I just read how Republicans have been rewriting history and painting the Clinton administration as having an easy time of it historically and lollygagging during the 90’s in foreign affairs. This is not true as seen in one of its major international efforts, its intervention in the Balkans. This is a typical Republican smear tactic to make Democratic look ineffectual and that their foreign policy caused 9/11. In this smearing and rewriting of history Republicans make themselves look as they are the only ones who care and can keep America save.
I am thinking, America and the world would not have been as resilient or able to come back to normalcy if it wasn’t for the Clinton years that put emphases on cultivating globalization and world interdependency. Had Clinton not put that emphases on globalization and world economic interdependency during the 90’s as he did, creating a world security and a global support system, it is quite believable that 9/11 may have led to something far worse, like war between civilizations as the attackers intended. Moreover, Clinton’s globalization efforts managed to contain any further possible hostility due to and after 9/11 because of the global support system and interconnectedness his administration promoted.
The globalization that occurred during the 90’s and saved America and the world from further war after 9/11 was mostly due to a burgeoning group, ‘baby boomers’, who liberalized and made the world safer. And in keeping with how Republicans and conservatives have twisted history, baby boomers have been a group that has been much maligned by Republicans and conservatives, as a group who have made America worse by push liberalism.
Proof is largely subjective, debatable, and often very difficult to find, if available.
Sources are easier to find, but much less compelling than proof. (davids04 is a source)
Propaganda n1. The systematic propagation of a given doctrine. 2. Ideas, information, or other material disseminated to win people over to a given doctrine.
Well, it wasn’t really mean, and the word makes no distinction about the quality or truth of the information, so nice propaganda it is.
Frustrating as it may be, the winners always write history.
Unfortunately for the other-than-corporatists, the corporatists have won, and regardless which of the parties control government, history will continue to be written by the money.
If it concerns anything in the last hundred years, I like to call it commentary.
Yikes! I am neither a democrat nor a republican, and I think Bill Clinton was a generally good president. I despise W and all he stands for. Well, not quite all he stands for. Most of it. For the record, I am generally more in agreement with conservatives than with liberals. Okay, I’m almost never in agreement with liberals. I don’t consider W anything like a conservative.
But - I would love it if someone could provide me with a link or some other reference where I could find anyone of any expertise that thinks that the Clinton administration did a creditable job in the Balkans.
Whatever he did was better than what we are doing now in Iraq, I will admit. But they are two different cases.
Exxon, GE, IBM and GM deserve more credit for globalisation than Clinton does. he did sign NAFTA, but his international security efforts were a joke. That’s what allowed 911 in the first place. I don’t actually blame him for this - it would have taken incredible vision and leadership to have done what was required - and it wouldn’t have been worth it, honestly. Not for three thousand people and a couple of ugly buildings in downtown Manhattan.
We really have to get over that - more people die on the highway every year.
As far as I’m concerned Globilization has been the biggest economic disaster to the US in history.
Republicans have always hated Clinton because he stole their moderate platform.
I’m amused that Conservatives who always oppose world government by the UN (and I agree with them) have no trouble surrendering soverignty to a bunch of unelected corporate hacks, who meet in secret…
I watch in disbelief as the USA itself is well on the road to becoming a Third World Nation. A disappearing Middle Class; heck, one sixth of the nation doesn’t even have basic health coverage.
I am horrified as I watch American industries (with their jobs) going off to Third World Countries to benefit from slave labor.
It’s almost hysterically funny that the Democrats are afraid to cut off funds to the Iraq war for fear of being called traitors, when the Republican controlled Congress cut off funds to Somalia. If they hadn’t, we would still be there “liberating” the population.
I find it bizzare that Clinton was impeached over a BJ (which is none of my damn business) and wasn’t impeached over Kossovo, which he lied us into. True, unlike Bush he had the brains not to go in, until he knew we wouldn’t get involved in a bloody war, doesn’t make it right.
Incredible, I find it Amazing that he’s blammed for 9/11 "because he “could have gotten bin Laden.”
And best of all, how he cut a division from the Army - So it’s all his fault - Of course in almost seven years of the Bush administration that division hasn’t been replaced.
And now, I’m living in the unimaginable era where my country tortures people as a matter of policy. And what euphimisms we use! “Enhanced interogation techniques.”
