Monday, November 3, 2014

BloggeRhythms

The day of reckoning is finally arriving tomorrow, with both major political party’s predicting prevalence (try repeating that one 10 times without a mistake) in the Congressional elections. And we’ll all find out who was right after all the votes are finally counted. 
 
However, until it’s known what the actual results are, speculating on the winners not only doesn’t matter, hordes of others have been doing that for months now. Instead, there’s another point that’s been hammered continually by Democrats during the past two years as a major reason for keeping them in office, or electing first-time candidates: the popularity and successes of Bill Clinton.
 
Considering how much credit is given to the extremely popular former-president, I looked up his performance record again, and found the following:  

According to findthebest.com, president Clinton,
  • Presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history
  •  Signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, cutting taxes for fifteen million low-income families, making tax cuts available to 90 percent of small businesses, and raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of taxpayers
  • Passed welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), providing health coverage for millions of children
  • Signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law and implemented Don't Ask Don't Tell in the armed services. Despite these anti-gay policies, Clinton also doubled federal funding for HIV/AIDS research, prevention and treatment and pushed for passing hate crimes laws for gays
  • Signed the 1993 Brady Bill imposing a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases and the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill expanding the death penalty for drug kingpins, murderers of federal law enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional categories of violent felons
  • Signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) creating a trilateral trade bloc between Mexico, Canada, and the US in 1994
  • Deployed American troops in Somalia and Yugoslavia as part of peacekeeping missions
  • Ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in East Africa in 1998
  • Was impeached for perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice during a lawsuit against him, both related to a scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinski, but was eventually acquitted by the Senate
Therefore, when you study the results, you find that except for several social issues, not very much ground-breaking legislation was enacted. In fact, the most outstanding achievement was the performance of the economy for eight years, which was the actual key to his popularity.
 
Which is why it’s important to remember that, although Bill Clinton knew virtually nothing about how the US economy functions, he was wise enough to realize his own shortcomings and left holdover Alan Greenspan, a conservative Republican, as head of the Federal Reserve. 
 
Consequently, whenever Democrats use the economic successes of the Clinton years as reasons for voting for them, they’re actually endorsing Republican economic policy as being best for the country.
 
Then, on another subject, there’s this  item a friend posted on Facebook, which underlines how brilliant a philosopher Albert Einstein really was.

image  That’s it for today folks.
Adios

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