Activist and Friend of Queerty Lane Hudson could’ve been mistaken for a town hall heckler. In fact, when he stood up and interrupted Bill Clinton at a Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh yesterday, the former president even suggested as much. Undeterred, Hudson wanted answers: Would Clinton call for a full repeal of DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?
Yes.
But also, don’t blame Clinton for everything that went down!
Lane Hudson: Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA and “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” right now? Please…
President Clinton: Hey, you know, you ought to go to one of those congressional health care meetings. You did really well there. I’ll be glad to talk about that. If you will… If you will sit down and let me talk, I’ll be glad to discuss it. But if you stand up and scream I won’t be able to talk. But the other guys would love to have ya. I wanna talk a little about that too.
But anyway, so, here we are in a different world. Now, it’s not like the 1990’s. You wanna talk about ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting some support in the congress. Now, that’s the truth.
Secondly – it’s true! – You know, you may have noticed that presidents aren’t dictators. They voted – they were about to vote for the old policy – by margins exceeding 80% in the House and exceeding 70% in the Senate. The gave test votes out there to send me a message that they were going to reverse any attempt I made by executive order to force them to accept gays into the military. And let me remind you that the public opinion is now more strongly in our favor than it was sixteen years ago and I have continued supporting it. That John Shalikashvili, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under me, was against “Don’t A..” – was against letting gays serve – is now in favor of it. This is a different world. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
Let me also say something that never got sufficient publicity at the time. When General Colin Powell came up with this ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ it was defined while he was Chairman much differently than it was implemented. He said that, if you will accept this, here is what we’ll do. We will not pursue anyone, any military members out of uniform will be free to march in gay rights parades, go to gay bars, go to political meetings, whatever mailings they get, whatever they do in their private lives, none of this will be a basis for dismissal. It all turned out to be a fraud because of the enormous reaction against it among the middle level officers and down after it was promulgated and Colin was gone. So nobody regrets how this was implemented even more… anymore than I do. But the congress also put that into law by a veto-proof majority and many of your friends voted for that, believing the explanation about how it would be eliminated. So, I hated what happened. I regret it. But I didn’t have, I didn’t think at the time, any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all. Look, I think it’s ridiculous. Can you believe they spent – what did they spend? – 150,000 dollars to get rid of a valuable Arabic speaker recently?
And, you know, the thing that changed me forever on ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the 1st Gulf War and all their commanders knew they were gay, they let them go and risk their lives ‘cause they needed them, and then as soon as the 1st Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That’s all I needed to know, that’s all anybody needs to know, to know that this policy should be changed.
Now, while we’re at it, let me say one thing about DOMA, since you… The reason I signed DOMA was, and I said when I signed it, that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left out to states and the religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage they ought to. We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the Levin referendum much later in 2004, in the election, which the Republicans put on the ballot, to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it’s obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican congress presenting that. The President doesn’t even get to veto that. It’s the Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states. I didn’t like signing DOMA, and I certainly didn’t like the constraints it would put on benefits, and I’ve done everything I’ve could, and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees, and I don’t like that eith… I don’t like the DOMA.But actually all these things illustrate the point I was trying to make. America has rapidly moved to a different place to a lot of these issues and so what we have to decide is what we are going to do about it.
(transcript via)
Andy
I call shenanigans!
Ohomo
This is a classic case of bloggers who don’t know their history. Clinton’s explanation is in fact, factual. Someday Queerty will be saying that Gavin Newsom was to blame for failing to pass a gay marriage law. Get it straight or get out of the conversation.
Chance
Bill’s right. There’s nothing a president, popular or not,can do for us as long as religion still sanctions the lie that LGBT are wrong and sinful. And if the president is also religious, as Barack “Wrestling With My Faith And My Concern For Homosexuals” Obama seems to be, then we’re doubly screwed. We’re incredibly foolish if we wait for gifts on high to come, instead of actively challenging the beliefs that make us wrong.
Alexa
I hope people read more than the parts you bolded, because all of it is pertinent and interesting. Such as:
“And, you know, the thing that changed me forever on ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the 1st Gulf War and all their commanders knew they were gay, they let them go and risk their lives ‘cause they needed them, and then as soon as the 1st Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That’s all I needed to know, that’s all anybody needs to know, to know that this policy should be changed.”
and
“We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the Levin referendum much later in 2004, in the election, which the Republicans put on the ballot, to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it’s obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican congress presenting that. The President doesn’t even get to veto that.”
Landon Bryce
This explanation of the defense of marriage act is a lie made up for Hillary’s presidential candidacy. It made its debut at the LOGO forum. There is no truth to it.
Bill fails to explain how it is the fault of the gay people that he used his willingness to sign DOMA to campaign in the south. Not does he explain how that fits into this largely fictional narrative.
He also does not mention how in 2004 he was advising John Kerry to gay bash.
This is disgusting.
Are people really dim enough to accept it?
DavidMichael
Bill is the most authentic charismatic president with the highest IQ we will probably ever see. What he says sticks good to my ribs.
Landon Bryce
Bill is also 100% responsible for the Bush presidency. Al Gore would easily have won in 2000 if not for the Lewinsky scandal.
Cam
Yeah, he kind of leaves out the part where when he signed DOMA he was 16 points ahead in the polls.
Alexander
Actually… his comments kinda all make sense. He’s a president, not an action star. He can’t just swoop in, guns a-blazing and save the queers, especially with a hostile congress who was having none of that. I’d be perfectly happy now if he was vocal and active in his support of gay rights; everyone deserves a second chance, right?
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
You’re wrong twice, Landon.
1. Clinton’s approval rating actually went UP after Monicagate, and he left the Presidency with a 65% approval rating—according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll at the time, “the highest for a departing president in the half-century of modern polling,” including Reagan.
RALPH NADER’s pathological ego, the Republican Secretary of State of Florida, and the Supreme Court are why we “ended up with Bush.” If the vote count in Florida had not been stopped, Gore would probably have won, given that officially he only lost by 537 votes there out of nearly 6 MILLION.
2. He may be culpable for his ignorance OR disingenuousness re community support in ’93 re the gay military ban, but he has denied the charge by mercenary political hack Bob Shrum who seems to always come up with some smear about whomever is not paying him to run [and lose] their campaign at the time—he also accused John Edwards of being antigay, then retracted it] that he advised Kerry to “gay bash” as you call it, and Kerry, himself, never said he did.
3. Clinton’s oversimplified last night, and it’s mindboggling how he can still speak of Colin Powell positively when homophobic, two-faced, lying, empty-suit Powell lead the Pentagon mutiny against his attempt to end the ban. He should have had the balls to fire him the same way Truman fired Gen. MacArthur when he was insubordinate.
But given the many people working their own agendas in 1993, and how isolated any President is, it’s believable that Clinton is still unaware that people working for him were telling gays such as David Mixner to NOT try to raise support for overturning the ban, that everything was going smoothly, not to worry. Even gay Congressman Gerry Studds, with years of experience in Washington, believed admin reps that things were on track…until it was too late.
4. Common denominator then and now: Rahm Emanuel. Senior Advisor to Clinton; Obama’s Chief of Staff.
5. Clinton should be encouraged to join the wide variety of people actively lobbying for repeal of both DADT & DOMA.
AND for an executive order by Obama freezing discharges. His refusal to use this legal option, given him by Congress that trumps DADT, is inexcusable when, in his own words, such discharges “weaken national security.”
Joel
I cannot hold Clinton as blameless as he would prefer for DADT, but nor can I ignore the cold political realities behind his response here.
I worked on the Hill during the DADT debate, and there were many political shortcomings in our community during that time. Clinton may have shown his own shortcomings, but that should not absolve us of our own.
And that brings us to Mr. Hudson. While I assume he is well intended, including with his role in the “Dallas Principles,” which I support, we have heard little since their unveiling in the way of their translation into tangible political output.
It’s a repeat of DADT: a community seeking to exercise its opinion, and its vocal chords, in search of equality, but without the level of political maturity, including toiling in the fields, that is required.
In politics, you can cry and ask for something all you want, but it is never given. It’s taken, with hard work.
Landon Bryce
Michael,
Gore’s campaign strategy required distancing himself from Clinton and it failed him miserably. He would have won without the scandal. Clinton would also have been able to, you know, govern without it. The glowing assessments of his presidency in the comments here are beyond even what you would say, and they make me despair.
I believe that Clinton gave Kerry that advice because it is completely in character. It is identical in spirit to his campaign ads bragging about DOMA, his Sister Souljah moment, his Jesse Jackson one recently. It is who he is. That you do not believe it flies in the face of everything we know about this man.
Listen to the Linndie England interview from the BBC. Bill and she sound exactly the same in their willingness to take no responsibility for using their power to hurt people less powerful than themselves.
ioni
Is there anything the man will not lie about?!
Dennis
@Landon Bryce: #7
You are 100% delusional.
There is some modest spin going on here by Clinton but the MAJORITY of what he is saying is factual. Deal with it. Yeah, getting a BJ by the chubby Jewish intern was a mistake (like he’s the only President who’s fucked around an his wife…try most of them).
Then, as now, evengelical sex-phobic obssesed rethuglican Jeebus freaks in congress did (and are now doing) everything they can to blatantly lie, to accuse, to obstruct progress, and to persecute any and all people who do not worship their precious Jeebus, and crucify all who do not bow down to their delusional self-proclaimed moral superiority.
Bush won because Al Gore has the charisma of toast, and his brother (and his Jeebus Thugs including that clown-makeup Harris cunt) stole Florida’s election, and the reactionary, conservative Supreme Court was unwilling to stand up for truth, and caved to avoid a further national scandal.
Bill Clinton is far from perfect, but what paradise, if our worst national problems now revolved around a jizz stain on a cheap blue dress.
InExile
So glad Bill set the record straight after hearing so many Obots bash the Clintons right here on Queerty. Too bad Bill & Hill are not the ones in the White House now, maybe something would be happening for gays.
