Amir Tehari says that Bill Clinton is burnishing his credentials:

...here is what Clinton had to say in a recent television interview with Charlie Rose:

“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

So, while millions of Iranians, especially the young, look to the United States as a mode of progress and democracy, a former president of the US looks to the Islamic Republic as his ideological homeland.

One wonders if he's as clueless as Jimmy Carter. And I notice that, as with Africa, he's always quick to apologize for things he thinks other people have done, but never for anything he's done.

And liberals like to think that conservatives are stupid?

1. Clinton isn't a liberal.

2. Most people who identify themselves as conservatives aren't. They're cynical reactionaries protecting their own interests.

3. Most people who identify themselves as liberals aren't. They're cynical fantasizers protecting their own interests.

4. Most everyone identifying himself as a moderate (which Clinton does) isn't. So what is he?

The HillaryCare attempt sure doesn't make it sound like he's a conservative.

Real conservatives, McGehee, want to make sure people can get the medical care they need. Most people who call themselves conservative are, like I said, simple reactionaries who don't care if people get medical care and believe making the rich richer will also, as if in a miracle, make sure everyone can pay for the health care they otherwise can't.

There are very few real conservatives and very few real liberals anymore, just a lot of ideological drones who are to politics what talking heads are to journalism.

Not sure about conservatives and liberals but I know cynics when I see them

It is hard not to be a so called cynic after being exposed to the world in some detail.

I prefer to use the world pragmatic.

'word' not 'world'. Sorry about that.

I'll leave it to others to judge my cynicism; it isn't important to me. I do know that I respect honesty, clarity, generosity of spirit, and a focus on the welfare of others. Most politicians have a focus on self, which invariably leads them to forget about honesty, clarity and generosity. Add to that my fundamental distrust of anyone who follows an ideology -- any ideology; they invariably justify reshaping society to make the ideology appear correct -- and I may seem cyncial. I choose just to call others naive.

Finally! I've been looking for someone to take over for me next wednesday at the NIST. You see I'm the calibration standard for one international unit of Voice of Sweet Reason. But my web schedule is just packed with pontification. With all the realists appearing in this thread, I'm sure I can find a sub.

You can just call collect with a few brilliant observations and witticisms. Shouldn't take more than a half hour, but that's a precious half hour I need to further the cause of reason on the web. They need to make occasional daily corrections for some drift in the standard. I'll still need to fly in for the more extensive onsite calibration at the begining of the month. Sometimes those can be pretty involved. Lots of debate, reasoning with fools, and of course the final invokation of Nazis to calibrate the Godwin's Law detector.

>generosity of spirit, and a focus on the welfare of others

In General supporting someone's wellfare
makes them dependant, un-happy and destroys what is best in humans.

Compare the mental outlook of the poor in
a country like mexico with no socal safety net
and the poor in a country with an extensize social
safety net like the Canada or Europe.

By any measurable standard the poor mexicans are much poorer, but they are also MUCH happier.
The poor mexicans know that the only person that can improve their lot in life is themself.
They are responsible for their own condition.

Someone on welfare knows that the only
person that can improve their condition is
some faceless person in some govbernment
office somewhere.
They have ZERO power to really improve their life, they are dependant! This is extreemly destructive
to their selfimage, their productivity and in general their mental well being.

I grew up in a small community in Alaska,
my family was one of two white families the rest of the residents were native american.

While I was growing up the Alaska Native American Land Claims settelment came to pass,
in effect this meant that none of the natives ever had to work again, they could sit back and collect a monthly check. The check was not enough to be rich, it was enough to survive.

It almost immediatly destroyed the people and the culture. 60% of the people choose not to work again. At the beginning of the month they would make their pilgramage to a nearby town to buy booze.

The other 40% all ended up leaving. The ones that continued to work and try to improve themselves were harrased by the ones that chose not to work.

I had a good friend Bruce that lived a semi traditional life of hunting, fishing and providing for his family. He went out in his boat to hunt, fish and trap almost every day. My dad ran a small bush airline that had it's main office at the town dock. I would go down to the office after school and usually see Bruce comming back in around dinner time.

I can still remember seeing a bunch drunken guys come down and harrass him for being such a
"stupid indian" that he still went fishing when he could just buy his food. They told him it made the rest of them all look lazy and that they wanted it to stop.

This image is etched in my mind I will never
ever support just giving cash to someone to make their life better, it does not make it better.

I will always support giving someone an
opertunity to provide for themselves.

Real conservatives, McGehee, want to make sure people can get the medical care they need.

Real conservatives, Bilge, want to make sure the government does not prevent people from getting the health care they need.

HillaryCare would have been a government roadblock to people being able to make their own health care choices.

Limiting people's economic choices is not conservatism, Bilge. Social-ism fits that description.

(Edited with a hyphen to get a perfectly legitimate political word past the filters.)

Paul Breed: "...honesty, clarity, generosity of spirit, and a focus on the welfare of others.." have nothing at all to do with economic policies that seem to have provoked your kneejerk response. In particular, generosity of spirit has absolutely nothing at all to do with handing out dole checks to people.

Consider that the opposing qualities are "dishonesty, vagueness, parsimony and a focus on self-aggrandizement". That seems a fair description of most politicians, regardless of the ir place in the political spectrum. Why should we want our politicians to exhibit qualities we abhor in ourselves and our friends?

McGehee, people who can't afford medical care or medical insurance have no choice at all about their health care. Republicans, especially those who dishonestly call themselves conservatives, like that just fine because it lines their pockets and the pockets of the corporations who own them.

If this administration and the Republican Party really does want Americans to have a choice in health care, they'd stop rolling over for the corporations that have driven the cost of health care to obscene levels. Given a choice between helping people get medical care or transferring more money from the pockets of patients to corporate treasuries, the Republicans choose the latter.

(Maybe it's time to have politicans and their legislation introduced with a PBS-like disclaimer: "Senator Bulbous is sponsored in part by contributions from ...")

"3. Most people who identify themselves as liberals aren't. They're cynical fantasizers protecting their own interests."

And that is Clinton in a nutshell!