfare.
Nafta endorsing
NO healthcare plan got through; didn't even fight hard for it.
schmoozing with repugs
telecommunications Act....
Big disappointment for we the middle and lower middle class; also for the underclass. I liked him otherwise..lol

Nothing else serious.

he imprisoned MORE marijuana supporters than his predecessor, how about that? he lost me with that one.

I mean I know technically it's his fault but the president doesn't oversee the day to day workings of the justice department.

i do blame him

For "free trade", the US is keen on keeping CANADIAN drugs out. So much for free trade, it's a hypocricy.

And you Canadians will love us when the next oil/energy shortage hits. NAFTA gives the US the right to take your oil.

Clinton signed NAFTA in 1995. One of the many things he did in the name of 'bipartisanship'. He was suckered into it (all Centrists are).

Didn't know about the 1996 Telecom act, but that's another disgrace as well.

He's done a few good things, but Commando George* has revoked all of those, so in the end Clinton was a kiss-up to the repukes, who then betrayed him with Monica, and used Monica to get more votes in 2000...
Thanks Bill. (the repukes are bastards, but that shouldn't give Mr. Cigar a free pass either...)

Like a fucking teenager.

during his first term.

He should have taken a lesson from Reagan, who faced a Democratic Congress, and used the force of his personality and appeals to the general public to get his agenda passed.

He should have just completely done away with the ban on homosexual people in the military.

-- Allen

It's nobody's business what anybody elses sexual orientation is. Nobody should have to share it and nobody should bother sharing it.

Signing "Defense of Marriage" act, so-called "welfare reform," war against Yugoslavia, intervention in Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere, threatening nuclear war against northern Korea, "anti-crime" legislation that grealty expanded police powers and the death penalty... the list could be greatly expanded. My criticism won't stop when a Democrat becomes president again, that's for sure.

Following the drug warrior line of thinking when he should have been up there stumping for a sane drug policy.

Those are the 2 biggies with me too.

i hated Gore for that crap (he lead the charge on that PoS)

Going back on his campaign promise re the hatian boat people in the first week of his term - and thus crushing his chances of doing anything effective in his first 100 days.

NOT moving part of the peace dividend from defense/aerospace into space/aerospace - we had all those amazing engineers and suddenly they didnt have jobs. If we'd moved them to space, it could have helped take some of the power out of the military/industrial complex.

Monica wasnt good. It was a kick to the pub fireant mound that the world didn't need.

in SWM.

...

Sorry He Should Have NEVER Put Him Self In That Cloud. ;-)

From memory:

NAFTA
GATT
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Telecommunications Act
Welfare Reform
1994 Crime Act
Kosovo, Haiti, Somolia - all could have been handled without resorting to military force
Waco - didn't like the way that was handled at all, and we handed the RW a major talking point with that one
Defense of Marriage Act
Backtracking on promise re: gays in the military
Backtracking on health care
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Some things first proposed by Clinton right after the OKC bombing which were incorporated into the Homeland Security Act and passed under B*s*
I also thought Brady was a pretty big crock. How many liberals actually read what was in that thing before throwing support behind it?

I was very pleased when Clinton first got elected, and he got two very good things passed very early in his administration: Motor Voter Act, and AmeriCorps. Then things fell apart and the rest of the eight years were spent fending off RW attacks on America from Gingrich and his ilk, and Clinton himself swung right. Some of the worst legislation ever passed were bills that Clinton actively promoted, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Telecommunications Act, the 1994 Crime Act, and welfare "reform".

On the positive side from later in his administration were his executive orders establishing several new National Monuments. His environmental record remained excellent even as he swung right on other things. Overall I have a mixed memory of the Clinton era but more negative than positive, and don't wish to repeat it.

As president of the United Stated, he could have at least fooled around with Heidi Klum!

These are my two biggies. In general I feel he was a major let down. We expected so much from him in 92 and got so little.

I would have to say he was the best Republican Prez in my lifetime.

The most memorable one, the one that really sticks in my mind, is all the presidential pardons he gave to the 'connected' criminals.