As far as Bill stating we could not deliver any congressional support back then, I believe it after our community having to focus on AIDS for so long. All of our money and focus was on AIDS to help our own back then, not equality. The push for equality really got side tracked.
edgyguy1426
@DavidMichael: What he says sticks in my throat (no pun intended) If Clinton was so against signing DOMA then why did he go on so many African American radio station touting the fact that he did? You can’t have it both ways, Bill.
Ryan C
I’m glad Bill set the record straight. It’s really amazing how many people don’t know their own history. It’s easy to sit back in 2009 and armchair legislate so to speak, but the political landscape Clinton worked with was a helluva lot more anti-gay. I mean gay sex was still illegal in a lot of states. Both DADT and DOMA were compromise pieces of legislation and both were at the time the “lesser of two evils.”
Gays were banned from serving in the military before DADT, so although he couldn’t get the support for gays to serve openly, DADT was at least a step forward at the time.
And if Bill hadn’t signed DOMA, Congress would have pushed through the amendment and seeing how nearly every state has or had its own version of DOMA on the books, there’s no doubt it would’ve passed. Now with the trouble Congress is having to repeal DOMA, imagine if you also had to go back to 38 states to repeal a constitutional amendment. It would be forever and a day before gays got any federal recognition. Some of you may not see it that way, but Bill actually saved us a whole lotta heartache by signing the weaker garbage.
@Landon Bryce
And just a side not, Gore lost Tennessee, his home state. While the Monica scandal hurt democrats some, you can’t put really put the blame on anybody else when you lose your home state.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@Landon Bryce:
Gore’s campaign strategy “required” nothing of him. It was the strategy he CHOSE, and, again, there was NO empirical evidence to justify it, just Gore’s personal feelings.
Who doesn’t use someone that 65% of the public approve of? I admire Gore a great deal [for, among other reasons, his privately urging Clinton to veto DADT even though he knew that, by then, the veto would be overridden], but he shot himself in the foot by freezing out Bill.
But you have the Love to Hate Him Hit List memorized.
Sister “If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill White people?”-“If there are any good White people, I haven’t met them.” Souljah deserved to be criticized and his statement, “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech” was true.
If that was dishonest exploitation, then so was Obama’s dumping Jeremiah Wright, comparing him to a “crazy old uncle,” after he’d praised him in his autobiography as a great inspiration.
And it’s still too soon for most to be honest, but someday history books will report that the side playing the “race card” in the 2008 election was Obama’s…even without including his using Donnie “Gays are trying to kill America’s children” McClurkin to, in the words of black lesbian minister Irene Monroe, drum up homophobic black votes in South Carolina.
Yes, there are tons of things that Clinton is unequivocally guilty of…..like not having the balls to tell Powell, Nunn, et al. to go fuck themselves when they first resisted his plan to end the gay ban…but they’re floating in a silly sea of outright lies, unsubstantiated smears, and psychobabble about what we “know.”
Besides, why waste your time when the World’s #1 Clinton Hater should be pulling up his stolen grocery cart full of lies and pathological demonization any minute?
Chitown Kev
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com:
Now, now….
Bubba equating Lane Hudson with one of these town hall crazies is a cheap shot.
I also think that Clinton saying all of this is easy since he’s not running for anything and Hillary isn’t running for anything anytime soon.
I do agree with you pt. about Rahm, though. Rahm is making a lot of enemies.
Chitown Kev
The Monica scandal certainly didn’t help Gore but it didn’t hurt him either. He had no business running that far from Clinton and his accomplishments.
Landon Bryce
@Dennis:
The blow job was not the unforgivable mistake. Lying to Congress about it was. Giving Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr the ammunition to the Democratic power for a decade is a big deal. He should have taken the office of the Presidency seriously enough to avoid the affair. He should have been honest about it immediately when confronted about it. Having an affair is no big deal. The president perjuring himself– even about something stupid, even when he should never have been called– is a big deal.
He gave Bush the White House. Period. It is 100% delusional to suggest there is any chance Bush would won the electoral college in college if Bill Clinton had not lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
I am an obnoxious atheist, but I have learned that anyone who uses the word “Jeebus” is hateful in a way I find especially odious. Where does it come from?
Ryan, I never claimed Gore was a thrilling candidate. It is just a statement of fact that he would have won the election without the Lewinsky scandal. He did in fact win the popular vote, so you are being disingenuous in suggesting his candidacy was basically a joke.
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com:
I think you are relying on one poll rather than what people actually thought and said. I think you completely ignore how the media piled on everything Gore did– Clinton would not have had that approval rating if they had not stopped trashing him to focus on Gore. They would not have done that if Gore had kept Clinton by his side. But, yes, there was that ONE POLL so you deny all facts and claim that Clinton did not lose the White House for DEmocrats in 2000.
I don’t deny facts, and I think they matter. I don’t hate Clinton, but I don’t love him, either. I think that makes me more reliable than you or the haters.
dgz
he sounds like he’s mad at gays, like we backstabbed him.
M Shane
Landon Bryce : I believe that you are correct all the way down. Interestingly , just for emphasis they should have asked Clinton about NAFTA. I don’t know where this concept of a “veto proof majority “came along. Also, to claim that Colin Powell was out of the picture since DADT is beyond absurd; where was he over the past 8 years. I don’t recallhis bringing a hint of decency into the picture-he was hardly powerless..
As far as the remarks about Clinton being the only one to go out on his wife, that is a weird ad hominum, since all of the other presidents since Kenedy have been impotent. Imagine a Bush getting it up for anything!
That Clinton has the highestest I.Q of any other adjacent president, if any of them had lower I.Q’s they couldn’t recall the names of their cabinent members. Like a lot of people with high I.Q’s Clinton was a consumate lier, and not too much of any switch fron the Republican– globalizing trde was one of the biggest Right wing disasters this country has suffered, and in complete consancy with the NEOCON program of dominating the world.
Ryan C
@Landon Bryce: I give you the fact that without the scandal Gore would have won, but the blame for losing has to rest with Gore. I think what you’re trying to say is that Gore shouldn’t have had to lift a finger to win the White House because Clinton’s administration should have won it for him. Which is true to some degree, but you can only rely on your predecessor to a certain extinct. You can’t just sleepwalk and expect to wake up President on election day. Had Gore run a better campaign, he would have won. It’s like the anchor leg of a relay running the slowest time, but blaming the rest of the team for not giving him a big of enough lead.
Anyway you look at it, Gore had a great set-up. The best they had was your boss got a bj. And he was running against a former cocaine using drunk with a C+ average at best. I’m sorry, but 2000 is on Gore.
Popsnap
Bill Clinton supported us at a time when many people were “tolerant” but not “accepting” of us, and instantly thought of stereotypes and sex. He tried, up until it became politically unwise for him to do so. Does that excuse him? No, but its not like he turned around and said “BWAHAHA FUCK THEM GAYS” to spite us.
He was a great president, and a hell of a lot better than Bush ever was or Obama will ever be. I bet George Washington & FDR weren’t exactly concerned about our rights, but I still think they were great presidents for their respective time periods.
InExile
It was Clinton’s fault Gore lost? Some of you seem to forget Katherine Harris with her hanging chads, Jebb Bush, as well as our right wing supreme court. Want to blame someone, blame Sandra Day O’Connor the swing vote that gave Bush the White House in 2000.
In 2004, blame Nader and the wonderful state of Ohio which was full of crooked republicans at the time manipulating the vote.
M Shane
p.s. Something that is really interesting is that while people buy into this ‘expaination’ of Clinton’s the “all you did was to attack me instead of geting me some support in Congress.”
they proceed to do the same thing with Obama. All anyone does ist attaCK HIM INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT THE FUNKY CONGERESS HE HASTO DEAL WITH and to do something with them-they make the critical decisins.
AlwaysGay
Lane asked Bill if he would support the repeal of DADT and DOMA and Bill launched an attack on gay people. Everything Bill said were lies. He told gay people not to worry about DADT, that he and congress got every under control. Then at the last minute things went wrong and we ended up with DADT. Bill Clinton is at fault for not working with gay people to push Congress. In 1996, he traveled across the country touting his success in passing DOMA.
Gay people get a brain and a spine.
Joel
M Shane: Exactly. We are replaying DADT all over again: demanding change, demanding it right now, with “no excuses,” while failing to demonstrate the political maturity and potency that is required in the real world of politics.
Good God, some in our community are organizing a wheezing march on DC when Congress isn’t there, others are issuing breathless manifestos with no real followup, while some others whisper in the President’s ear not to worry.
Same situation, and yet we expect different results somehow.
Landon Bryce
@Ryan C:
Oh, I’m not saying Gore ran a good campaign or that the Republicans are not to blame for almost everything. I’m saying that the American people would have been better served if Clinton had not given horrible people enough ammunition to destroy not only him but his party. I’m saying that it is wrong for people to behave as though Bill Clinton were either a demon or a saint rather than both. He was both the best president the United States had ever had on gay rights and the president who signed the most anti-gay federal legislation in American history. He presided over a period of nearly unprecedented prosperity and laid the seeds for our current economic disaster. He is both hero and monster.
The Shakespearean character he most resembles is Falstaff, in his essential nobility, in his good humor, his selfishness, his sensuality, and his utter consistency in a total lack of integrity.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@Landon Bryce:
We have shared some opinions in the past, but either reread your own contradictions:
Gore won the popular vote but yet he lost because of Clinton????
And this part is totally incoherent:
I think you completely ignore how the media piled on everything Gore did– Clinton would not have had that approval rating if they had not stopped trashing him to focus on Gore. They would not have done that if Gore had kept Clinton by his side. But, yes, there was that ONE POLL so you deny all facts and claim that Clinton did not lose the White House for DEmocrats in 2000.”
“@Chitown Kev:
I think Clinton’s initial overreaction/misperception of Hudson was simply the result of his having so much in his mind of the kind of mobs of screamers for screamers’/disruption’s sake we’ve seen recently. [Which not only disgust me but seriously frighten me to death and you know what I mean…..]. From the video, it looks like a huge room of people….many of them booed Hudson themselves for whatever reason…and while he apparently heard/understood the question I think there was the simultaneous “reflex reaction.” Say what you will about Bill, he’s NOT one afraid of being challenged.
