Chris Hedges blasts Bill Clinton's new book “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World"

[Larkspur]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/17/3898/

Chris says eloquently how I feel about the Clintons.

Bill Clinton has written a new book. It is called “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.” He will give a portion of the proceeds to charity. Giving, the former president informs us, gives us fulfilment in life and is “the fabric of our shared humanity.”

His book is the political equivalent of “Marley & Me” It is filled with a lot of vapid, feel-good stories about ordinary and wealthy Americans setting out to make the world a better place. It smacks of the philanthropy-as-publicity that characterized the largesse of the robber barons — the Mellons and the Rockefellers — and has become a pastime for our own oligarchic elite. Clinton’s call for charity is the equivalent of well-scrubbed prep school students spending a day in a soup kitchen, doling out food to the people whose jobs were outsourced by their mommies and daddies. It does little to alleviate suffering. But it is a balm to the conscience of the oligarchic class that profits handsomely from the impoverishment of the working class, globalization and our anti-democratic corporate state. The rich love to dine out on their own goodness.

The misery sweeping across the American landscape may have begun with Ronald Reagan, but it was accelerated and codified by Bill Clinton. He sold out the poor and the working class. And Clinton did it deliberately to feed the pathological hunger he and his wife have for political power. It was the Clintons who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough. The Clintons argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers would vote Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better, the Clintons argued, to take corporate money and use government to service the needs of the corporations. By the 1990s, the Democratic Party, under Clinton’s leadership, had virtual fund-raising parity with the Republicans. In political terms, it was a success. In moral terms, it was a betrayal.

SNIP

[Maat]

1. Thanks for the post.

This retired social worker agrees.

[Doctor_J]

2. Ah, yes. It's agreat time to be bashing Big Dog

Maybe President Thompson can fix all of the problems wrought by Evil Clintons. Just like * has. And he out-fundraised the GOP? God forbid! He should have refused all donations and run against the GOP with spare change from the couch.

[Zodiak]

18. That's a lot of strawmen

The author is not promoting Thompson

The Clintons were not called "evil"

The author does not say that Bush has solved our problems.

The author does not dispute that getting that much $$ is a political success, so there is no "God forbid" about it....just where the money is coming from.

And the author did not say anything about spare change from the couch.

So in two lines, you introduced five strawmen. Not the most honest or good-faith way to argue.

[Forrest Greene]

26. One Of The Things

...trivially enough, that bugs me, at least, about Clinton touts is the ersatz familiarity with which they refer to the ex-President & his wife. "Big Dog" & "Hills..." It reeks of assininity. I'm not really sure why I find it so cornball & bumpkin, & sad, but there you have it.

[bemildred]

3. Good, "I feel your pain" didn't turn out to mean much. nt

[Maribelle]

4. Irony, this.

The author of the hit piece romanticzes war, is addicted to traveling to and reporting from conflict zones, tells us that war is a force that gives us meaning - - then attempts to bash Clinton for trying to help those in abject poverty.

The author is a fraud.

[Emillereid]

27. Boy, you didn't understand his 'War' book at all - he was decrying the

sad and tragic fact that war is a force that gives us meaning. He is one of the best reporters out there.

If the Democratic Party is to have a chance of being a party of the people, we will have to quit the denial as they say in the 10 step program and admit that we were powerless under the Clintons. Hedges is right -- Clinton drove our party to the right and had it drinking from the same corporate trough as the Repukes. After all he is the one who gave us NAFTA, ended Welfare (that sure helped poor people) and gave the gift of a lifetime to Big Media with the 1996 telecommunications bill. The Clintons are all about power and image - and don't have a progressive bone in their respective bodies. Let's get our party back from the DLC sell-outs.

[Maribelle]

36. He was? Just what on earth did he propose as an alternative?

He was clear about his addiction to the war in El Salvador - - and how he thought it was good.

[Emillereid]

48. Like I said, you didn't read the same book I read. Hedges is extraordinarily

anti-war. Addictions are never good -- Chris was simply being honest about the adrenaline addiction that comes with war. Also to the extent that you keep being drawn back you finally start seeing ( and reporting) its horrors.

