Chris Hedges has some very critical things to say about Bill Clinton and his new book....do you agree with him or not?
[url=http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070917_giving_and_taking/]‘Giving’ and Taking
[/url]
Quote:
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.
The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to the country by the Clinton White House as an opportunity to raise the incomes and prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Goods would be cheaper. Workers would be wealthier. Everyone would be happier. I am not sure how these contradictory things were supposed to happen, but in a sound-bite society, reality no longer matters. NAFTA would also, we were told, staunch Mexican immigration into the United States.
"There will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home,” President Clinton said in the spring of 1993 as he was lobbying for the bill.
MORE AT THE LINK.
The comments make interesting reading....
Think about this one:
Quote:
Because I don’t wish to spend even a small part of whatever time I have left researching the pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses, vision/blindness of Presidents past, I don’t pretend to be knowledgeable on the topic.
I just wanted to state that if, as a citizen, I must be screwed, I’d rather it be by some leader with class, style, intelligence, personality, ability to use the English language and just a hint of being a sexually viable, sentient, thinking human being!
Guess that rules out George W. Bush.
...and this one:
Quote:
It amazes me how the extreme Left so hates the Clintons that they actually seem to PREFER Republicans in power because then they can write and say ANYTHING about them...But about Dems they don’t like they’ll feel stifled.
Face it: The 8 years under Bill Clinton were the best 8 years this nation had since Jan 1965, when LBJ started his second term. By my count that’s 42 years, of LBJ expanding Viet Nam, Nixon continuing it and sinking the economy, Ford fumbling, Jimmy Carter STARTING the Draconian measures needed to fix it only to be sunk by Reagan/Bush41--who made a mess of everthing they touched, to Clinton, pulling us out to health, to Bush43 sinking it all again.
Yet Bill Clinton, arguably the MOST successful President in the last 42 years, even by extreme Left-wing standards, is sliced and diced for remembering and acting by the adage that “politics is the art of the possible.”
In fact, if you ask the question: was JFK a better President than Clinton? Was Ike? (maybe, maybe not) How about Truman?, You’ll rapidly come to the conclusion that Bill Clinton was the BEST President America has had since FDR died in 1945--that’s 62 years, folks! The BEST 8 years of the last 62, by a DEMOCRATIC President that you vitriolically condemn.
Just what the HELL do you want?