And the organizers were wrong not to have scheduled a Q&A at the end, which, again, I doubt was something BC demanded.
@AlwaysGay:
Get a brain? You first, doctor. Clinton did NOT “across the country touting his success in passing DOMA” in 1996. There were some radio ads that were quickly pulled. Never should have been made in the first place, but spare us the worse myths.
@M SHAME:
There you go again! You’re momma called and she’s begging you to pull your head out of Obama’s ass before you smother to death.
He does not NEED the permission of ONE person in Congress to LEGALLY stop discharges before DADT is repealed. And many of them are asking him to do just that.
Landon Bryce
@M Shane: Thanks!
I think I disagree only in that we need to keep pressure on both Obama and Congress– you have been right to point out that people focus way too much on the president and that racism is clearly at fault for much of that. But I am still absolutely disgusted by Obama. No one who took seriously the equality of gay and lesbian people would have made Tim Kaine the head of the DNC. Period. I think the movement we have seen from the Obama administration is only because of the degree of pressure that has been kept on him.
Michael is right that Clinton wants us to follow the same advice he gave us in 1993: shut up and let the big smart straight boys take care of us. It will work no better now than it did then.
Stop letting Obama off the hook for the people he has chosen to work with and the sexual minorities he has kept shut out of real power.
Landon Bryce
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com:
I am often incoherent, as you well know. Thanks for trying.
My basic premise is that Clinton would have been more popular had he had not lied to the American people about his affair. I think that that factor alone (like many, many others) was significant enough that it is impossible to deny that in an election as close as the 2000 one, Gore would have won. Clinton hurt the Democratic party brand badly by perjuring himself. I was drawn into this discussion by people commenting as though he were not a major factor in giving power over to the most extreme elements of the Republican party. He acted extremely badly and, yes, obviously there would never have been an Iraq War had he answered honestly when asked if he had blown his load on Monica.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@Landon Bryce:
I agree that Clinton was beyond stupid re Monica…it was textbook pathological to fulfill the prophecy of your most ruthless opponents. His is a psychodynamic that some explain, in part, by coming out of the family of an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler. And it certainly hurt his own programs if only by all the time taken up on the scandal. But its negative effect upon the 2000 election was Gore’s reaction..
@Joel:
“Same situation” my ass!
Clinton’s naivete was drowned in the perfect storm of opposition by the Antigay Industry generally and their members in Congress and the Pentagon specifically. In addition to the enormously popular Powell threatening to resign as Chair of the Joint Chiefs, Carl Mundy, Commandant of the Marines, showed the Chiefs the rabidly antigay video, “The Gay Agenda,” and made copies of it for others in the military and Congress. It’s producer distributed FIFTY-FIVE THOUSAND COPIES that spring.
Pre-existing groups both genuinely hated gays AND saw it as a great fundraising tool. Falwell, Robertson, Sheldon, Dobson, James Kennedy, Gary Bauer, Robert Knight, Even Oliver North joined the fray, send letter to hundreds of thousands of his supporters asking for “a special contribution of $15 or $22 right away” to stop him. By the end of the ’93, the Christian Coalition had increased its membership by 20%.
The week after Clinton’s inauguration, in ONE day alone, members of Congress got over 400,000 phone calls against lifting the ban…five times the daily average.
In August of 1992, 59% of Americans favored lifting the ban. By the end of January 1993 that number had dropped to 35%.
Today, roughly 75% of Americans favor it, including 59% of Republicans. Other homohating demagogues survive but two of its greatest, Falwell and James Kennedy, are dead; Dobson is mostly retired and his group is begging for donations to make up a “$6 million shortfall.” Harpy loon Elaine Donnelly sent an antigay letter to the President which included signatories who are dead.
Clinton MIGHT have prevailed if he’d immediately called their bluff and issued an Executive Order as Truman did re military racial integration. But he fiddled and the coalition burned him down.
In today’s 95% different climate, what’s Obama’s excuse re neither taking an active role in leading Congress to repeal nor instructing his military reports to immediately come up with an implementation plan as he promise NOR issued an Executive Order freezing discharges as he’s legally empowered by Congress to do in times of national emergency.
If one believes him genuinely not homophobic, there’s only one explanation: he is afraid of the few remaining dinosaurs in the military who support the ban.
Class: can you say “moral and political cowardice”?
Joel
Michael: I don’t disagree with a single new factor you mentioned.
None of it changes the portrait of our own political anemia.
Whether it’s the health care debate or DADT, I’ve grown weary of our side mouthing mightily about some heavenly alignment, while still failing to have laid our own solid groundwork. Then, when the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a train instead of the sun, we blame someone else for the outcome (the very trait that irritates us when practiced by Mr. Clinton).
You sound like many Dem operatives I heard spin tales of bliss at how the nation was ready for health care reform this time. Now that it’s hit the fan, what’s the plan? Where’s the message infrastructure? What machine do we have to keep Members to our side?
It’s blind bliss you’re peddling, and I’m not buying it.
Kropotkin
“Bill is also 100% responsible for the Bush presidency. Al Gore would easily have won in 2000 if not for the Lewinsky scandal.”
Al Gore lost to Bush because he was Al Gore.
M Shane
Mr. Matlovich:
“He does not NEED the permission of ONE person in Congress to LEGALLY stop discharges before DADT is repealed. And many of them are asking him to do just that.”
I’m not sure, given all you write that you do much thinking :
(I’ll reiterate) It makes no sense at all for Obama to singn a statement stopping discharges when it clearly presuposes what the Congress will do, and is hence tantimont to his making laws. It can’t be clearer; the issue is very devisive and far from being a done deal. The Military Gen Miller (I believe) made public statements against the our cause which was completely inappropriate. It should at least indicate to you that one of the biggest dangers this country now lives in the constant shadow of is an GROTESQUELY overgrown MiIltary (‘Wofowitz Doctrine’ 1992). The U.S spends more on the Military than all of our other expenditures over 3/4s of which is unecessary and illegal, and the Congress is invested in it even the most “liberal of Senators has military bases and Armament factories that want to support.
InExile
@M Shane: #27 Clinton did not have a list of promises on a website. Clinton did not promise to be a “fierce advocate” for gays. Clinton did not continue to make promises while doing nothing.
I’m sure it is not that Obama does not want to honor his promises, he is just not strong enough to do so. I hope he gets the “bi-partisan” support he thinks he needs for everything.
M Shane
@No. 32 · Landon Bryce : re; the people he has chosen to work with {black religious freaks?]
I have been aware for a considerable time that Afro – Americans do not associate or like blacks who don’t fit thier profile of black slave stock : I.e. they hate any African blacks, the hate well educated blacks, and they dn’t like or trust people who aren’t deeply churchified(that is their subgroups power center). It was very cl;ear when Liberals started pushing for Obama as president he had the qualifications to pass as an Afro -American, wh was smart enough to lead. The Afro American community disagreed rather strongly. They said (to me that a “real black man” would be some one
who is a black Baptist Minister etc. So Obama was faced with the necessity (not choice) to sell himself to the Black people as a popular leader, not for them but so the white liberals could say that they had gotten a black man elected.
Trust me this was far morre important on their agenda than gay rights or anybodies rights.
Now he is stuck with having to keep happy assholes of the likes of Donna Brazille or lose the black suport and let that whole house of cards fall.
Because in fact, there are very few black people around who have any power who are not associated with religious
fanatics. He does have a choice to hang himself or to pansy foot around these people. All he needs are for a few black loudmouths to start spouting off that he has betrayed them. If he was a white man or woman his choices would be of a different kind.
M Shane
No. 38 · InExile The biggest going delusion going around is that ” BIPARTISAN BULLSHIT”. I have been giving a lot of thought to how destructive that myth is to the Democratic Party. It seems that they believe (?) in such a thing . I was watching adocumentary that just came out of political analists commenting on the current tactics of the parties.
There seemed to be some concurance on the logistical matter of reconciliation; whereas the Republicans never move left in any situation; if anything they have consistently moved farther Right- ie. the Neocons & Bush., The Democrats have always become more centrist or right in a conflict. How people read this is that they can’t trust the Democrates.(which I think we can all agree with). WHAT THE DEMOCRATES NEED TO DO IS TO ESTABLISH A STRICT POSITION BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND THE GOP. They need to stake their territory, regarding re;Civil Rights, Taxes, the Economy , Labor. and stay there.
I am really concerned that there is some talk that Obama may be on the Neocon side of the Economic fence, regardless of healthcare. That would make him as bad as Reagan or Bush.
Chitown Kev
@M Shane:
#39 FTW- You hit the nail right on the motherfucking head.
Andrew
Look, Bill is married to a lesbian who was just knocked out of the White House by a black man. He can be bitter.
edgyguy1426
Just reading the words “I didn’t like signing DOMA” and then hearing those radio spots which will forever be burned inside my memory.. Why do these Clintons always tell a lie that can easily be disproved by audio video or something that hasn’t beed dry-cleaned yet? It makes me think reports of them being so intelligent are greatly exaggerated.
Landon Bryce
@M Shane:
I agree with adorable Kevin about everything you wrote in your message.
No, I can’t complain about any black people Obama has chosen to work with since becoming president. Has he as president chosen to work with black religious nuts? He hasn’t chosen to work with Donna Brazile, ever, has he?
I’m talking about the white dudes. I’m talking about Rahm Emanuel. I’m talking Tim Kaine. I’m talking about Robert Gibbs. President Obama has chosen to hurt gay and lesbian people by continuing in the belief that we are simply unfit for the highest level of governemnt service. He has put people who hate gay people into positions of power where they have already hurt us– Kaine immediately cut all funding to Stonewall Democrats, and only direct intercession from Andy Tobias redirected a pittance their way.