Or how bout the 200,000 dollar raise he gave Bush.

Or the "assault weapons ban"

Or the total lack of any decriminalization of marijuana. He could have atleast tried something like that in his last moments in office. Instead he gave bush a raise and released all the criminals who he had ties to.

I've been waiting to see if this even registers at all on the collective radar. I see that one person has mentioned the Welfare "reform", but other than that, I don't see any mention of the cuts to housing, etc.

This is *very* discouraging to me. Dems keep painting themselves as the "compassionate" party, and yet.. this is about the last issue that is ever mentioned. Threads about social services issues don't seem to get many replies.

So, I gotta wonder either what it is going to take to make this an issue of value to the party, or what pary is finally going to upstage the Dems on this issue.

When you talk about registering people to vote, you might want to remember this, and think about why poorer people simply don't bother. They know they are no longer part of the party.

The party goes on without them. In more ways than one.

Kanary, more and more discouraged.........

And Waco.
And his entire policy on guns and drugs.

More weed less guns, sounds good to me.

I already posted the Arms sales information from Mother Jones.
Woody Harrelson's documentary WEED stated (at the time of making) that 3 million more drug offenders had been imprisoned under Clinton.
If I recall correctly the Justice Department had started charging doctors for writing Medical Marijuana perscriptions.
These were doctors in california, where the law passed.

And the assault weapons ban barely passed, i think gore cast the vote that pushed it over the top. It was a waste of paper which is bad for the environment.

more freedom = better.

I didn't intend to join DU, just lurk. But this particular thread forced my hand.
No one ever mentions Clinton shilling for the arms industry.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/arms/
"Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants to their host countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's first year in office, U.S. arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to 1997, the U.S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every nation on earth.
The arms industry, meanwhile, has greased the wheels. It filled the Democratic Party coffers to the tune of nearly $2 million in the 1998 election cycle."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/arms/lobbying.html
"In 1993 Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) proposed that arms sales to Indonesia be linked to that country's human-rights record. Lobbyists immediately went to work opposing Feingold's proposal. As one complained to the Legal Times, "Every time a human-rights issue comes up, they jump on it and say, 'Let's cut off arms sales to Bongo Bongo.'"
The lobbyist then became defiant: "We'll fight Feingold; we'll fight each senator if we have to. The defense industry has to fight each one of these battles."
The Indonesian government's "registered foreign agents" -- its lobbyists in the U.S. -- disengaged from the fray and let American arms exporters do the fighting. The arms makers impressed upon legislators that tying arms exports to human rights meant the loss of jobs to foreign competitors. The State and Defense Departments phoned Feingold to let him know of the Clinton administration's opposition to the bill. The Feingold bill went down in flames."

Click on Tax breaks for Merging and you will find this
"Merger Reimbursements:
In 1993, then-Secretary of Defense William Perry reversed a 40-year-old ban on federal reimbursement of certain expenses of defense company acquisitions and mergers. The government's rationale was that the downturn military contractors were experiencing at the Cold War's end would force some out of business; these payoffs were seen as a way of cushioning the impact of a defense-industry downturn.
In other words, merging paid. From some two dozen major military contractors at the beginning of the 1990s, the U.S. now hosts two giants (Boeing and Lockheed Martin), two other major contractors fighting to stay independent (Raytheon and Northrop Grumman), and a host of subcontractors and niche companies that are highly disadvantaged in competing for major contracts."

And the loss of jobs
"According to the Pentagon, the defense industry laid off 795,000 American workers between 1992 and 1997. At the same time, many of these corporations were sweetening their arms deals to other countries by offering "offsets" -- incentives provided to foreign countries in exchange for the purchase of military goods and services. The programs often include agreements to manufacture some or all of the products in the purchasing country."

No wonder Moore calls Clinton the best REPUBLICAN president the US ever had.

Bill Clinton was the one who signed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Bill Clinton was the one who signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.
Defense of Marriage, where he backstabbed his Gay supporters.