Yeah! Except that most of that middle class disappeared into the upper-middle and upper classes.
Those industries went overseas because american consumers told them to. In almost every case, we had a choice - buy the more expensive made-in-america version, or the cheaper foreign-made one. And it was the very middle class that chose the cheaper one.
Personally, I vote for more slave labor. I need a few things that I’m waiting for the price to come down on.
Here’s an example. Company A and company B both make shoes. Company A goes to China and pays it’s workers $1 dollar a day. Company B stay here and pays $16 an hour? The result? Company B goes out of business.
Of course, what they actually do is Also move to China…
They, whether they want to or not are forced to move to stay in business.
Meanwhile of course, the technology to produce shoes more effieciently is not being used. It’s not being used because it cannot replace that one dollar a day worker.
Tell me Faust, in the fifties, were Americans starving because they paid their workers good wages? Even if prices were highter?
Our standard of living is collapsing. You might very well celebrate the drop in prices because companies use slave labor, but I see a collapse in our standard of living. Rent? The old guildlines were for 25 percent of your income - Now it’s 60 percent of your income.
Spare me the rhetoric that it’s “our” fault that these companies have moved. It’s the fault of the WTO, NAFTA, etc.
Just how did we survive when we actually MADE things ourselves?
NB.
I have nothing against globalisation. What is happening in the world today is globalization STRICTLY for the benefit of large international corporations. Thirty years ago, we were the largest EXPORTER of finished goods in the world, today we are the largest IMPORTER of finished goods in the world.
Do you really think that we can maintain this kind of pace?
Do you really think that a Nation living on a credit card tab can avoid the bill?
The “handwriting is on the wall,” and all you can see is a cheap television. Have you noticed that the dollar is collapsing? Just how cheap is that television going to be in a couple of years?
Then indeed you are drinking the Kool aid in gallon sized jugs…
That’s the same dynamic - we’re talking about the same thing. The US-made shoes didn’t go up in price - they didn’t become unaffordable. The consumer opted for the less expensive shoes. We chose. The US consumer forced company B to move offshore.
As to the technology - that technology might well be a robot - which would replace the US worker, anyway. But there are many examples wherein the best technology is being used overseas. Sometimes not at first. But quality counts, as well as price.
In the fifties, the major undustrial countries were virtually out of business due to the war. That was an unrepeatable circumstance. Unless you propose that we destroy Europe and Asia’s economies again.
The fact is that our standard of living is not collapsing. There are several ways in which that is measured, but the stats are not kept a secret - that phrase was invented by and is defined by economists - look it up. What you claim is just not true.
I don’t know a soul who pays sixty percent of their income in rent. I have never seen that figure anywhere. Please provide a (non-political) reference. The government keeps stats on that - please tell me where you got that number from.
Did I say “fault”? i don’t think i did. That’s your own rhetoric. I don’t have a problem with it - I would surely not assign fault. I will surely lose interest in this thread if you are going to put words in my mouth. That’s just boring.
Import/export - so what? Who cares if all we do is grow beets? If we live well, we live well. You sound like some tired old AFL-CIO shill. The AFL-CIo almost ruined this country.
Hey - you want more exports, but you don’t want the dollar to fall. Hmmm.
I haven’t owned a television in years. Don’t even want one.
I have been hearing that the sky is falling for my whole life. It isn’t falling.
I will wait a while to see if you know even the first thing about economics.
Let us not be more disingenious than we have to be. If government ALLOWs company A to invest in China, let us not blame company B for wanting to stay in business.
No, it means less workers, but not no workers. And if all the companies stayed here, there would be plenty of work. If all the CAPITAL was invested in modern machinary, we would have no problem being competitive. As for the best technology being used overseas, who pays for that technology? It comes from the profits that were made HERE.
I see, so that explains why Europe is NOT becoming a Third World Nation while we are? Yet they have a higher standard of living than we do.
I HAVE looked it up. Moreover, I don’t have to look it up, I see it every damned day. Just like the nature of unemployment, which by a bi-partisan effort we’ve more or less eliminated "STATISTICALLY. SO if you work ONE DAY a month, you are not unemployed. If you work part time you are NOT unemployed. Meanwhile of course food charities report that they can no longer keep up with demand. One in six New Yorkers depend on charity to get food. This sounds suspiciously like Third World country to me.