Mostly, though, I’m talking about an LGBT-free cabinet. I’m talking no representation for us in White House discussion on health care, the economy– shit where we NEED to be heard every fucking day, not just in June.
Closet cases are less likely to advocate for gays than heteros, so don’t even bother there.
Bill Perdue
At this point there are only a few diehard liars claiming that Clinton was trying to do us a favor championing DADT and DOMA.
Michael Bedwell, nee Leland Francis is the most prolific of that swiftly dwindling troop of cultists because the evidence against Clinton is by now overwhelming. Even Bedwell/Francis is pretending to be just a tiny bit critical of his idol and admitting things he’s denied or ignored for years.
The truth is this. Clinton championed and signed DADT and DOMA not to protect us from a federal DOMA, that’s simply a lie, but because he’s a Southerner, a right winger adept at pandering to other religious bigots.
Champion: To fight for, defend, or support as a champion. An ardent defender or supporter of a cause. In Clinton‘s case the causes were deregulation of predatory banks, union busting, draconian cuts in welfare, creating a humanitarian nightmare for childen in Iraq and promoting bigotry by making it into law.
His bigoted support for DADT and DOMA was not out of character, not a misstep and not isolated. Even though much of the legislation Clinton championed was written by Republicans he was its most important supporter. Clinton the Dixiecrat is a thoroughgoing right winger, a right centrist to be exact.
DOMA and DADT wouldn’t have passed without his support and the support of most Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The ad Michael Bedwell, nee Leland Francis mentions not only boasts of his support for DOMA, it promotes restrictions on abortions and supports the rights of cults to gouge – tithing. The as was an appeal for the bigot vote and it was withdrawn after it served its purpose.
Clinton also championed NAFTA, draconian cuts in welfare and the deregulation of predatory banks and lenders. Now he’s collecting huge fees for speaking at events sponsored by the same predators, sometime, as in San Diego, crossing union and LGBT picket lines to collect his twenty pieces of silver.
Clinton promoted a humanitarian nightmare for Iraqi children. Lying, Clinton claimed that Saadam Hussein was stockpiling WMDs to attack US interests and imposed an embargo on food, medical supplies and sanitary supplies on Iraq. Roughly half a million Iraqi children died as a direct result of his murderous embargo. Clintons Secretary of State Madeline Albright defended the murders in this chilling interview with Leslie Stahl on CBSs 60 Minutes on May 12th, 1996:
Lesley Stahl “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Clinton is a rightwing Dixiecrat, a right centrist to be exact, and claims that he didn’t betray GLBT folks, unions, workers, and consumers or that he didn’t kill a lot of Iraqi children are lies. Those who make those claims are liars.
[img]http://www.scopelabs.net/blamepics/billclinton.jpg[/img]
Bill Perdue
At this point there are only a few diehard liars who still argue that Clinton was trying to do us a favor championing DADT and DOMA.
Michael Bedwell is the most prolific of that swiftly dwindling troop of diehard Clinton cultists because the evidence against Clinton is so overwhelming. Even Bedwell is pretending to be just a tiny bit critical of his idol and admitting things he’s denied or ignored for years.
The truth is this. Clinton championed and signed DADT and DOMA not to protect us from a federal DOMA, that’s simply a lie, but because he’s a redneck, religious bigot.
Champion: To fight for, defend, or support as a champion. An ardent defender or supporter of a cause. In Clinton‘s case the causes were deregulation of predatory banks, union busting, draconian cuts in welfare,
killing Iraqi children and promoting bigotry by making it into law.
His bigoted support for DADT and DOMA was not out of character, not a misstep and not isolated. Even though much of the legislation Clinton championed was written by Republicans he was its most important supporter. Clinton the Dixiecrat was a thoroughgoing right winger, a right centrist to be exact.
DOMA and DADT wouldn’t have passed without his support and the support of most Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The ad Michael Bedwell mentions not only boasts of his support for DOMA, it promotes restrictions on abortions and supports the rights of cults to gouge – tithing. The as was an appeal for the bigot vote and it was withdrawn after it served its purpose.
Clinton also championed NAFTA, draconian cuts in welfare and the deregulation of predatory banks and lenders. Now he’s collecting huge fees for speaking at events sponsored by the same predators, sometime, as in San Diego, crossing union and LGBT picket lines to collect his twenty pieces of silver.
Clinton promoted a humanitarian nightmare. Lying, Clinton claimed that Saadam Hussein was stockpiling WMDs to attack US interests and imposed an embargo on food, medical supplies and sanitary supplies on Iraq. Roughly half a million Iraqi children died as a direct result of his murderous embargo. Clintons Secretary of State Madeline Albright defended the murders in this chilling interview with Leslie Stahl on CBSs 60 Minutes on May 12th, 1996:
Lesley Stahl “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Clinton is a rightwing Dixiecrat, a right centrist to be exact, and claims that he didn’t betray GLBT folks, unions, workers, and consumers or that he didn’t kill a lot of Iraqi children are lies. Those who make those claims are liars.
WillBFair
At last, gay people are considering political realities. What a shocker.
Then as now, the polls showed the public were massively selfish about marraige. Now they support domestic partnership, a darling concession. And dadt was best compromise possible at the time. That was always obvious.
But again, gay people don’t bother with polls. They’d rather pretend that politicians are leather pigs taking orders in full harness. Or they just make it up whole clothe without a shed of evidence, and name call till they’re blue in the face. Name calling is the sign of a dingbat.
Obama and the Clintons have always been our friends. But they can’t re-carpet the Universe on demand. They also can’t do much for us when we’re shooting ourselves in the foots.
In the 90s, we were busy fighting aids, as InExile points out. Now it’s time to grow up and make some savy decisions, and formulate a mature strategy.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
I’m talking about the portion of the electorate that would not support Obama throughout his career as a black politician in Chicago. M Shane, in fact, gets it exactly right. Black folks that aren’t deeply “churchified” or who are educated always supported him; that was why Obama chose Trinity for a church; Trinity has an abundance of both. The “deeply churchified” black community did not like Obama yet Obama pandered to them. Truth be told, Hillary Clinton had a better network in that deeply churchified portion of the black community than Obama initially. The game changer, in that regard, was Iowa.
Now can Obama hold on to that vote is a good question.
Do look at what M Shane is saying in this sense. The “black community” is not monolithic. AT ALL.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
well, I think we all suspect that the Cabinet is not LGBT free. Maybe we LGBT’s will be safe and protected and have some security in our (ahem!) homeland.
Landon Bryce
@Chitown Kev:
I am pleased to have elicited M Shane’s response which, again, I completely agree with.
However, I think you know I was right when I wrote that closeted gays are less likely than straights to ever mention gay rights. In fact, they tend to speak against us when they do speak in order to protect themselves. In terms of anyone who is ever going to say anything about gay issues, the Cabinet is 100% gay and lesbian free.
And that is not something that is cute to joke about.
It’s a fucking obscenity.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
oh, very, very true in that regard to closet gays in the cabinet.
Or (if I be catty for a minute) closet gays in the Congress (freshmen cuties from the Midwest) that like to compare and trade secrets on gams with the First Lady.
I mean to me, Obama is simply another Clinton at this time, really.
Landon Bryce
I think he’s more than that, Kevin. I don’t think he will ever show the appalling lack of integrity that Clinton has shown over and over again. I was thinking earlier this week how Hillary really seems to have come into her own as Secretary of State, how I might support in a run for the presidency after the Obama years. She’ll be awfully old, but younger thn Reagan in terms of life expectancy. Then I remembered Bill and how absurd the idea of him as first Dude would be. Then I thought, “Bill might be dead by then!” Then I remembered hard working white people and I thought, “Fuck Hillary.”
I love her as Secretary of State, though.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
“Then I remembered Bill and how absurd the idea of him as first Dude would be. Then I thought, “Bill might be dead by then!” Then I remembered hard working white people and I thought, “Fuck Hillary.”
LOL!
Yes, those HARD working white folks working the town halls and trying to avoid the Obama death cam…oops, panels (but that’s what thr Rethugs are really trying to evoke).
That’s how silly they sound, really.
Landon Bryce
@Chitown Kev: Yes, exactly. Those are exactly the people I see as Hillary’s hard working white people, shrieking about what has happened to their America.
I’ve been watching 30 Rock and fantasizing about Tina Fey hosting a special called Sarah Palin’s Death Panel. It would be a lot like the dating game, except with a panel of celebrities deciding if various old people get to live or die. “Angela Lansbury can stay but Dick van Dyke is a waste of space!”
The Gay Numbers
If the buck stops with President Obama, then the buck stops with President Clinton. No double standards. You show your color here.
InExile
@M Shane:#40 The democrats need to start being democrats and stop this middle of the road bulls**t. The democrats (President included) are still destroying themselves by playing around in the middle. Honestly, it is getting harder and harder to tell these two parties apart. Bi-partisan is a dream, the repugs just continue to stab the democrats in the back.
Bill Perdue
@The Gay Numbers: @Landon Bryce: @Landon Bryce: @M Shane:
There’s a disconnect in this discussion. People who voted for Hillary or Obama to save us from ‘fascists’ like McCain now realize they blundered but not understanding the nature of the Democrat Party they blame thier blunders on the ‘failure’ of their candidates.
The candidates didn’t ‘fail’; they just acted like the good little lapdogs and gofers for the rich that they campaign all thier lives to be. Democrats, like their Republican cousins, are mired in obligations to corporations.
Obama got tens of millions from big Pharma and financial giants like Goldman-Sachs. And loyal lapdog that he is he repaid his debts by scuttling socialized medicine and handing out trillions to the looter rich. Reid is a tool of the gambling industry. Pelosi and Feinstein are rich in their own right. Perhaps the worst of them are the Clintons who got their money from war contractors and 140 last pardons of wealthy drug lords and financial swindlers on his last day in office.
McClatchy’s newsletter reports
Common Dreams reports that
The problem is not just the candidates it’s the twin parties of the rich as a whole, including its base that project clueless motives on candidates who don’t give a rat’s ass about us. Democrats and Republicans line their pockets with bribes and pander to christer bigots. That’s how we know they’re Democrats or Republicans.
