who in the hell is Ruth Marcus from the Washington Post who thinks she can judge

[onecent]

Bill Clinton
Well, EXCUSSSSSSE me if I dont' agree.

The only thing Bill Clinton did WRONG was lie to the wrong people...he should have stood up there and said,
"what i do with my personal life is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.."...END OF CONVERSATION

God I get so sick of these religious people who want to put Clinton down.....HOW MANY MEN IN CONGRESS
HAVE INDISCRETIONS.....hellO??????????????

HOW MANY????????????????
Enough that got their women to STAND BY THEIR MAN...
SOME LASTED.
SOME DIDN'T BUT FOR GODS SAKE LET A DEAD DOG LIE.

I don't give a flying crap who wins...Trump....Bernie.....Clinton.....It's such a show.....but I tell you this
Clinton would be the best thing that EVER HAPPENED TO US. HE IS A MASTER..
AND THIS GOD DAM COUNTRY WAS IN NO DEBT WHATSOEVER WHEN HE LEFT OFFICE.

Thanks to Dipsit George W. bush.................
Happy New year allll...

[MBS]

1. Ruth Marcus CAN be very good on many topics

but she's always been weird on sex/pornography stuff

[tularetom]

2. The damage Bill Clinton did to this country is only now becoming apparent

NAFTA, the war on drugs, private prisons, welfare "reform", repeal of Glass Steagall, etc. etc.

The guy was a disaster and all the drama served as a deflection from the crap he was pulling.

You can holler about Bush all you want and he was a miserable excuse for a president.

But Clinton was damn near as bad.

[Truprogressive85]

3. Dont tell them that

He is Master lmaooo

[onecent]

17. Thank you .... he is DEFINITELY THAT. People can say all they want

About Clinton, but they will NEVER convince me otherwise...
He is a Master!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like I said, people FORGET, we all have an achilles heel....
our congress is the horniest group ever...
but SO WHAT...
I DON'T CARE...WHAT they do with their personal life...
I was married to one.(a horney guy) and a gambler.....HA HA WHAT A JOKE...

Tell me of few women who have not been jolted....
it's life....
It happens....and it will NEVER CHANGE...

I WOULD love to have Clinton in the White House.
I LOVE THE MAN....I honor the man....He is one of the BEST of the BEST.

I'm positive Hiiary will win, Frankly, I think it is destiny....!!!!unless trump really does something (which I would not
put past him) but People will wake up...

Trump is not presidential material....but I may not have any control over whether it happens or not.
scares me a little....
The unknown is a bit scary...

[Demit]

7. Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court.

And Stephen Breyer. Don't know about you, but I'm grateful for those two.

[ladyVet]

40. Yep. Damn near broke my mother's heart when I had to explain all the damage that man did.

She adored Bill Clinton (much like she does Obama -- she cuts me off when I try to talk to her about that), and she really hated learning how he wasn't the best president ever.

[jwirr]

41. And although most people are not saying it that is why those

who were there are not happy with the idea of him back in the WH. I know people who voted for raygun because of Bill's personal life in the WH.

[questionseverything]

4. clinton had a couple of years where the budget was balanced but

we were still in debt

[Amimnoch]

5. It wasn't "Balanced" it was "Surplus".

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-deficit-by-year.htm

And the only one since before Kennedy. Not that facts play well here these days.

[questionseverything]

9. yes there was a small surplus

but we still had debt...that was my only point

[pnwmom]

19. That debt didn't come from the Clinton era. It was from the profligate Rethugs before him. n/t

[SickOfTheOnePct]

21. Yes, most was from the Republicans

But 28% of it was Clinton's. Yes, he balanced the budget and got us a surplus, which is a great thing, but he didn't reduce the debt overall, he added to it.

[Yupster]

37. "Babe Ruth was the greatest ever"

"He hit over 600 home runs in one season."

"No, he never hit more than 60 homers in any year."

"Why do you hate Babe Ruth?"

[Amimnoch]

23. Loving the hypocracy.

This is TOO funny coming from the side that wants us to have a Utopic society of immortals. Yeah, that'll be a balanced or surplus budget.

[questionseverything]

39. actually clinton didnt get the budget balanced (to get a small surplus)

until the last 3 (?)years of his admin...so yes some of that debt was from his admin

i do not understand why you would tell that untruth that it was all from the repubs before him,

balancing the budget for the first time since at least ww2 was a big accomplishment so why add the untruth?

dems and repubs both along the way ran deficit budgets

[TexasProgresive]

10. And we were actually paying down the debt a bit

This was and is totally lost on the fools I worked with. They hated Clinton and would not/ could not admit to the truth that the country was running better, people were being employed and there was a surplus.

They were all like, Raygun, Raygun, Raygun. When dear president Carter left office the total debt was under a trillion after Raygun/bUSH it was somewhere around 7 trillion.

[hfojvt]

18. well, speaking of facts

it would be nice if they factored social security out of there, since, if memory serves, it was social security which provided most, if not all, of the surplus.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

8. Just a quick fact

The country was still in debt when President Clinton left office.

[TexasProgresive]

11. We weren't spending more than was coming in.

The Clinton Admin had a surplus and part of that was paying down the debt.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

13. True

But that's not at all the same as claimed by the OP, i.e., that we had no debt.

Not even close to the same thing.

[pnwmom]

20. That's because Reagan, in his terms alone, more than doubled the combined

debt of all the Presidents before him.

Are you expecting that President Clinton could have erased trillions of dollars in national debt during his 8 years?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

22. Of course not

I'm not criticizing Clinton for not eliminating the debt, just pointing out that saying we had no national debt when he left office is completely untrue.

[earthside]

12. My impression ...

... was that she was just saying that if Hillary is going to use Bill as a surrogate and top advisor and refer back to her time as First Lady, then Bill Clinton is fair game for political discussion and examination.