I know dozens. But of course, no doubt if you live in Maine, housing is cheaper. My bad, I;m referring to New York. Even so, even if you DO live in Maine, surely the rents have gone up? query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h … A961948260
You are being disingenious Again. If you say “we choose,” just what are you saying? If someone is poor, they shop at Walmarts. One has to ask, why are they poor? There used to be good pay for unskilled labor. Such is no longer the case.
Sorry, no - You are assigning fault, or as you put it, praise.
How? By turning all of us into a middle income society? Well then you must be pleased, they are a tiny percentage of the working class. Too bad, you wont be able to blame them for the imminent collapse of the economy.
Wait, wait, it’s their fault that one sixth of the country had no health care. Tsk, tsk, my bad.
It’s money that was made HERE that was the first export.
I own a TV, don’t use it. Nor did I say the sky is falling, only the economy.
I am one of those who DIDN’T predict the collapse of the economy until recently. But since none of this means anything to you - Enjoy Maine - I love the place as well.
NB. You can enjoy your existance with my blessings. I’m not BSing here, I wish you well. But the country as a whole is going downhill in a hurry.
As Mark Twain says, “there are lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Since in the day to day activities that I do, Fixing commercial boilers for Apartment complexes and office building, I meet a lot of people. And not to be funny, a hell of a lot more people than you do. I SEE misery increasing. I don’t need BS from the labor department…
More than you if you believe that unemployment is under five percent. That alone tells me you know nothing. It used to be that the jobs section of the Times would be ten, twenty pages, now it’s down to one or two.
Go figure.
You are not being dishonest, because you’re not lying. You live in another world, where things are peachy and my gloom and doom is all left wing nonsense, barely in the level of my being a troglodyte…
But YOU can quote how good things are, but you can’t explain why so many people have no health insurance, unless you’re actually going to claim, like some Neocons do, that people don’t have insurance “by choice.”
Which of course is true. People choose between food and health care.
You can’t explain why one out of six New Yorkers is hungrey and needs CHARITY to simply eat.
All you can do is toss out statistics from the government, that all is well, and if it’s not, it’s because people just LOVE to starve, live out on subway grates, and use emergency rooms for their health care.
Dave
Dude, I wasn’t being disingenuous - I was assuming free trade. The same sort of free trade that allows foreign countries to invest in the US. No national economy can flourish as an entirely closed system. That’s just a stupidity.
Again, I am not blaming anyone. Where you get this “blame” thing from, I don’t know. But it makes me think that you have no idea what either of us is saying.
Again, you demonstrate that you have no knowledge of even the basics of economics. If all the companies stayed here? Including the foreign companies? To follow your model, they would have to stay out. You are also supposing that only the US has the best technology, and that we do not wish to compete globally. If a Dutch company invested in a plant in China, and we didn’t, they would clean our clocks in the foreign markets. You seem to assume that the US is the only country doing this.
Every single year I read about how food pantries have half the resources and twice the demand. It’s just a way to get more resources. Again, I don’t “blame” them. But I have read this sort of story every year for as long as I can remember. Thirty years? If they were true, well, I suppose you could do the math. Maybe not.
New York is not representative of the entire housing market.
And, no, I really don’t mean to assign fault. Again, I don’t know who you are reading, but it ain’t me.
Health care has to be addressed, yes. That it does, doesn’t mean we are a ruined economy. But simply providing insurance to everyone, on the present model, isn’t the solution. maybe another thread for another time.
I haven’t addressed unemployment. Yet you know from my nonexistent position on unemployment that you know more abut economics than me. In other words, you are making this up out of whole cloth.
I don’t think I have actually quoted a stat from the government. Again, more fiction from you.
First as was written here earlier The winner gets to write history how they choose.
Second If economy is failing the people it means the people have failed the economy. When consumers are not demanding quality and are willing to work for nothing then how is an economy going to support the poorest? It won’t. Resources are spent on crap, people buy crap, people make crap, People accept crap payment, the economy will be crap. You can blame corporations but, in the end they need people to support them. Its the people that do it to themselves.
Don’t accept less than a living wage , don’t buy crap you don’t need and don’t pay more than you should.
