http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=249014483&blogID...
Justin:
The last time a democrat was in office, there was PEACE & Prosperity ,
there hasn't been anything close to that these last 8 miserable years,
please explain why your Republican president of 8 years has a 28%%
approval rating the lowest ever of any 2 term American president?
RESPONSE:
That was then, when the American Public didn't realize it was al-Qaeda
who hit the WTC (
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698239/posts)
in the first year of the Clinton Presidency. They also hit us in Somalia
during the Black Hawk Down (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJ6cxWdZwA)
incident. And what did Clinton do? He turned fighting terrorists in
America over to Janet Reno, pulled the troops from Somalia, and a year
later when Republicans took control of Congress, instead of having the
FBI investigate al-Qaeda in America, he had them investigate Republican
members of Congress.
Then Clinton turned around in 1995, and told Sudan they couldn't turn
Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda over to US Authorities, because he had no
grounds upon which to take them into custody! That same year, he stopped
Robert Baer from assisting a former General under Saddam and the Kurds
from uniting to overthrow Saddam, because he didn't want it interrupting
the Palestinian Peace Process. A friends of mine who left Islam and
became Christian, told me Clinton was a fool to trust the PLO. He said
they would only have cease fires, and stop to discuss peace until they
could rearm. The Intifada and Homicide Bombings that followed Clinton's
brokered deal to give every Palestinian family $4,000 a year from US tax
payers, to try to bribe the peace (and $4,000 would have comfortably
provided for every Palestinian family over there) fell apart, because
Arafat knew the core beliefs of the PLO
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYXAWgY__1w) and knew they would kill
him if he accepted peace.
So Clinton failed to stop al-Qaeda and failed to keep Iraq from becoming
an issue after he left the Presidency and his whole folly of trying to
leave a Clinton policy of Peace in the Middle East was a red herring
only the PLO realized and knew to be so.
Much of a President's policies do not go into effect until he leaves
office, and so Clinton prospered under policies put in place by
Reagan/Bush when it took them 12 years to turn around the disastrous
policies of the Carter Administration
(
http://groups.google.com/group/nashville.general/browse_thread/thread/379cc67b83cd0c1c/63b4d3ea75278508...=#63b4d3ea75278508),
and a Democrat controlled congress that had been in power for 40 plus up
until 1994. Republicans came in and cut spending and it helped improve
the economy, but Clinton refused to work with Gingrich and freeze all
government spending for 5 years, so the budget could be truly balanced
and the national debt paid off. Had Clinton listened to Gingrich, there
would have been no housing crisis from the sub-prime loans, because
interest rates would have been low enough for most families to afford
their own homes.
Then you have the continued MYTH OF THE CLINTON SURPLUS
(
http://www.letxa.com/articles/16) that never really
existed(
http://www.boilermakers.org/files/report er/V38N6.pdf - see page
9 of pdf file)!
And Clinton, not wanting to freeze budget spending, actually wanted to
increase it, but he had no way of passing taxes with Republicans in
control of Congress. I remember plenty of people in 1993 who survived on
one income who were mad as hell, that they had to have two people from
the same house go to work, to help pay for the largest tax increase in
US History that Clinton passed, and that Al Gore broke the tie vote for
in Congress that would come back to cost the Democrats control of
Congress in 1994. So since he couldn't get a tax increase out of
Republicans, he got it via OPEC. He sent Bill Richardson in 1999 to ask
OPEC to cut production
(
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/20/190717.shtml),
because of 15 year historically low crude, that came about in 1984, when
OPEC increased production to control OIL prices, because in the 1970's
British and Finnish companies invested in drilling in the North Atlantic
that brought as much oil online as OPEC produced. That's why I saw gas
prices drop in one years time from their historically then high of $1.84
a gallon to $0.55 a gallon.
However, Clinton knew raising the price of Oil would get Russia and
Mexico more money for their Oil and allow them to pay their debts off to
the US Treasury quicker, and so he managed to pass a tax you and I pay
at the pump and still do.
So this notion that all was peace and prosperity during the Clinton
years is a smoke and mirror show. After Enron crashed for doing
accounting the way the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) had done it for
years, the Republicans changed the way the Democrats who done accounting
for 40+ year after 2001. Now the government could no longer count
expenses as investments (for example, feds buy MS Windows XP, and then
count the cost for buying that many copies as an investment instead of
an expense, this is what took Enron under and many other companies as
well). When the Republicans did this, they found out they no longer had
the artificial Clinton Surplus, but a deficit, that was always there
throughout the 90's.
+++++++++++++++
In February 1999, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson visited Saudi Arabia
when prices were at their lowest. Richardson reportedly pressed Saudi
Oil Minister Ali Naimi on the "oversupplied market" and expressed
concern about "extreme price volatility."
Former Saudi minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani told a Houston oil
conference that Richardson had "saved the oil industry" during that
visit because his "intervention" had "persuaded" the Saudis to change
policy by raising prices.
After Richardson's visit, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, an industry
newsletter, quoted Saudi officials as wanting "a price of $18 to $20 as
soon as possible."
In 1999, then-President Clinton pressed OPEC to raise prices in order to
finance the brutal Russian war in Chechnya. Clinton needed Russia's help
settling that pesky little war in Kosovo. However, Bill was unable to
aid Boris Yeltsin directly because of the rampant corruption inside Moscow.
Clinton quietly used OPEC oil diplomacy to supply Russia increased
energy profits. The influx of cash into Moscow was mainly obtained
through Iraqi oil sold by the U.N. and distributed through Russian
suppliers. The cash paid for the Russian war and a new round of rampant
corruption, centered on the former Soviet GAZPROM state oil company.
However, there were also unexpected results. The oil sales helped Saddam
Hussein re-arm his military with a brand new Chinese-built air defense
system. The move is also now seen as a major blunder that triggered the
2001 recession.
Anti-Energy Movement
In the 1990s, OPEC wanted to re-establish monopoly control by flooding
the market with cheap oil. In 1973 OPEC cut off all oil to the West
during the October war. The result was a sudden influx of investment in
domestic and alternative production that peaked just before Clinton took
office in 1992.
Clinton cooperated with OPEC by destroying domestic production.
Clinton's main weapon was a war of propaganda waged by Al Gore. Gore led
the attack on the U.S. energy industry using "green" policies of radical
environmentalism. Despite the many variables in domestic energy, there
is a basic flaw in the anti-energy argument. It is far more
"environmentally friendly" to pump oil from static fields here in the
U.S. than it is to import foreign oil in fragile ocean-going tankers.
OPEC in 2001 just squeezes harder, having learned never to let the U.S.
go cold turkey again. The Clinton economy was built on artificially low
cost foreign energy that has suddenly become very expensive. The United
States is now more dependent on foreign energy than ever before.
Blackouts on the West Coast, skyrocketing gas and oil prices and an
unstable stock market all add up to a recession in progress. There are
no fast answers for eight years of declining domestic oil production and
climbing oil consumption.
+++++++++++++++
"Just the facts Ma'am!"
