Do any of you old geezers remember the awful, awful Clinton years?

[Philosoraptor]

I do, I am so old, I remember when it didn't break your bank account to take a trip to see your mom, I remember when we had a SURPLUS, and we weren't trillions in debt to China.

And jeez, remember how high those gas prices were? And remember how screwed up the economy was?

And every time Clinton got up to speak, man oh man, all he would do was make sense and speak clearly and answer questions without the help of someone offstage with a transmitter putting words directly into his ear, without a teleprompter back up, jeez those were embarrassing years.

My God, will this nation EVER get over those 8 awful years of peace and prosperity?

Things are so, so much better now, and I'm just happy to say I actually lived through those terrible, rotten Clinton years.

[enid602]

1. vilify

Worse thing Team Obama did was to vilify the Clintons. The only effective Dem Adm in the last 40 yrs. Not a good way to unite the party.

[babylonsister]

5. Villify? Buy a clue. Who villified who? Clinton was certainly not

wonderful, but compared to these clowns, he seems so. The Clintons had/have their share of problems, and would still have them if they were in the forefront now. To annoint them isn't the answer.
And for you to 'villify' Obama isn't either.

[enid602]

13. yes, vilify

According to Team Obama surrogates on most major internet websites, the Clintons were actually responsible for Iraq, outsourcing, NAFTA, the current economic mess, the end of Welfare and Affirmative Action, etc. Of course, Obama has never made these arguments himself (it wouldn't be seemly); nor has he given any indication that he will actually reverse course on any of these policies in a material way. From a campaign standpoint, it was good strategy, and everything's fair in love and war. My only point is that ultimately it's not good for part unity to vilify the effective only Dem Adm in the last 40 years.

[babylonsister]

18. Give me a break; they ran a lousy campaign. You can

blame it on surrogates on the internet, or whoever you want. Keep your head in that sand, by all means. :eyes:

[enid602]

24. campaign

Yes, so bad that she got damn near half the vote, despite being accused of causing everything that ails this country. And not much help from the media. Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to downplay the innovative aspects of Obama's campaign; he won fair and square. Still, there are consequences for taking the tack that Team Obama took. Don't shit where you eat.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. The primaries are over.

The better candidate won.

Get over it.

[Political Heretic]

43. Name one thing.

That the Obama campaign did to vilify the clintons.

[MotorCityMan]

2. Oh yes, I remember the "awful" Clinton years

I could just cry when I see just how much * and co. have managed to fuck up this country.

I vividly remember a couple days after 9-11, how Clinton was in New York BEFORE * got there. I remember seeing a news clip of Clinton among "the great unwashed", something * wasnt't willing to do, even then. Clinton was hugging a woman who was just sobbing, and she said "I miss you so much". All I could think at the time was "So do I".

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. really? here i thought it was the worst presidency in years. only to parallel bush's.

you and i must live on a different du :P

[peekaloo]

4. Remember when he used to travel overseas

and there would be crowds not carrying protest banners and placards.

[Philosoraptor]

7. Yeah, my neck was sore from holding my head up high when overseas.

Now I just tell my foreign Friends that I'm Canadian.

[whistle]

6. Eight years that shook the world. very low inflation, full employment, growing incomes

...savings on the rise, Federal Budget surpluses....it was outrageous:sarcasm:

[Philosoraptor]

8. Dark, fearful times, that's for sure.

Glad I lived to see the bush family save America.

[whistle]

21. Instead of blow-jobs in the Oval Office, it's now just blow up the Dubya orifice

[tjwash]

9. It was reagans economy we were running on.

That was the meme that rush limpballs and the rest of the right wing tools spewed out regularly. The second shrub took office...ooh look! It's all Bill-o's fault. :eyes:

[meegbear]

10. Boy I sure do ...

when "Bubba" was sworn into office in January '93, I was unemployed for over a year and didn't get a job until that May, making 16K. When that scalywag finally left, I was making a mere 71.5K! A paltry 55.5K pay increase in 8 years??1?!?

Thank God Dubya showed up and got me laid off in November 2002. With that and my credit cards interest going up to 31%, I don't know how I would've made it today.