[Carolina]

28. Chris Hedges didn't romanticize war

his point was just the opposite: it is awfully tragic that it takes something like war to give us meaning, purpose ... to bring us together!

Did you read the book? The author is not a fraud.

[Maribelle]

34. He most certainly did romanticize war, many times over.

Does he still today? I couldn't care less.



METTA SPENCER: I have only read two of your books. The one that blew me away was War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. It's the only book that I know that discusses the attraction to warfare -- that there can be an addiction or craving for it. You write about it as something people can get "hooked" on, as you say you did.


CHRIS HEDGES: Yeah. Soldiers call it a "combat high." It's essentially an adrenaline rush. It's possible to hate war, yet at the same time become attracted to those experiences. Even the colors are brighter. You're present in ways that you never were before. The twisted pathology of war often resembles a drug trip, with the rushes and the zombie-like state and the hallucinogenic landscapes. It has a very addictive quality. It's pretty common among people who get caught up in a war zone.

[RufusTFirefly]

29. Fraud indeed

Some people's shallowness is palpable. And I'm not talking about Hedges, who won a Pulitzer in 2002 for reporting on terrorism as well as an Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism for the aforementioned "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning."

His latest book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" compares the rise of the Christian Right to the growth of fascism in Italy and Germany.

But hey, he doesn't worship Clinton, so he must be a fraud.

[Maribelle]

32. Resting on ones laurels is no excuse for lies.

That makes him even more of a fraud.

[bread_and_roses]

5. I wish this were in GD, since it is so timely: we reap what he sowed

This emphasis on "charity" and the acts of individuals in isolation is profoundly Right-wing. We don't need charity, we need social justice. We need Fair Trade, not "Free" Trade. Fair tax policies. National Health Care. An adequate safety net. And publicly funded elections, to end the system of bought and sold Politicos who do the bidding of the upper 1%, not that of the people.

From the article:

...NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, had the curious effect of reversing every one of Clinton’s rosy predictions. Once the Mexican government lifted price supports on corn and beans for Mexican farmers, they had to compete against the huge agribusinesses in the United States. The Mexican farmers were swiftly bankrupted. At least 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off their land from 1993 through 2002. And guess where many of them went? This desperate flight of Mexicans into the United States is being exacerbated by large-scale factory closures along the border as manufacturers leave Mexico for the cut-rate embrace of China’s totalitarian capitalism.

Clinton’s welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, obliterated the nation’s social safety net. It threw 6 million people, many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage. Families were plunged into crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that paid $6 or $7 an hour, or less than $15,000 a year. But these were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those dropped from the welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid funding. The booming and overcrowded prison system handled the influx of the poor, as well as our abandoned mentally ill.

The growing desperation provided a pool of broken people willing to work for low wages and without unions or benefits. And while Clinton was busy selling out the poor, he lowered the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, a reduction that permitted the wealthiest 1 percent of the population to derive 80 percent of the tax savings. Clinton, like George W. Bush, also provided lavish government funding for his corporate backers, including in 1998 a $200-billion highway and transportation package for the big construction companies and a $17-billion increase in the military budget. This was the largest increase in military spending since the end of the Cold War. Corporations, flush with government aid, saw their taxes dwindle. Amway, for example, had its taxes cut during the Clinton years by an estimated $280 million. The Clinton and Bush administrations, through tax breaks and corporate bailouts, have squandered billions of our tax dollars on corporate welfare.

edit for quote box

[Maribelle]

6. Why do you consider bashing Clinton timely?

Tell the truth now.

[bemildred]

7. Because there is another Clinton trying to get elected President.

What could be more timely? If we are not to criticize now, then when the heck are we supposed to air our complaints?

[Maribelle]

8. But don't you think there is a significant difference between "criticize" and "bashing"?

Starting with one word: honesty?

The hit piece is so full of lies and subjective opinions, I could be here for a month rebuking the mass.

Honest criticism would pivot on objectivity.

For instance one outright porous lie: Clinton’s welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, obliterated the nation’s social safety net. It threw 6 million people, many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage.

Putrid gases wafts from that.