Voting for Democrats (or Republicans) is clueless.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: I read that Obama received over 18 million, more than all the candidates combined from the health care industry for his campaign in 2008. The Obots will tell you ALL THAT MONEY he raised was from $5 donations. Any wonder why the “public option” is not being fought for?
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
With DADT, I do give Clinton some space (not a lot) on the subject that I don’t give to Obama because times were different. To a much lesser extent, I give Clinton space on health care too.
I would do it with DOMA but not only did Clinton sign the damn thing when he didn’t have to; he campaigned on it. So since Clinton really wanted ownership on DOMA then, it’s his legacy. Own that bitch, Bubba.
M Shane
No. 56 · InExile:& Bill.
There will be no true Democracy until the Money obligations are whiped out. At the founding of this country , I don’t believe that anyone believed that leaders believed political people would be so wholesale caught up in aspirations of greed: that everything else was secondary. Of course we expect Repugs to be licking the boots of Corporations. But who who would imagine that. Decocrates would have sold out Labor (whose interests are their formost obligation) or who would fuck around with basic Civil Rights because (of all things) religious qualms. All of the senators , not just a few, Bill, have a vested interest in the monster Military: giving them $600+ billion dollars. An outrage.
It was a Republican, D. Eisenhower, leaving office who most of all warned us in loud explicit terms of the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Apparently no one paid any heed, or took it as advice. Because here it is sitting on our heads.
It is not Constitutional to have a “standing army” of any kind yet which even comes close to the U.S. aborition. What have they done since WW2. They have been engaged in one unilateral conflict after another to protect Corporate interests around the world.
if the U.S. Citizenry had one purpose, it would be to demand the “public option'” unless they are to owed ad too ignorant to do anything. Then we would have persons of integrity.
Chitown Kev
@M Shane:
Say what you will about the “Founding Fathers”, any reading of the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers or…hell, just Thomas Jefferson would tell you they they would not be surprised ONE DAMN BIT about any of this. They actual did write quite a bit about human nature and greed and the potential of what it could do to any system of government that they wanted to set up.
The more I read them, the more I kinda sorta like the old coots. At least the were honest when they wrote all of that.
InExile
@M Shane: I assume bu “public option” you are referring to health care. I am enraged that the public is not demanding it. I live in a french territory and I am on their socialized medicine and it is great. What amazed me most was how cheap the drugs are even if you do not have the social coverage. If you are sick, you just go to the doctor, no appointment, it costs 25 euros but the system refunds 17 euros of that back to you. If you go to the emergency room, you pay nothing.
A friend of mine in LA has co-pays of $700 to $900 per month for medication with a good insurance plan, it is just crazy!
M Shane
Chitown Kev; You’re right on about the Founders; indeed, the entire makeup of our Constitution was a bulwark against the abuses of power by majorities, presidents, the military etc. The “balance of powers’ became such an incredible issue with Bush because he (criminally)drew so much unauthorized power to the president in liew of the Legslature or the Justice Department.
That is why I made my comment that this aspect of “buying influence’ was not addressed and would have suprized them that people could be so unscrupulous in this way.
If they had, they would have made it explicit that legislators could not accept money or be influenced by other devious financial incentives. These factors are sure to influence people.
strumpetwindsock
@M Shane:
They weren’t that much different than us.
Actually it was alive and well back then too, just not as all-encompassing. When Franklin and Adams were in Paris negotiating a French alliance for your Revolutionary War one of their hosts was a major French contractor for the American army (something which shocked Adams).
And even they had to compromise on things like the issue of slavery in order to do what they needed to do at that time. For good or ill, that was a matter of sacrificing principle and human interests for financial gain.
@InExile:
And yes, a close relative of mine just came out of a quadruple bypass; I can’t imagine what that costs in the states. Frankly the whole idea of going to a hospital and being expected to pay is so foreign to me I have a hard time imagining we had a similar system to the states when I was born (1961).
I understand the Canadian system is being roundly slagged down there by people opposed to Obama’s plan.
Don’t believe it. I would never want to trade what we have here for the less cost-effective paid system.
Duncan Osborne
Typical. Clinton’s explanation is self-serving and false.
Ending the gay ban on military service was not a major demand of the LG community in 1992. It was Clinton who moved it front and center. When the opposition to his proposal emerged in 1993, he capitulated almost immediately. That history can be found in “My Life,” his autobiography.
Tom Stoddard, who headed the Campaign for Military Service during that fight, said in a 1994 interview with the Advocate “In the end the administration deemed us too insignificant to fight for. Not only did [the Clinton administration] not oppose what [Senator Sam ] Nunn offered, but they endorsed it. Regardless of whatever spin they might try and put on it, that is a deep betrayal.”
Clinton happily signed the Defense of Marriage Act and ran ads on Christian radio stations during his 1996 reelection campaign boasting that he had done so.
Clinton appeared before 400 gay men and lesbians at a 1992 fundraiser in Los Angeles and said “If I could wave my arm for those of you who are HIV positive and make it go away tomorrow, I would do it, so help me God I would. If I gave up my race for the White House and everything else, I would do that.”
Bear in mind that this was at a time when there were no protease inhibitors, no NNRTIs, no powerful anti-HIV drugs at all and HIV remained a death sentence.
What we know today is that new HIV infections among gay/bi men increased throughout Bill Clinton’s two terms. He is one of the most cynical and dishonest politicians that this nation has seen.
The Gay Numbers
@Chitown Kev: No. Precisely because he later pushed DOMA and after that in 2004 pushed Kerry to support the state level anti-marriage equality amendments. It was crass political calculation. All politicians do it. It is,however, not up to us to excuse them for doing it. This is where I system breaks down. We try to think of ourselves in their place rather than advocate our own interest. Our interests are equality. Not to provide cover for a personality of cult. Be that cult that for President Obama or for President Clinton. My guiding belief based on basic civics is that my duty is to always hold their feet to the fire, even after the out of office, because otherwise they never learn anything.
ProfessorVP
He’s lying. Good gosh, he’s lying. Get me my smelling salts! Bill Clinton lying? Who’d have thought?
In 1992, he campaigned in electoral-rich states where gays live promising to lift the ban by executive order. It’s all on film, kids. He bleated about how dumb and unfair it was, and it would be gone by the stroke of his pen, he promised. The New
Harry Truman, who would do for gays what Give ‘Em Hell Harry did for blacks- do the right thing and screw the haters and naysayers. Here are some things Bill DIDN’T promise: 1) to let Colin Powell and Sam Nunn decide shit, and 2) to do whatever the polls allowed him to do.
I’ve been saying for years that the real opinion of us held by the Clintons has never been what is seemed, and now I’m glad some others can see it. Know what else I’ve said? That per usual, people who think they don’t know any gay people almost always misunderstand us and treat us like crap. George
Stephanopoulos, Janet Reno, Donna Shalala, Babs Mikulski, Hillary Clinton… all under Bill’s nose and Bill surely had no clue. You could say the same for our current president. Is it possible he thinks he doesn’t know any gays and lesbians, which accounts for some of his tone-deaf ways on DADT and same-sex marriage? Letting his Justice Department compare same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia, for example. Does he have his own dumb version of DADT with his own inner circle, and that includes Janet Napolitano?
Bill Perdue
Don’t stay away so long, Prof.
The trenches need staffing.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: You might have read me quoting Donna Smith of the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO about the $18.5 million dollars Obama got from the owners and managers of HMOs, etc. at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/04-8
Smith was complaining, in the polite way that nurses do, that Obama is a lap dog of the rich. Like I said, she’s polite so what she actually said was:
You do know that Obama’s ‘public option’ is a crock don’t you. It forces people as individuals or collectively through the government (using our taxes) to pay through the nose for bloated profits and salaries of the owners and managers of private health care businesses. It’s typical of Democrats – welfare for the rich and austerity for working people. And that’s true for the Clintons as well.
Now you can use that $18.5 million against the Obots to make them and Obama look bad compared to the Clintons, whom you seem to regard as the political version of Santa. You can continue to indulge in hissy fits when people compare Hillary Clinton to bigots like Obama, McCain and Pat Robertson for opposing same sex marriage. You can deny that she’s a religious nut although the evidence is overwhelming. And you can disagree that she learned union busting and consumer fraud at the hands of experts serving six years on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart, but it’s clear that she did.
You can, imitating tired old liberals like Bedwell who for years has labeled critics of the Clintons as Republicans. He even called me, the original rebel without a pause, a Republican until people began to pity him for losing it. Now I have some sad but true news for you InExile: if you support, endorse or vote for Democrats you’re just a Republican in drag.
Last summer and fall a dozen or so rightwing Obots – SparkleObama, EMB, MisterC, The Gay Numbers, Landon Bryce and others all bellowed that we had to vote for Obama for reasons ranging from getting a better Supreme Court to preventing a fascist coup. They can’t face the facts but the truth is they ended up supporting the murder of civilians in Afghanistan and Iran, welfare for the rich and union busting and turning over the government to yet another religious bigot. Now they’re criticizing the very conditions they created. What they gave us a Clinton/Bush doppelganger in the White House and a congress chock full of panderers, bigots and backstabbers.
Hopefully they’ll reconsider and begin to examine the real nature of the Democratic Party, not just the hustlers who run for office and then stab their constituents in the back.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: Hillary wanted universal single payer health care, Obama wanted and insurance company hybrid so guess what we will get. If America really cared about Health Care they would have sent Obama packing.
Bill Perdue
@M Shane: Mark, if what you’re saying is that absent economic democracy political democracy is just a sham, an illusion, I agree 100%.
The looter rich now have a larger share of total income than ever before. Current income disparities between the looter rich and workers are even greater than the huge disparities that caused the last Great Depression.
Part of this is due to the deregulation of S&Ls in the late ‘70s and ‘80s by Carter and Reagan that led to the recessions of 1980 to 1983 and 1987 to 1991. If this recession becomes another depression it will be on the hands of Bill Clinton who signed a Republican bill (with nearly total support from Congressional Democrats and Republicans) in 1999 that loosed predatory lenders on our economy, wrecking it.