[Zenlitened]

11. I'll never forget the embarassment...

... of paying 99 cents for a gallon of gasoline. Like shopping at the dollar-store, for goodness sake! How tacky, how de classé. I much prefer the "upscale shopping experience" we have at the gas station today.

:D

[DeeDeeNY]

12. People have short memories

During the Clinton years, people forgot how bad things were during the George Senior years. They got spoiled and complacent, and thought the worst thing a president could do was to lie about extramarital sex.
It will take decades and decades, if at all, to repair the damage caused by W. And it might be too late to undo the environmental damage.

[noamnety]

14. I don't think it does much good

to use the disney version of history where everyone is either a villain or a hero. (Well, I can't think of much good to say about the Bush years, that might be all villain, but ignore that for now.)

The reality is that for very many people in the black communities, the Clinton policies toward locking people up was a tragedy, and much of our incarceration rates come from his actions.



"Welfare reform" was a disaster for many people - primarily oppressed groups like women and minorities.

NAFTA also - a disaster for many people affected by it.

If you were financially stable already, if you were part of the investor class, especially if you were straight, white and upper middle class, the Clinton years were great.

If you were one of the half million children who starved to death or died of disease due to his sanctions in Iraq, those years weren't so great. People love to show photos of children wounded in the Iraq war ... but they aren't so fond for some reason of showing the photos of the children that starved to death under Clinton's policies. Clinton was responsible for as many Iraqi deaths as Bush. But I guess those were kinder, gentler deaths because we didn't carry guns when we killed them, eh?

[babylonsister]

23. Wow, reality. What a concept. nt

[Zhade]

40. Ah, a bit of truth amongst the rose-colored memories.

Thank you.

[gatorboy]

15. Gas was 97 cents at one point.

And when he left office, Bush and the Repugs were screaming when gas went to $1.30. A barrel of oil was $30.

[Wednesdays]

50. At one point in 1998, I paid 71 cents per gallon

And I understand some places in Missouri were selling it for 64 cents. Never in the Clinton years did I have to pay more than $14 for a fill-up, and it usually was less than $9.

[bamacrat]

54. Yeah, I remember when we would get premium just for the hell of it.

Regular was 81, sure lets see how it runs on premium for 89 cents. Those were teh good ole days, too bad I was a teenager and not able to enjoy the benefits of an excellent economy.

[John Q. Citizen]

16. I remember seeing health care reform morphed into the mangaed care insurance company

institutionalization act.

I recall the Repos taking over both houses of congress as Clinton pushed to pass ghw bush' NAFTA.

I remember the corporations pushing through the media consolidation act aka the telecommunications act, and that leading to a virtual lock on mass media by a handful of corporations.

I remember the growth of privately run prisons and the Clinton's embrace of privatization on a whole lot of levels.

I remember the refusal of Clinton to hold the criminals from Iran Contra accountable. These are the same folks preying on us and the rest of the world today.

I remember the so-called containment of Iraq after the UN has already documented the destruction and disposal of over 95% of the WMD that we and Western Europe had supplied to the Bathist Regime.

[Midlodemocrat]

17. You mean the eight years of peace and prosperity? Thank GOD that's over.

[NNN0LHI]

19. He used to drive the Secret Service crazy

His limo would stop at a light in some inner city and they would look over and he was gone.

They would find him walking down the street shaking hands with strangers by himself.

Imagine Bush trying that? He wouldn't.

Don

[Ganja Ninja]

20. Yeah I remember those years.

Thank God President Bush II came along or otherwise we might have seen a major American city devastated in a terrorist attack or by a hurricane and flooding.

And just think, now that the dollar is worthless all those europeans that loved Bill Clinton so much can come here and fawn over him in person, provided they can get past our ever vigilant homeland security of course.:banghead: :cry:

[RebelOne]

22. Oh yes, those Clinton years were so terrible that I made enough money

to travel to Europe twice and even buy a Cadillac. I don't know how I ever survived those years.

[EFerrari]

25. Yeah. I remember how he embraced privatizing and set us up for this.

Come on. DADT, welfare deform, free trade -- ah, yes, the consequence free years.

[sandnsea]

48. ditto

Windows generated the economy of the 90's.