In truth most were given free job training and went to work with health care benefits, 401k plans, vacation and sick pay, and subsidized child care. Some even received jobs that offered tuition reimbursement. Objectively: A lot of single mothers were given computer technology training and went on to become solid middle income earners. Subjectively: Many single mothers claim that this was the very best program the United States had ever offered poor mothers struggling to raise their children.

[bemildred]

9. No, it just depends on whether you like the opinions or not.

All opinions are subjective. There is nothing wrong with being subjective. You calling it "bashing" is just as subjective as the exaggerations in the piece. Honesty is better that fake "objectivity".

[Maribelle]

10. But did the hit piece indicate the stuff about the 6 million was opinion or...

was it offered as fact?

Please. I am not talking about opinion here. I am talking about outright lies.

[bemildred]

11. Politicians lie. Newspapers lie.

They make things up, they exaggerate, what do you want from me? Clinton is one of the best liars I ever saw.

[Maribelle]

12. So, its quite ok with you if the hit piece lies?

Fine.

Just as long as we admit to alligator tongue lapping up plantation putty when it's applicable. :dilemma:

[bemildred]

13. Let's say I'm used to it. nt

[ThomCat]

23. You still have yet to point out a single lie.

[Maribelle]

31. I did too. The lie about 6 million, it dumped them onto the streets without ...

Y'all ought to have more respect for your brains than to believe that crock.

[ThomCat]

33. Gee. I was a habitual volunteer during that decade.

I put in a few thousand hours of volunteer time and I saw a huge increase in people who were desperate because the safety net was gone.

I must have imagined all of that. Your view from your ivory tower must be so much better and more accurate than my view was from the street. :eyes:

[Maribelle]

35. You saw 6 million dumped into the streets?

Plese give me a break, you're making my head hurt with this.

[Maribelle]

39. Can even one Clinton hater here prove that 6 million were dumped on the streets? Shouldn't be hard

if it were true.

[ThomCat]

41. How about this.

http://www.speakout.com/activism/issue_briefs/1362b-1.html

An article from 2000 that sites HUD's own statistics about how the number of homeless in the US Doubled during Clinton's period of supposed prosperity.

Do you really think that it's a coincidence that the number of people who were homeless doubled at the same time Clinton was cutting social services? Do you really think the two are not related?

Even if you cling to the delusion that Clinton's policies didn't contribute to the increase in homelessness, even you would have to admit that his policies were cold and heartless at a time when more people than ever needed that assistance.

[Maribelle]

42. Sorry, but your article says it doubled from 1984 to 1987, not during the Clinton era.

Homelessness became a visible issue during the eighties. From 1984 to 1987, according to HUD statistics, the number of homeless doubled.

And what the OP said was that 6 million dumped in the streets. I called that a lie. No one person seems to be able to verify the 6 million. That should be an easy positive to prove, if it were true.

[bread_and_roses]

14. I suggest a little more research on the results of welfare "deform"

Like poster #1 I too was in human services during that era, and saw first hand the results. In addition, I've done considerable reading on the outcomes over the ensuing years. Your rosy scenario was true for a few. For all too many, it meant low-wage jobs, part-time, if they were lucky enough to find any job at all. Not that long ago I read one study that noted that one in five - 20%! - of former recipients could not be located through payroll, disability, current welfare rolls, or a working spouse: they had fallen off the map. I wonder what their outcomes would do to even the mixed reviews so far on outcomes? Look at our child poverty rates, our infant mortality rates for that matter, and tell me we have a safety net that deserves the word?

As for the rest, I've seen nothing but attacks on the author of the piece, not substantive arguments against the points made. Nor are these new or outrageous criticisms: they were made at the time, and have been borne out since.

As for "timely" I said why I thought it timely: because we see the outcomes of these policies today, in the wage race to the bottom and in the number of homeless families with children, among other indicators.

edit: spacing correction

[Zodiak]

21. I thought that rosy outlook of welfare reform was too rosy, too

I have seen first-hand what the effects of welfare reform have had, and it is not pretty.

And attacking the messenger is no longer viable. Today's times show that this method of attack is only used to deflect from the issue at hand.

[Maribelle]

37. How about if you research those 6 million dumped in the streets.

You do not have even a speck to support that gross lie.