UC Berkeley bean counter Emanuel Saez has a study available in PDF form at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2007.pdf Here are the most important extracts:
The shares of the uber-rich, 0.01% of the population, who steal 6% of all earned income, and the top 10%, who grab about 50% of all earned income has sextupled since the Carter-Reagan-Clinton deregulations passed beginning in the late seventies, Then the looter rich only extracted about 1/3 of all income earned.
That data puts the lie to any delusions that this is a democracy and goes a long way towards explaining why socialists say the Democrat and Republican Parties are ‘owned’ by the looter rich. It also explains the socialist view that elections don’t produce change. They sometimes reflect change, especially that won by mass action, but are otherwise nothing to write home about.
So all that leads me to this question, Mark. Why in hell did you support Obama last fall? Why do you mess with the Democrats? They’re the enemy.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: I’m not accusing you of lying but you don’t seem to have a real grasp on reality. It’s simply not true that Hillary Clintons health care plan was single payer. It is, like Obama’s, a giveaway to the unholy trinity of HMOs, Big Pharma and insurance companies like AIG.
At least according to Paul Krugman, who said that her plan “may disappoint advocates of a cleaner, simpler single-payer system.”
And Barbara Ehrenreich, feminist, fairly tame socialist and noted sociologist says that ClintonCare won’t be the stepping-stone to single-payer and advocates a fight for single payer. “… the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront – the American private health insurance industry. With the courageous exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic candidates have all rolled out health “reform” plans that represent total, Chamberlain-like, appeasement.”
Ehrenreich is correct about Kucinich: he and he alone among Democrat presidential candidates was for single payer but he’s been playing his “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert” shtick too long. No ones going to take him seriously until he moves a lot further to the left and makes a clean break from the Jackass Party.
Until Obama won in the primaries, pushing Hillary Clinton into permanent has-been status, Clinton was leading in fundraising from the unholy trinity:
This was early in the campaign.
Union nurses weren’t exactly enthusiastic about Obama, Edwards or Hillary Clintons virtually identical ‘welfare for the rich” heath care plans: here are some heartfelt pleas from union nurses to all three of them:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CNAPNHP#play/all/uploads-all/1/lLNTB-4t4Ns
(It hardly matters what Obama claims. The $18,500.000.00 referred to was not in $5.00 donations – it was raised from HMO’s, insurance companies and Big Phamra.)
InExile
@Bill Perdue: My first choice was Dennis Kucinich because he seems to really care about the people in this country. Hillary was my second because she is far stronger than Obama, there is no comparison. Obama is caving in on ALL of his promises, he seems to not have a backbone similar to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. All this bi-partisan crap will only get you stabbed in the back by the repugs.
Now Obama’s Health Secretary has said there is no need for a public option, she says non-profits is the way to go. It all stinks of insurance industry give aways with us paying the price. I am not so sure we are better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain/Palin, it all looks the same. Pathetic.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: If Kucinich cared about health care, the genocide in South Asia and fighting the homohaters he wouldn’t be a Democrat.
Democrats are Republicans in drag. All of them. They’re defined by their party, not the other way around. And so are their supporters. Like you.
As the Republicans do-se-do to the far right, Obama and the Democrats are not far behind, killing GIs and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, busting unions and imposing austerity on working people, quashing any hope of socialized medicine, pandering to bigots, ignoring our agenda, bashing immigrants and etc.
I don’t think Obama is particularly weak. After all he cut Hillary Clinton off at the knees and captured a little over a third of the eligible vote last November 4th. He torpedoed our chances for same sex marriage in California. And irrespective of his politics, which are terrible, he managed to become president in what is probably the worlds most racist country. That’s not weak.
But if it were then I’d hate to see a Thatcher clone like Hillary Clinton have a go at it. She’d be even worse than Bill Clinton and George Bush and I’m not so sure we’d survive that.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: Whatever Bill, drink your Kool Aide, you have your own unique blend, that’s for sure.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: In the last few months I’ve proved you wrong on everything you’ve claimed about Mrs. Santa.
You just ignore that and make up more stuff to say, like Mrs. Santa is strong and that she supports single payer. Does this mean that you’ve exhausted your make believe reasons for idolizing Mr. and Mrs. Santa?
InExile
@Bill Perdue: You have not proved me wrong every time, they are the same old tired BS arguments the Obot used in the Primary. Well, you should be happy now that we have and are getting nothing from the Obus. I hope you are enjoying it, I am not.
M Shane
No. 62 · InExile ; Your healthcare system is admirable to anyone her who is willing to toss their presupositions and just look. Unfortunately, ias I saw in an interveiw with some pol. analysts: people here vote their beliefs even if thy are in conflict with their interests. So when, in frusration we innocently query”I just can’t see why?” the answer is that theRight wing here has so thorughly brainwashed people into fearing the notion”socialism” that they literally are associating it with “fascism” re; healthcare in the town hall meetings. It’s a product of the cold war where the Corporate interests wanted it pounded into peoples heads that anything left was the same as Stalinism.
Bill Purdue:
There’s no question that “absent economic democracy political democracy is just a sham, an illusion” Anyone who doesn’t see that basic principle is just not following the clockwork–how things occur , in fact.
Some time back, I concluded that we agreed on virtually everything. Which leaves me in the position of virtually being an anarchist relative to what’s on the menu. I have little faith in the ability of Americans to act anything but mechanistically
Politics in the U.S. because of the naivety and ignorance too say notihng of the rampant deception of politicians.is a farce parading as democracy. In a country where 1%of the population owns 50% of the assets; 20% owns 80% and the other 20% are split among the rest .The Country has been reduced to this division thanks to Reagan, Clinton , the & the Bush’s. This is more classist that any Monarchy.
And both political partiesare for sale to Coporate buyers.
I’ve felt that If I was not to just throw up my hands and quit caring I would have to make hard choices. My decision for Obama had top do witha basic belief (I hate to admit this) that he was putting people on to get into the Presidency. There were signs that while he might be playing the cards dealt him as a black candidate, he would have cards up his sleeve. Several radical and bright people who I trusted backed him. And he was sure as hell more trustworthy to me than Hillary. She may have let Bill get by with his philandering , but that is insignificant next to his right wing politics and his bullshiting. You express my feelings about her: “if it were then I’d hate to see a Thatcher clone like Hillary Clinton have a go at it. She’d be even worse than Bill Clinton and George Bush and I’m not so sure we’d survive that” The prospect horrified me.
The first thing that has shocked me, are Obamas picks for cabinet and staff which are hardly “.progressive’, and I just read an article partially which questioned his real interests regarding the Neocon globalization agenda. He curiouslty hasn’t done anything about the wars– which he can as Commander and Chief.
I do respect his wanting to leave the matters in the Gay Agenda to Congress., however, he could be doing more to push them; Re healthcare The agreement that he suspiciously made with Big Pharm. is an outrageous concession . They are the source of the greatest costs, and he’s protecting them.
Obama clearly doesn’t have more than a half assed right wing congress with some nominal Democrates. There is no option but the(far) Right wing-Why be nice?
My fear with another party has always been that they woiuld be another Green party. Of course the Socialists or a potential Labor party are just screwed from the gate.
I just don’t know what your alternative is; it’s starting to look pretty hopeless- as you implied with the players we have.
The country is fucked up: the Military /Industrial complex is a
full flown reality. The Neocon dream is virtually a fact. As it rapidly becomes clear: gay rights (as they are defined now) are going the way of the Dodo bird. There is a real danger of there being a disasterous reaction There won’t be a Democratic show of support.(which is what it relies on; not Obama .Gay people don’t realise that their”social issue” is tied to a bigger, more pervasive notion of justice; which is even more basically economic. And the Democrats need to be replaced or sent back to government school, to figure out what they ae there for.
I’m beginning to seriously doubt my affiliation with Obama.
Of course, as I say it seemed in the first place to be the best choice of some very bad ones, in a government is sadly waylaid.and ineffectual for doing anything right.
ProfessorVP
Thanks for encouragement, Perdue. I resist the temptation to be in the trench too much, with a lot of non-progressives mouthing off to me. I think of that as trench mouth.
Having said that, you are spot on about Dennis Kucinich- he of the tiny height, hair that may be real but looks like a bad wig, the pierced-tongue oddball wife, the Polish funny name… who would have been a truly great president, and a rare thing, a real leader, had the public been able to see beyond the initial things I listed.
Shane, what you wrote is sad but true, especially about the naive and ignorant nature of American politics. What better evidence of that than the faux outrage at these moronic
so-called Town Hall meetings, with their scripted rabble-rousing and cookie-cutter signs about how making health insurance universally available somehow flushes our Constitution- something these cretins had never given a thought to previously-
down the crapper once and for all.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
On DOMA and esp. on Kerry 2004, we absolutely agree about Clinton’s crass political machinations.
On DADT, on the other hand, I don’t think that anyone comsidered that that would wind up the big mess od a discriminatory policy that it is now. For example, the entire “witchhunt” aspect as it concerned gays in the military should have ceased.
Not that Bubba doesn’t too. But the “times were different” scenario does hold true for DADT, in that regard. We can agree to disagree on that one.
Kary
Can someone explain to me why as Commander in Chief, he couldn’t simply have issued an order permitting gays to serve? Apparently Truman did exactly that regarding the integration of the services. Why is gays in the military no more than a Department of Defense Regulation? Like wearing epaulets with your dress blues? Why did Congress get involved? And why did Clinton (and Obama) not call in the Chiefs of Staff and say, “Here’s what’s coming down. You don’t like it? Put your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning.”
I’ve never had anyone know the facts regarding the above. And I’ve asked around.
I’m a Spanish literature major…I don’t know shit about American anything. But I did serve (drafted) in Vietnam, and I do understand how the military operates. They don’t do many things terribly well, but they do completely understand direct orders. They “get” obedience.
