…at Waco. We should make him regret dredging this stuff up. It’s like he’s vying with Jimmy Carter for worst ex-president ever.
[Update a few minutes later]
Damn Tim McVeigh to perdition. He’s managed to take this anniversary and turn it into mediafest about a sociopath murdering government workers, instead of the one about the government murdering children two years earlier. And the irony, of course, is that both occurred on the same date as the first shots to win our independence from a tyrannical government.
[Update a few minutes later]
What Bill Clinton has in common with King Edward Longshanks:
…powerful people in government have been making that argument literally for centuries.
Take England’s King Edward I, aka “the Longshanks” of “Braveheart” cinematic fame. It wasn’t just William Wallace and the Scots who made Longshanks uncomfortable; he also took very unkindly to criticism from his own subjects. So much so, in fact, that he manipulated what in 1275 passed for the English Parliament to approve Westminster I, a re-codification of basic English law.
Westminster I made it a crime to sow “tales whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the king and his people or the great men of the realm.” That law put a stop to criticism of Longshanks and his best buddies among the nobles.
The Dems must really hate that pesky First Amendment.
[Update a while later]
The nonviolence of the tea parties is driving the Democrats nuts. Well, actually, there has been some violence. But only by leftist and union thugs.
Yonggary says “What a surprise that Godzilla prefers war in Japan to war in Korea. Rarrrrrrrr!!”
Does Clinton get “credit” for the GOP winning control of congress?
Yes. 😉
Speaking of Republicans in the House, Intrade now has the Dems at just under 50% chance to keep the House in the 2010 election. FWIW, it’s been steadily dropping since July, 2009 where the high was around 80% chance that Democrats kept the House.
It’s not clear that he eliminated Iraq’s WMDs (how did that happen, exactly?
Read the Iraq survey group report — Hussein shut down his WMD programs in the mid-90s in response to Clinton’s sanctions and airstrikes.
none of it would have happened absent a Republican Congress.
He could have done more with a Dem Congress, but he gets credit for what he actually did.
passed Welfare reform- over Bill Clinton’s objections
He had quibbles with the bill, but he ran on “ending welfare as we know it”, pushed for it and signed it.
And if he “eliminated” Iraqi WMD’s, why was it that he, his wife, his VP, and all of the bigwigs in his party were claiming that Iraq STILL HAD THEM, as late as 2003?
He didn’t know that he’d already succeeded in eliminating them, but with the benefit of better information we now know that he had.
Jim,
Are you just stupid or do you really think that repeating your lies that a budget surplus occurred during the time that William Jefferson Clinton was president will make us believers?
Just give up the lie, we are not that stupid.
Godzilla, Cecil, Rand
There was no surplus. The US owed more money at the end of each year then owed the year before since the 1950’s.
Frank:
The annual surplus/deficit is not the same thing as the year’s decrease/increase in the national debt. But if you are comparing Clinton to other presidents, it doesn’t really matter which number you look at.
According to the Treasury, the national debt was $5,656,270,901,615.43 on 9/30/1999, and $5,674,178,209,886.86 on 9/30/2000. That’s an increase of $17,907,308,271.43, or 0.3%, by far the smallest year-to-year increase since the 60s. Since the GDP increased by 4.8% in 1999, our debt-to-GDP ratio fell significantly, making Clinton the only president in recent history to shrink the debt in relation to the size of our economy.
Jim,
That is an accomplishment worth mentioning. The way we had the supposed surplus is that the Social Security surplus was greater then the deficit spending by the rest of government. These funds should not be used when considering the annual surplus/deficit since they are already committed to offset the future obligations of Social Security. Perhaps I would be less touchy about this but for all the talk at the time of how to spend the surplus. This money is supposed to be for the retirement of those being forced to pay into the system.
One of the reasons I have little use for this former president is that he was often talking about how best to spend the supposed surplus. He clearly has no concern for the people whose money was taken with a promise that is not likely to be fulfilled, especially if the money is pilfered.
Another reason is that he said that he believed the government would make better choices about how to spend the money (surplus) then the average American citizen could so, of course the money should not be returned to the people who paid the taxes. Elitism is all to common among the ruling class in this country and especially so with both Clinton and Obama. The Bushes are not much if any better.