[bread_and_roses]

49. gross lie? Let's lose the fixation on "six" for a minute and look at some data

I could not vouch for the "six" but I doubt it is far off. It may even be an underestimate.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=0093

There was a dramatic 60 percent national decline in the number of people receiving federally-funded, welfare (TANF) between August 1996, when President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill into law, and December of 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services. The number dropped from 12.2 million people to 4.8 million.

That's a little under eight million, I believe. However:

http://www.brookings.edu/views/speeches/waller/20041114.htm

Furthermore, analysis of welfare caseloads suggests that program design or administration has already contributed to caseload decline. In the mid-1990s, over 80 percent of all families eligible for cash assistance got it, while in the most recent report to HHS, less than 50 percent were getting help.

So even in the mid-nineties, when an expanding economy made it possible for more people to find work, around 20% of those eligible for cash assistance were not getting it. If 12 million were getting welfare in '96, 20% would be over 2 million. So add those to the eight million or so noted in the first quote. That's ten million. Sounds good - ten million off welfare. The problem is that it has always been hard to track those who went off.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=0093

Government studies on welfare almost always fail to fully account for people who have left the public assistance rolls but did not obtain employment. For example, the most significant New York State study on this topic, “Leaving Welfare: Post-TANF Experiences of New York State Families, June 2002,” was able to obtain information from only 53 percent of sampled families.

The study assumes that the families interviewed had identical outcomes to the 47 percent of families who did not respond. But it is highly likely that the families that could be located for interviews had far better financial and employment conditions than those families who did not participate.

(by the way, this author worked in the Clinton administration and still "on balance" thinks he "did the right thing.")

If you extrapolate NY to the rest of the Country, approxamately half of the ten million who either left the rolls or didn't get the benefits they were eligible for in the first place = about five million. Not so far off six. Nor is that the total story.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=0093

According to more recent statistics from New York City, out of the people who left public assistance over the past year, less than 40 percent did so because they were placed in jobs. Out of that 40 percent, fully 24 percent were no longer employed after six months. Thus, almost 70 percent of people who left welfare in New York City had no post-welfare employment reported after six months. Because the City does not track former recipients beyond six months, we have no idea how many more former recipients may have lost employment later on.

Other data from around the country now indicate that, especially in this still-difficult economy, many people left welfare without having jobs, but even many of those who did obtain jobs early on likely lost them later, or kept jobs but didn’t earn enough to feed their families.

Now, you may accuse me of mixing statistics, or playing with numbers, but I assure you that is not my intent. It has always been difficult to find hard data on welfare, even before "reform." Different studies use different measures, etc. And I am no statistician, so simply do my best to wade through.

However, even BEFORE welfare "refrom" there was reasonably good data (at least to the best I could evaluate it) that most families cycled on and off welfare as the availability and feasability of work changed. The "rolls" were quite fluid - some families going on, some going off. People would get a job, then get laid off - or hours cut - or a child would get sick - or the car would break down - or the Day Care provider (often a relative or friend) would have to quit for some reason - or, or, or. Working is very hard when you're poor, just logistically.

Since you seen to think welfare "reform" worked so well, here's a little experiment for you. Borrow an infant who's 18 months or so overnight. Get up at 7:00 or so for your 10:00 AM shift at K-Mart. Feed and dress the baby, put together his/her supplies for the day, get out the stroller and walk the three blocks or so to the bus stop. (This is better is sub-zero winter weather, but I won't insist). Take the half hour ride to the Day Care. Get off the bus, walk the blocks to the Day Care home, get the baby settled, walk back to the bus stop, take another half hour or so ride to work. Work five hours, because they've cut your shift. Repeat the morning in reverse. When the baby is sick the next day, call in. You might lose your job, but the Day Care doesn't take sick kids. You still are not making enough even to pay your own rent, so you still have appointments at "the Welfare." Try to schedule them on your day off - difficult, because they make the appointments weeks ahead, and you don't know Monday's schedule till Saturday before.