I haven't read her article, but that was what I got from what she said on MSNBC.

If that is the case, then I think she is correct.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

14. Agree n/t

[Hekate]

28. That is not what she said, and Bill is not going to be a "surrogate." Many spouses....

....from the beginning of the country have served the president as an unacknowledged advisor and someone to bounce things off of. Does the name Abigail Adams ring a bell? Or Roslyn Carter?

How do you expect it to be otherwise when couples have been working together on mutual interests for a lifetime?

The line of questioning from the reporters was predictably stupid. They were asking if Bill was going to be doing "lady things," and Hillary was telling them she would find time for a few of those herself, thank you.

[earthside]

31. This is not 'usual'.

We've never had the spouse of a President run for President before.

I don't like it.

I think familial politics of this nature is bad for a democracy, a republic.

If you think Shrub had psychological baggage because his dad was President, just wait for the psychological and emotional baggage of a spouse succeeding to that office.

So, heck yes ... Bill is a surrogate for Hillary ... he will be campaigning and speaking for her. He is a former President, he is her husband, she was First Lady in his Presidency.

[840high]

45. Agree.

[1939]

15. Supluses versus outstanding debt

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/fl/US-Deficit-by-Year.htm?utm_term=Federal%20Budget%20Deficit%20History&utm_content=p1-main-5-title&utm_medium=sem-rel&utm_source=msn&utm_campaign=adid-f7149b28-2a2e-4407-9bf5-45ace00037ae-0-ab_msb_ocode-31621&ad=semD&an=msn_s&am=broad&q=Federal%20Budget%20Deficit%20History&dqi=&o=31621&l=sem&qsrc=6&askid=f7149b28-2a2e-4407-9bf5-45ace00037ae-0-ab_msb

While there were surpluses the last three Clinton years (and the first Bush year), this chart shows the federal deficits and surpluses year by year since 1929.

[hfojvt]

16. I also tend to judge liars and cheaters

Although I understand some lying. I mean who wants to stand up there and admit "I did this bad thing"? Something like "yes, I broke the window".

I also have to admit that it's hard for me to judge a cheater. I mean, how do I know that I would not do the same thing - IF - I had the opportunity?

Still, I don't like it, because I would NOT want somebody to do that to me.

I've never been much of a fan of Clinton, although I have liked some of his convention speeches.

But I have disliked a lot of his policies and a lot of his rhetoric. From Nafta, to welfare reform to tax cuts for the rich, to the repeal of Glass Stegall, and so on.

In a personal sense, his "boom economy" never lifted me up.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. As rants go, that one wasn't too bad.

Though I have to disagree about Bill's abilities to be a "Master" of anything other than being a clever salesman of neoliberal programs.

[HereSince1628]

25. Whut? You mean lying to the RIGHT people would be OK?

I'm not sure I'm following that logic.

I can only measure what I know of the events against the terms of employment I worked under.

What Clinton and Lewinsky constructed seems pretty much the iconic example of the power-asymmetry sexual liaison that is presented in sexual harassment training for new hires.

[cali]

36. Bingo.

[840high]

44. ...^ that

[madville]

26. It wasn't his personal life though

It is improper to have sexual relationships on company property, on company time, with subordinates (and usually also forbidden outside of work). That will get you disciplined and/or fired from most jobs and opens the company up to potential lawsuits.

One could make the argument that it was also sexual harassment since it potentially adversely affected Lewinsky's career because her chain of command (having become suspicious of her and the President's relationship) involuntarily transferred her to the Pentagon because of the inappropriate relationship.

[HereSince1628]

27. Those are the rules known by we common people with common jobs

[cali]

29. He paid 850,000 to Paula Jones to settle her lawsuit against him

[Hekate]

32. link? I remember she got a facelift paid for by her team of lawyers and enablers...

...but I sure don't remember her getting a settlement of almost a million bucks from Clinton.

[cali]

34. Sure. Clinton Settles Paula Jones Lawsuit for $850,000

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/jones111498.htm

[Hekate]

35. Well there ya go. No wonder they were flat broke when they left D.C.

"After more than 4 1/2 years of scorched-earth legal warfare, Clinton and Jones brought a sudden end to the case with a four-page deal in which he acknowledged no wrongdoing and offered no apology."

[LeftyMom]

30. It might be time to install a breathalyzer on your laptop.

[Warren DeMontague]

33. Didnt give a shit about it then

Dont now.

[Spider Jerusalem]

38. Clinton was incredibly lucky.

He was president at a time when new technology fields started making a major contribution to the economy. The tech boom of the '90's was largely responsible for the "good economy" of the Clinton years. At the same time, it was an unsustainable bubble, and Clinton also presided over deregulation that contributed significantly to the eventual 2008 crash, and over things like NAFTA and most-favoured-nation trading status with China that saw American manufacturing gutted (the US textile industry lost over a million jobs in the seven years between 1994 and 2001, for example), and NAFTA specifically is also largely responsible for worsening the immigration crisis (dumping of highly-subsidised US corn on the Mexican market bankrupted an awful lot of Mexican farmers) and contributing to the general lawlessness and destabilisation of Mexico due to the drug war. By and large? Bill Clinton is the Democratic Calvin Coolidge. The 1920's were also an era of unprecedented economic expansion in new industries; then the 1929 crash happened, and it took almost two decades to recover. I don't think you'll find anyone arguing that Coolidge was a great, or even very good, president these days.

[jwirr]

43. THIS is a very good point. My daughter keeps saying "But

Bill had a really good economy. I have not known how to explain that this kind of thing can happen. Thank you.

[spanone]

42. compared to the bu$h before and the bu$h after, he's a fucking genius.