[WhiteTara]

26. you mean the awful peace and prosperity

yes...I long for the endless discussions of stains and cigars as opposed to torture and financial ruin.

[spanone]

27. it was horrific, we had to pay more taxes cause our investments ACTUALLY MADE MONEY!!!!

[devilgrrl]

28. I remember that the media sucked ass - but not quite as much as they do now.

:popcorn:

[trof]

29. yeahbut (One of my favorite words...'yeahbut'), didn' he get empeeched?

Yeah.
I'm pretty sure he did.
Sumthin about wearin' a blue dress or sumpthin'?
Naw...wait...he peed on the dress, or sumpthin'?
Anyways, I heard he did a bad bad thing.
This guy I work with...sumpthin' Moran tole me.
yeah
:eyes:

[Greyhound]

30. "We suck less" is still no justification.

He was the best republik President since Eisenhower.

[MrSlayer]

59. Indeed, "Corporatism with lube and a reach around."

Whereas with BushCo it's just a flat out brutal rape.


And being fortunate enough to be in office when a major technology boom takes place doesn't hurt.

[elehhhhna]

31. i remember low fares, great exchange rates and getting a taste for travel

the good old days

[Gato Moteado]

32. gas was cheaper than bottled water....

i had the jobs of my choice. i bought a house and made my payments easily. i lived comfortably and saw many working class people doing much better than they had previously. they were buying houses too. the stock market was unbelievable.

but all that peace and prosperity got dull.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

33. "My fellow Americans , the state of the economy . . . .

is the BEST it's EVER been!!!!!"

My brother does that in a great Bill Clinton voice and it just cracks me up. And then I crawl away and suck my thumb under the coffee table.

[sufrommich]

36. lol.nt

[BuelahWitch]

34. And the jobs I had that gave me health care benefits and stock options

Health care benefits that I didn't pay anything for out of my check as "employee only." It was GHAHSTLY, just GHAHSTLY! Thank heavens NOW I have my choice of jobs with no health care, or ones that take out weekly premiums that equal my electric and gas bill combined!

[blues90]

35. people seem to forget a lot.

Clinton ahd to deal with a repub house for most of his term and did carry the crap Bush Sr handed off as well as Reagans world of hell.

Trouble is now after bush jr where the bar has sunk below the dirt and Obama climbs onto the scene with all of this talk of hope and change and huge rallies filled with people who have the same mentality as mega church members just about anything that is not McCain looks good.

With Clinton we were finally pulling out of the bush/reagan years even when Clinton had a lot of resistence. He worked hard and did not need some tele prompter to get his point across.

[Neshanic]

38. I am in therapy now over this horrible period. Peace, prosperity, calm. It was insane!

[Zhade]

39. I remember friends who lost jobs due to NAFTA and ones who had to hide their identity due to DADT.

I remember people who loved each other and couldn't marry because of DOMA.

I remember the increasing consolidation of professional liars in the media thanks to the Telecommunications Act.

I remember half a million dead Iraqi kids, and Albright saying it was "worth the price".

I remember innocent medijuana patients going to jail, and more nonviolent drug offenders overall going to jail under his administration than ever before.

Yeah, I remember. And?

[noamnety]

41. Albright's comments still piss me off no end.

I can't help viewing it as extremely arrogant, self-centered and racist (there! I said it!) when people can be so dismissive of what was every bit as much a genocide in Iraq as what we have now - and go on to describe that period as peaceful and prosperous because their own financial investments did well, or they could buy a fancy car.

I have a hard time distinguishing between that, and the upper class now who are safely removed from the current genocide in Iraq, and whose oil investments are doing well, and who therefore view this current decade as a peaceful time of prosperity (for them).

That may sound harsh, but the thought process looks from my end to be exactly the same. "My life was/is good, so I guess the cost to those brown-skinned folks in various parts of the world was worth it."

[SidneyCarton]

46. Yes it wasn't the nirvana that nostalgia makes it look like.

But this is one of those moments where yesterday was actually better than today. That alone should tell us something.