Yes, there were problems with the welfare system before "reform." They could have been fixed without the draconian, punitive measures instituted. Most families wanted to work, tried to work, even before "reform." The initial success of "reform" was due largely to an expanding economy and would have happened anyway, I think. Other success was due to backward states which hadn't had support programs for poor working families instituting them (here in NY we did have them before "reform."). Again, those reforms could have been made without the draconian measures. We see the results of those measures now. In my area, approxamately half the Food Bank use is by low-income working families. Around the Country, our homeless, child-poverty, and child-mortality figures are appalling. The prisons are bursting at the seams. That's some real success, eh?

[mark414]

15. that welfare reform bill did indeed do that

it caused a disaster here in Wisconsin and people are still suffering because of it

[ThomCat]

19. "most were given free job training and went to work with health benefits..."

What drugs are you on? Do you have any proof that this is anything more than a deluded fantasy?

Yet again you seem absolutely certain of purely imaginary things.

[ThomCat]

17. How is it "bashing" to point out the truth

about Bill Clinton's pro-corporate, anti-populist policies and positions?

[Zodiak]

22. It is bashing to a Clinton supporter

I wonder why people take their loyalty to a politician so personally. I like Kucinich, but there is no way that I am going to defend him in such a personalized manner as to call his critics "bashers". I truly do not know the man, just his public image (which I like). He could be a real jerkoff in private....I wouldn;t know. It's not that personal.

We should deal with the message at hand and not the personalities presenting these issues. That is a deflection, and it speaks volumes of the ability of the deflector to deal with the topic.

[Maribelle]

38. I never indicated it was "bashing" to point out the truth.

Do you even care that I was talking about the lies?
No?
I didn't think so.

[ThomCat]

40. What lies?

You claim that true statements are lies, without ever presenting actual evidence, and then claim the other person is "bashing."


You're a total loon.

[Maribelle]

43. 6 million dumped in the streets is a lie.

But thanks from the childish name calling.

[ThomCat]

44. Prove it's a lie.

Your delusions aren't fact just because you insist that they are.

[Maribelle]

45. Easy

First lets take another look at the liars egregious lie

Clinton’s welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, obliterated the nation’s social safety net. It threw 6 million people, many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage. Families were plunged into crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that paid $6 or $7 an hour, or less than $15,000 a year. But these were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those dropped from the welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid funding. The booming and overcrowded prison system handled the influx of the poor, as well as our abandoned mentally ill.

It dumped 6 million onto the streets?


Now lets take a look at the most reliable data from the U.S. Census on poverty for that time period, and you will see proof that poverty during the Clinton years went down. If six million were dumped onto the streets one might assume they would still be poor, in worse financial condition then when they received welfare, correct? But the data does not show that because they were not dumped onto the streets as the liar claimed.

Numbers in thousands.
_______________________________________________


.Year......All people....Below poverty...%.....
.----......----------....-------------..---
.2006.........296,450.......36,460.....12.3....
.2005.........293,135.......36,950.....12.6....
.2004.14/.....290,617.......37,040.....12.7....
.2003.........287,699.......35,861.....12.5....
.2002.........285,317.......34,570.....12.1....
.2001.........281,475.......32,907.....11.7....
.2000.12/.....278,944.......31,581.....11.3....
.1999.11/.....276,208.......32,791.....11.9....
.1998.........271,059.......34,476.....12.7....
.1997.........268,480.......35,574.....13.3....
.1996.........266,218.......36,529.....13.7....
.1995.........263,733.......36,425.....13.8....
.1994.........261,616.......38,059.....14.5....
.1993.10/.....259,278.......39,265.....15.1....
.1992.9/......256,549.......38,014.....14.8....
.1991.8/......251,192.......35,708.....14.2....
.1990.........248,644.......33,585.....13.5....
.1989.........245,992.......31,528.....12.8....
.1988.........243,530.......31,745.....13.0....
.1987.7/......240,982.......32,221.....13.4....
.1986.........238,554.......32,370.....13.6....
.1985.........236,594.......33,064.....14.0....
.1984.........233,816.......33,700.....14.4....
.1983.6/......231,700.......35,303.....15.2....
.1982.........229,412.......34,398.....15.0....
.1981.5/......227,157.......31,822.....14.0....
.1980.........225,027.......29,272.....13.0....
.1979.4/......222,903.......26,072.....11.7....
.1978.........215,656.......24,497.....11.4....
.1977.........213,867.......24,720.....11.6....
.1976.........212,303.......24,975.....11.8....
.1975.........210,864.......25,877.....12.3....
.1974.3/......209,362.......23,370.....11.2....
.1973.........207,621.......22,973.....11.1....
.1972.........206,004.......24,460.....11.9....
.1971.2/......204,554.......25,559.....12.5....
.1970.........202,183.......25,420.....12.6....
.1969.........199,517.......24,147.....12.1....
.1968.........197,628.......25,389.....12.8....
.1967.1/......195,672.......27,769.....14.2....
.1966.........193,388.......28,510.....14.7....
.1965.........191,413.......33,185.....17.3....
.1964.........189,710.......36,055.....19.0....
.1963.........187,258.......36,436.....19.5....
.1962.........184,276.......38,625.....21.0....
.1961.........181,277.......39,628.....21.9....
.1960.........179,503.......39,851.....22.2....
.1959.........176,557.......39,490.....22.4....