Landon Bryce
@Kary:
Don’t you think it’s a factor that Truman served in World War I and proved himself to the military throughout World War II? Clinton, on the other hand, was accused of being a draft dodger because he did not serve in Vietnam. He did not have the respect and network within the military that Truman did.
Obama does not, either, and that is doubtless part of why he is insisting on Congressional action on DADT.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
That’s possible, even likely, Landon, but I would think that Obama would have understood and found retired general who do have those networks. And I’m not thinking of Powell (though he has the most gravitas) but-I can’t remember his name offhand, but he served under Lyndon Johnson (he’s an African American).
M Shane
No. 81 · Kary ; the issue that Obama runs into is that if he does issue a statement permiting gays to serve is that he would be presuming the retraction of DADT by Congress.
If he did on so touchy an issue, his order would only be good until Congress revisited the matter. Then they might make it more emphatic or just cancel out what he ordered by not repealing. You have to remember, at last count the primary right wing ‘family” group announced that 30% of both houses were100%on their side. With these weirdo democrats in there, I don’t know if their good will might not be threateded by Obama preempting them.
The difference with Truman’s situation is that he didn’t have a law that he anticipated coming up for review.
That’s my guess. He is working against a strong antipathy tward doing what Bush did; over stepping his bounds.(even though he has done so oin less questionable situations.
ProfessorVP
Let’s just say that there are those on both sides; some say Clinton could have successfully issued a presidential order, some say he couldn’t have. (I say he could have, like Truman
did, however Truman didn’t bother consulting his pollster and focus group.) Okay, let’s say the jury’s out. Question: Should Clinton have PROMISED to issue an executive order in 1992, to attract progressive contributors and voters… then after he won, only then discover he couldn’t do it?
Landon Bryce
@ProfessorVP:
I can forgive Clinton for not understanding the insanity with which the extreme right wing would attack everything he did. I don’t have any doubt that the promise was sincere– he did pay a significant price for the progress he made. What he should not have done was decide three months into his presidency that gays were a liability and that he would never, ever again attempt to do anything for us. Because he rarely did, and I can’t forgive him for that.
Kev, I think you are right. The obstacles are less daunting today and the way to plan for them easier to see. Obama has never faced substantial criticism for his lack of military service, either, so that is simply not the liability it was for Clinton. Clinton was undoubtedly braver in his support for gay people early in his administration, which makes the current hesitancy more frustrating than it would be otherwise. Of course, we are all still paying the price for that early bravery.
Sad emoticon.
The Gay Numbers
@InExile: You are lying. Healthcare is one of my issues. The policies of all three major candidates are things I followed heavily during the Democratic Primary. THe only person to even discuss iniatially a public plan idea was Edwards. The other two followed from his example.
The Gay Numbers
@Chitown Kev: DADT was a result of Clinton’s hubris. Just like Obama has the same hubris. I don’t forgive him because it was more about how grea Clinton is than about the policy. The same flaw infect Obama.
M Shane
@Landon Bryce: ” The obstacles are less daunting today and the way to plan for them easier to see.” I think that assumption is adamantly incorrect. Since Clinton, the GOP, for lack of a substatial monied base, has made profound attempts to secure the support of the Religious Right. Gay people may feel more confident but so do their enemies, and there are a lot more of them.
That “Clinton was undoubtedly braver in his support for gay people early in his administration” I doubt, because he came up with a new item and didn’ know what to expect, also he was not nearly as answerable(because he’s not Afro American) to a group who is basically from thrreligious right. He wasmainly responsive to white liberals.. He turned on the working class people with NAFTA so he can’t have been very worried about them.
ProfessorVP
@Landon Bryce: Anytime you have Clinton and sincere in the same sentence, you show you don’t know what the man is all about. And by 1993, when he took office, Clinton had already been through the mill and had faced enormous adversity. I don’t know how you or anyone could think that by that point, he would at last realize about the right wing, sort of like the anti-Sally Field, “They don’t like me; they really don’t like me!”
The proof that Clinton was never sincere about this particular promise was that he didn’t sign the executive order and tell the generals, “This is how it’s going to be; you implement it and report to me.” Instead, he got everyone together and asked their opinion. Only then- get out the smelling salts- did he realize the top brass wasn’t keen on it. No, kids, he was not sincere about it, although Clinton would probably say that it depends on the meaning of sincere.
Landon Bryce
@ProfessorVP:
That you can write as though the level of venom directed at Clinton were not completely precedented ( Freshmen Congressmen booed him until they were quickly stopped) shows that you are either deliberately misrepresenting history or you simply don’t understand it very well.
I think Clinton underestimated the challenge he faced. If it had been easier, he would have come through. That’s very faint praise, and I think it’s absurd to give him less. As I wrote to Michael earlier in this thread, I bother writing here because I remember what happened in the 1990s and I neither love nor hate Clinton. People who think he is either all good or all bad should not be the only ones in the discussion.
M Shane,
Clinton appointed gay people to places we had never been before. Obama has not gone further than he did despite the fact that there have been sixteen years of progress. Clinton made gay rights a signature issue of his first hundred days. Obama did not mention gay rights in his first hundred days.
Clinton was braver. That’s a fact
Braver is not always better.
Anyway, odd that you focus on the part of my message where I agree with what Kev wrote and then address it to me. I was giving Obama more slack than he was, actually.
ProfessorVP
@Landon Bryce: If you’re implying that I don’t remember what happened in the 1990s, I was a grown man then, same as I am now. I am more progressive now, although I was hotter then. That said… I don’t know who is saying Clinton was all good or all bad and therefore has nothing relevant to offer to the discussion. Not me. I’ll give him this: he resisted the temptation to try to colonize Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike you-know-who. I think he was, like Obama is, intelligent and hard-working. But he has this blind spot about lying and pissing on people who had supported him. And I am incredulous that Clinton didn’t realize that the top brass loathed him for being a draft dodger, and lifting the gay ban would just add fuel to the fire. He was not an idiot; of course he knew. But he handled DADT just like DOMA: “Gosh, look what the bad people are MAKING me do… sign things I don’t agree with.” The same thing happened after he was re-elected governor of Arkansas and promised to finish his term: “Gosh, my grass roots supporters are MAKING me run for president.” As for all these gay appointees of Clinton– name just friggin one with a name any of us would recognize. And no, don’t say George Stephanopoulos, Donna Shalala, Janet Reno or Hillary Clinton (unofficially appointed for health care), because they were not, and are not, out. To put Clinton in a better light by comparing him to Obama is like putting diabetes in a better light by comparing it to cancer.
Landon Bryce
@ProfessorVP:
Clinton appointed over 150 gays and lesbians, many to levels of government where sexual minorities had never served openly before. Most of them are names you would not remember, although John Berry and Michael Socarides are in the news off and on. I have no idea why you think we need to recognize the names for them to matter.
But everyone should remember James Hormel.
He was the first gay ambassador. This was a big enough deal that Congress refused to confirm him and Clinton made a recess appointment. By doing this, he shattered the wall so effectively that bigoted Bush even appointed a gay ambassador.
Again, where Obama is an unforgivable disappointment is that he refuses to go beyond where Clinton went on appointments a generation ago.
ProfessorVP
@Landon Bryce: I think we’re hogging things and I should really hang it up on this thread after this. I meant that the positions Clinton filled with gays were not the sort of mid-to-high level positions that would gain any public attention, where people would realize, “Gays are in this position and the sky didn’t fall.” I don’t count Socarides because he was some sort of gay liason what-not, not a real job. Hormel, after contributing millions to Clinton, got the piddling Luxembourg appointment, but had to promise not to bring along his partner, which proves that even Luxembourg has a back seat of the bus. It was, however, unthinkable to acknowledge Stephanopoulous, Reno, Shalala or Hillary Clinton, the heavy hitters. I’ll sum it up this way and call it a night: You could tell Bill Clinton, “Sometimes you say you were forced to sign DOMA, and yet in some states in 1996 you boasted about signing DOMA.” And he would no doubt reply, “And your point is…?”
The nanosecond you leave the turf of politics and how to win elections, he goes blind and deaf, and a reasonable person would realize he actually has no particular ideology or agenda, which comes as a huge disappointment. Whereas with someone like Bush, you expect effin’ nothing, so there’s no letdown.
Bill Perdue
After being bamboozled by a few hundred hired Republican hecklers Obama is in full retreat on health care. He’s abandoning his health care “reforms” as fast as he abandoned us. But neither come close to the deadliness of his betrayal of GIs and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re dying because he’s afraid of Halibuton, the rest of the Military Industrial Complex and the power of Big Oil.
He’s the classic Clinton clone – a gutless wonder who makes promises, kisses babies and then stabs his constituents in the back. Bush had the same right wing policies (and McCain would have too) but at least with them all but a few dummies had that figured out beforehand. Dummies as in LCR, twins of the Stonewall Democrats dummies.
According to Sundays NY Times
I think sliver is the operative word here and in any case calling it a ‘public option’ is a sleazy lie to hide the fact that it would have been administered by for-profit insurance companies and HMO’s and preserved the obscene profits of Big Pharma. All of this flows directly from the $18.5 million dollars Obama got from the owners and managers of HMOs and his secret meetings with PhRMA President and CEO Billy Tauzin (4 meetings), h Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive officer of America’s Health Insurance Plans (4 meetings), Richard Umbdenstock, President and CEO of the American Hospital Association (7 meetings), and with the AMAs President Dr. James Rohack (3 meetings).
Obama, mimicking Clinton, Cheney and Bush, refuses to comment on what he gave away and what he got paid for it. Déjà vu all over again, and again, and again.
What better way to tell that backstabbing huster in the White House what we think of him than to Support the March on Washington.