People tend to forget that retailers mark up the goods to at the very least %100 profit margin generally its 200 or 300% profit. Why pay that? You don’t have to. Look at hospitals… 12$ for an OTC tylenol pill? One stinking pill is 12 dollars? Get real, argue with retailers, service people, medical, Housing etc… they would rather get something than nothing.
Kris- for the record, I have no disagreement with anything you have said here. Except that the economy is not presently “crap”. But there is a lot of crap to it. Always was.
Well, that’s not all you need to do. You don’t get a very good picture of an economy if all you look at are the most extreme examples you can find to support your case.
stephenstillwell wrote that the winners always write history. I guess that true. And that has been said by others.
The Republicans won in 2000 and have been writing their history and saying that the Clinton administration was responsible for 9/ll. They say it happen because the Clinton administration did not do its job and capture Osama ben laden.
If it was only so simple. And that is what this Republican administration does. talk about history in simplistic terms, like there are not extenuating circumstances. Being simplistic about history is childish thinking and ignoring reality. Their history has been based on faith which is like building a house on sand. They even have believed that they could create reality, their own reality, through faith. Well, this reality began to unravel a few year back when the truth about Iraq, which the Bush administration was fabricating, became obvious.
The Republics who have been spinning history in their favor about 9/11 and the war on terror have forgot to mention their complicity in it all. Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein are really two of their creating. For instance the Reagan administration supported bin laden with money and weapons to fight the invading Russians in Afghanistan. After the Russian were driven out bin laden was a abandoned by the U.S. and allow to drift around with all the America weapons and know-how he had to some day use it against the U.S. some day. Similarly, Hussein was supported and weaponized by America in its fight against Iran. Bush senior was very supportive do Hussein.
There are many instances where Republican have not cleaned up their historical messes. And had the Bush junior administration been more alert, doing its job, 9/11 most likely would never occurred. Condoleezza Rice said no one could have imagined that such an attack could have occurred. The evidence, though, of its possibly happening was right underneath her nose.
Someone once asked if Al Gore as president could have handled the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as well as George Bush, in galvanizing the country and being tuff on terror. Could Gore have been as decisive and steely as Bush? Well, me belief is that if Gore was president 9/11 would never have happen. Gore would have been more attentive and less provocative with the Muslim world.
Faust I said if the economy is failing… not that it is. If an econmy fails it is not the leaders it is those that create it ,sustain it and use it, that cause failure.
I am doing fine in this economy because we know how to work it. if people choose not to learn what to do to survive then it is on their own shoulders no one elses.
stephenstillwell wrote that the winners always write history. I guess that’s true. And it’s been said before.
The Republicans won in 2000 and have been writing their history and saying that the Clinton administration was responsible for 9/ll. They say it happen because the Clinton administration did not do its job in capturing Osama ben laden.
If it was only so simple. And that is what this Republican administration does, talk about history in simplistic terms, like there are never any extenuating circumstances. Being simplistic about history is childish and ignores reality. Their history has been based on faith which is like building a house on sand. They even believed that they could create reality, their own reality, through faith. Well, this reality began to unravel a few year back when the truth about Iraq, which the Bush administration had been fabricating, became obvious. (“You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”)
The Republics who have been spinning history in their favor about 9/11 and the war on terror have forgot to mention their complicity in it all. Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein are really two of their creations. For instance the Reagan administration supported bin laden with money and weapons to fight the invading Russians in Afghanistan. After the Russians were driven out bin laden was a abandoned by the U.S. and allow to drift around with all the America weapons and know-how he had, which he then aimed against the U.S. Similarly, Hussein was supported and weaponized by America in its fight against Iran. Bush senior was very supportive of Hussein. Check the record.
There are many instances where Republican have not cleaned up their own historical messes. And had the Bush junior administration been more alert and attentive to duty, doing its job, 9/11 most likely would never have happened. Condoleezza Rice testified that no one could have imagined or foreseen that such an attack could have happened. However, the evidence of the possibly of it happening was right under her nose.
Someone once asked if Al Gore was president could he have handled the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as well as George Bush seemed to be doing, in galvanizing the country and being tough on terror. Could Gore have been as decisive and steely as Bush? Well, my belief is that if Gore had been president 9/11 would never have happened. Gore would have been more attentive and responsible, and less provocative and dismissal in his attitude towards the Muslim world.