[Xithras]

55. Thank you. We tend to forget the dirty details when waxing nostalgic.

Like the 40,000+ of us who protested in Seattle against the WTO policies that formed the very backbone of Bill Clinton's economic plan (and laid the foundation for our current outsourcing mess). Or the die-in's in front of the White House for the "acceptable losses" among the Iraqi kids. Or the "good war" against the Serbians to protect the Albanians who turned right around and ethnically cleansed the Kosovar Serbs under the barrel of our own guns (whoops!)

Yep, perfectly peachy. The difference is that we were making money on Ebay, cheering as our bubble stocks hyperinflated our 401k's, watching Krispy Kreme's going up on every other corner, and enjoying the X-Files on TV...so nobody cared about pesky little annoyances like those. The complainers were the radical fringe.

[Catherine Vincent]

42. Yes, I remember.

But if you listen to some of the ninnies here, it was a terrible and horrible presidency.

[SidneyCarton]

44. I work at a library, and was going over some old newspapers today.

All from the Clinton era, and I got such a sense of nostalgia. I was in Junior High and High School when Bill was President. He was no saint, and some of his policies were atrocious, but I could have confidence in the head of my country, a feeling I have been sadly lacking for nearly 8 years.

[rucky]

45. Never underestimate the power of a blowjob. n/t

[MichiganVote]

47. If that's all it took to govern well, we'd never know a bad prez......

[Wednesdays]

49. Heh, you just paraphrased one of my all-time favorite Onion pieces

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'
January 17, 2001 | Issue 37•01

WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

(more):
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

[Lilith Velkor]

51. You sound just like GD:P, except that you're kidding.

:yoiks:

[Rex]

52. I remember picking and choosing which IT contract to take

for a boatload of money. Never in my adult working life did I have so many companies to pick from, to bad Bill went and screwed it all up. :sarcasm:

[lumberjack_jeff]

53. Yeah. Irrational exuberance sucked. n/t

[jcla]

56. After many promises we go "Don't ask...Don't tell"

So much for lesbian and gay people in the military.

[Radical Activist]

57. I'm still paying my student loans from the Clinton years.

I've never had health insurance since he was President either.
Clinton did some good things but I hope we get real, lasting change this time.

[galledgoblin]

58. could have been much much better

but it sure is much worse now.

[hedgehog]

60. Ah, yes, the Clinton years; when government regulators protected all of us:

What happened when Clinton deregulated the media in 1996?
Telecommunications Act of 1996
The 1996 Telecom Act was a landmark piece of legislation that drastically altered U.S. media and communications policy. The Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, deregulated the media and communications sectors, leading to increased consolidation in both industries.


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071215232338AAPfVUB



As chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, Gramm engineered passage of legislation that effectively ended the major regulatory restraints applied to the financial industry in response to the Great Depression. The purpose of his co-authored Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed in 1999 by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton,


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/15/EDEP11PPMN.DTL

[B Calm]

61. You could tell your boss to go to hell, walk across the street to another job!

[asteroid2003QQ47]

62. The "Big Dog" forced the Morality Hypocrits* to expose themselves...

en masse and that alone is enough reason to love him.

*Those who would nail Monica in a heartbeat given half a chance.

-----------------------------------------
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
--H. G. Wells

[madokie]

63. This old geezer sure do

I love it when I hear our son and his friends saying things like during Clintons Presidency we didn't have any of this shit like 4 dollar gas, 5 dollar milk etc. Yes the Clinton years will be remembered by all, except'n of course some of the re:puke:s, with fond memories.

[Wcross]

64. I "suffered" terribly.......

It took less than 30 bucks to fill my gas tank. I was forced to figure out what to do with the rest of my paycheck. It was a lot of extra thinking that thankfully I don't have to worry about now.

[kiva]

65. Yep, the embarassment of having a president

who make sense when he spoke--you know, one of those uppity types who didn't sound like he had a mouth full of horseshit.

[dionysus]

66. yeah, that sweet little baby jesus bill clinton... whose bullshit gave us bush...

:eyes:

[Scout]

67. Bill Clinton didn't give us Bush, DIEBOLD gave us Bush n/t

[dionysus]

69. he was a factor.

there were a lot of factors, some bigger than others...

[shadowknows69]

68. We had better times, but that's not much of a feat is it really?

Mud shines like a diamond when it's sitting next to shit.