[img]http://whitecrane.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345161a069e2011570554d07970c-800wi[/img]
Landon Bryce
@ProfessorVP:
Wow. That you are willing to write off all of the progress made for gay and lesbian people through the appointments made by Clinton shows that you have no understanding at all of the modern gay rights movement at all. None.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: See Bill, if you really wanted UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER health care there was only one choice, Hillary. But you lambasted her during the primary so you should enjoy the Obus health care system bringing more wealth to the insurance companies. You said it yourself, Obama collected more in contributions from the health care system than all the other politicians combined last election cycle, funny how that works huh?
InExile
@Bill Perdue: 100% agree with you regarding the march on Washington, they need to know we are tired of sitting in the back of the Obus. Letters, calls, meeting with representatives, emails and petitions are not working! Our HRC’s and other lobbying organizations are also not working.
Bill Perdue
@Landon Bryce: Landon Bryce says Clinton was “braver”.
And it’s true.
He bravely stoop up for NAFTA and fought against unions and environmentalists. That was payback for Hillary Clintons years on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart where she learned the basics of union busting and consumer fraud. NAFTA eliminated hundreds of thousands of union jobs with good benefits. No wonder Hillary Clinton called it a “boon to the economy…” by which she meant that it made the rich richer and that was OK as long as the Clintons got theirs in the process.
In return for a few hundred high priced speaking engagements after leaving office Clinton bravely signed the 1999 Republican authored bill deregulating corporate predators. His act relentlessly led to the current recession which threatens to become a depression. He signed all the bill presented to him. “Bill Clinton as president gave the super rich a larger tax break than George Bush’s tax cuts…” Bill Moyers Journal January 18, 2008
Clinton bravely stood up for the christer cultists and bigots and led the fight against homos in the military by turning bigotry into law – DADT. Then, not resting from his labors he put the pervs in their place by championing DOMA. No pervy stuff in the military and none polluting the holy sacrament of straight marriage.
The, in an act of unparalleled bravery, Bill Clinton ordered the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children by instituting an embargo on food and medical and sanitary supplies. The BBC warned “In the parts of the country most affected by both (war and the embargo bp) , infant mortality has more than doubled, rising well beyond 100 per 1,000 live births.” UNICEF said substantially the same: “Wednesday, 12 August 1999: The first surveys since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq reveal that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the findings reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency.” A year or so later The Nation reported that the UN “Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) study in Iraq wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society, asserting that sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children.”
Clinton’s bravery is legendary. He’s an exemplar of the Crusaders of old. Who else could smite 567,000 foes and live to tell the tale? Who else could put the queers in their place. Who but Clinton could face down public opinion with that overwhelmingly opposed NAFTA, tax breaks for the rich and letting corporate predators wreck the economy.
That’s why the looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons – they’re greedier, they fool more people and they’re able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.
They certainly fooled Landon.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: Same tired, tired, tired arguments full of gossip, innuendo, and tall tales told my most Clinton Haters and republicans. If Clinton gave such big tax breaks to the rich why has Obama refused to bring back the Clinton Taxes on the rich so they pay their fair share? Same old tired arguments against the greatest President of the last century.
Landon Bryce
@Bill Perdue:
Oh, Bill. By muddying the water and pretending there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, your ilk played your part in giving us the worst administration in modern history. It’s exactly that kind of talk– exactly- that Ralph Nader used to siphon off enough votes from Gore to put Bush in the White House. I know you don’t feel bad about Gore losing because people like you screamed over and over that he and Bush were exactly the same. I know you wouldn’t feel guilty if it had worked this year and you had put McCain in the White House by screaming for months that other Obama and he were exactly the same. That you cannot see the craziness of this is one of the reasons I cannot take you seriously at all.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: @InExile: You’re lying again. Read http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01182008/transcript5.html for Jan. 18, 2008 “…Bill Clinton as president gave the super rich a larger tax break than George Bush’s tax cuts…”
But you probably won’t. You’ll just claim, as you always do that Moyers is a stealth Repbulican propagandist. Just like you claimed that Mother Jones is a right wing rag instead of the sober, well respected left wing union magazine that it is.
@InExile: You’re lying again. Socialized medicine, not Hillary’s welfare for the rich giveaways are the answer. If you claim that Hillary Clinton is for single payer heath you’re delusional or lying. Again. Refer to the website of the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO. And don’t lie and tell us they’re stealth Republicans. And please stop whining that the unions, along with the UN FAO, PBS, UNICEF, magazines like The Lancet, The Nation and ‘Mother Jones’, the BBC are all part of a vast right wing conspiracy. It makes you look even loonier.
http://www.youtube.com/user/CNAPNHP#play/all/uploads-all/1/lLNTB-4t4Ns
Don’t quit your day job. You make a piss poor shill.
Bill Perdue
@Landon Bryce: Gore would have done substantially what Clinton and Bush did, what Obama’s doing and what McCain would’ve done.
I cannot for the life of me understand your obvious pride in supporting the economic disaster caused by Clinton’s deregulation, NAFTA and tax breaks for the rich. All those policies were continued by Bush and Obama, as was Clinton’s infanticide in pursuit of oil in SW Asia and their attacks on socialized medicine and etc. You proudly, happily voted for it and we’re paying the price.
What I can’t understand is how you could unthinkingly vote for candidates that gave us DADT, DOMA, NAFTA, economic disaster and imperial wars of aggression without a thought of the consequences. Nader’s not a socialist and wouldn’t get my voted but I doubt the he and the greens would have the baby killers like Clinton and LBJ, both of whom you admire.
Landon Bryce
@Bill Perdue:
I did not vote for Clinton in 1996, in part because of DOMA and in part because of his economic policies, which I don’t admire much more than you do. Mostly, though, I voted against Clinton because the situation allowed me the luxury of a protest vote: if there had been a chance Dole would have carried my district, I would have sworn about it and voted for Clinton.
That’s what responsible citizens do: they make the best choice possible.
You, Bill, are very similar to the shills attempting to drown at debate on health care at town hall meetings. You have nothing to say– you just want to scream, ALL POLITICIANS ARE EVIL over and over.
Yes, dear. They’re very nasty indeed. And you have nothing else to contribute. We get it. We all get it.
Now take your meds and let the sane people talk.
InExile
Hillary’s Plan:
Universal Coverage: The plan covers everybody. There are about 47 million Americans without health insurance, and Hillary Clinton’s proposal would provide coverage for all of them. The coverage would come from one of a number of sources she calls the new “Health Choices Menu.” The menu would include a Medicare type option and an option similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP).
• Coverage is Mandatory: Although she calls here plan the American Health Choices Plan, you don’t have a choice. Everybody must be covered by health insurance.
• Eliminate Insurance “Discrimination”: Hillary Clinton wants to prevent an insurance company from setting rates based on the health of the insured, a common and sensible practice in the insurance industry (e.g., bad drivers pay more for car insurance) that she labels as “discrimination.”
• Modernize Health Care to Produce Cost Savings: Clinton believes her plan can deliver health care to you more efficiently than the health care industry, and that her plan will result in annual savings of $56 billion.
• “Net Tax Cut for American Taxpayers”: The plan includes refundable tax credits to help pay for health insurance. In conjunction with the cost savings, Clinton plans on paying for these credits by raising taxes on high income earners to the tune of $54 billion. Apparently, the credits are more than the increased taxes, abracadabra, a net tax cut.
InExile
[img]http://a700.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/46/m_ed7297235d60554aff5867661155809b.jpg[/img]
Bill Perdue
@InExile: I know, I read it. But thanks for posting it.
Where does it say single payer? It doesn’t. Universal coverage through and for profit gougers is not, repeat not, single payer or socialized medicine. It pretty much what Obama supported although he’s caving to the right so fast it makes your head swim.
You ‘misinformed’ us again and claimed she was for single payer yet your post clearly says she isn’t. It’s a giveaway to the the owners and managers of criminially negligent HMOs, insurance compnanies and Big Pharma. Just as the nurses union says it is.
So who should we believe, you or the nurses union.
Landon Bryce
@InExile:
And the people at Town Hall meetings would have shouted “Hillary care!” until all reform effort died. Come on.
On health care, especially, Clinton could never have led half as effectively as Obama has. Her history of failure would have brought out the cowardice in every Dem in town.
With the Clintons, especially, you have to factor in not only what she would have done but what others would have done and how effectively they would have managed it. It would have been much, much, much easier to kill health care reform under Hillary. It would be done by now.
Bill Perdue
@Landon Bryce: The really insane thing to do is to vote for or support candidates who kill children for oil, create recessions and promote bigotry. That includes LBJ, Bill Clinton and Obama, but it would have included Gore or Hillary Clinton. And of course their cousins in the Republican party.
And it’s even loopier to assume we’re not going to explain that you’re proud, unthinking partisanship is counterpoised to the needs of the GLBT movement, the antiwar movement and the standard of living of working people.
Get used to it.
And actually you can’t be a responsible voter unless you live in Nevada and can vote for “None of the above candidates” or vote for one of the minor left wing parties kept out of government by undemocratic Democratic Party ballot restrictions.
Chitown Kev
@Landon Bryce:
Yeah, I didn’t vote for Clinton (or anyone else) in 1996 either. There’s what you mention and other things.
Landon Bryce
@Bill Perdue:
Yes, it was my “proud, unthinking partisanship” that cause me to start the message you are directly replying to by saying “I did not vote for Bill Clinton in 1996.”
And I’m done playing with the crazy man for today.
Bill Perdue
@Landon Bryce: “I would have sworn about it and voted for Clinton”. So yes, it is your unthinking partisanship that leads you into opposition to the GLBT movement, the antiwar movement and to support parties owned by the looter rich and their handpuppets who are wrecking the standard of living of working people.
You can’t get much more rancid than that.
InExile
@Landon Bryce: #108 On health care, especially, Clinton could never have led half as effectively as Obama has. Her history of failure would have brought out the cowardice in every Dem in town.
===================================================================
Obama has not led, that IS the problem! NO LEADERSHIP ON ANYTHING, not LGBT issues, not health care, Nothing Nada! He cannot be called a failure though, for that he would have had to try first. Always playing the middle of the road on every issue is not leading. The cowardice of every democrat in town is EXACTLY what we are seeing now so I just do not get your point.