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html

According to the above data, there were 31,822,000 Americans below the poverty level in 1981, the first year of Reagan's presidency. That number rose sharply to 35,303,000 in 1983, when it began to gradually decrease.

In 1990, the numbers began to rise dramatically again, and by 1992, the final year of George H.W. Bush's presidency, the number of Americans below the poverty level had risen to approximately 38,014,000 -- a net increase of 6,192,000.

In 1993, when Clinton first assumed office, there were 39,265,000 impoverished Americans. That number decreased every year of Clinton's presidency, and by the end of his second term in 2000 there were 31,581,000 Americans below the poverty level -- a net decrease of 7,684,000.

[ThomCat]

46. What you are missing is that Clinton took away the safety net.

So it's not how many people who were poor that matters, but how many of those poor people could not keep a roof over their heads.

If there are fewer poor people, but the remaining poor have less help and fewer options then more of the poor are going to end up homeless. Clinton's terms in office were famous (at least among those of us doing the volunteer work at the time) for turning the working poor into homeless people.

I cooked in soup kitchens. I walked the streets giving out food to homeless people. I taught crafts to the children in homeless families while their parents attended workshops on how to rebuild their lives. I saw first hand that people were being thrown out on the street because we stopped helping people who needed help.

[Maribelle]

47. Are you saying then there were 6 million homeless, or have you moved on?

The guy lied. Fact the facts.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness reported a point-in-time estimate of
744,313 people experiencing homelessness in January 2005. For the past decade there has been a steady increase.


So the homeless when Clinton was president does not even come close to the 6 million, now does it?

Good night.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. I was so engrossed in reading this article that I ate the part of an apple

I wasn't suppose to eat. hack, cough, cough.

[acmavm]

20. Billy was one of the luckiest, and most opportunistic presidents

this country ever had. Came in as the dot.com bubble was inflating, left as it was blowing up. And in the meantime fucked over every working man and woman here and in Central America as well as cozying up to the big money corporate elites. He shit on everybody, no one was exempt.

[ThomCat]

24. And for some reason people still applaud him for it.

People idolize him. I've always been of the opinion that people who idolize anyone are total idiots.

[acmavm]

25. No kidding. Here people think the guy walks on water. I cannot

figure it out.

[Skittles]

50. you have no fucking clue what you are talking about

:puke:

[acmavm]

51. Of course I do. That's why we don't need another opportunistic

Clinton in the White House.

[Poppa]

30. Great Post!

The on-going link between former President Clinton and his wife and the corporate movers and shakers in this country is disgusting. Our party under the Clinton's and their minions and the DLC and their corporate allies has little in common with the party that I joined and first voted for in November of 1964. The unions are gone for the most part, the working arrangements and support in Congress between the urban and rural interests no longer exist to any great degree. Additionally, the lessening of vocal and legislative concerns for minorities, and the loss of respect of and for the rights of the poor and working class Americans seems to be the prevailing pattern. It is enough to make me want to skip the '08 election in total especially since it appears Senator Clinton has a very good chance of becoming our party's nominee. I'll never vote for any repub for any reason at any time, but I cannot support any republican-acting Democratic candidate like Senator Clinton.