The real Reagan #1 "beloved"

[techweenie]

We've heard for the last week how 'beloved' Ronald Reagan was as a president. this has been a continuing theme of Rush Limbaugh among others for the past 3 years or so.

In truth, Reagan was almost *exactly* as popular as Bill Clinton in terms of approval and disapproval ratings through each year of his presidency.

[speeder]

But what were the #s? They were both pretty popular, were they not?

When it came to winning elections, those two could give lessons to anyone. If not for the 22nd Amendment, Clinton could have beaten GW Bush in 2000 w/o campaigning, IMO. It would have been the proverbial "sprinkler against a firehose".......

[island911]

Originally posted by techweenie
. ..
In truth, Reagan was almost *exactly* as popular as Bill Clinton in terms of approval and disapproval ratings through each year of his presidency.

Keyword; WAS.
Perhaps we should look at who is more popular now, rather than who was then. . . .so I mean is-is rather than is-was.

btw, what is with this Regan Bashing? I think you should consider moving to France.

[techweenie]

Here are the numbers.

Interesting that "liberal" ABC exaggerated Reagan's approval rating.

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/reagan-myth-reality.html

[kach22i]

Reagan appealed to swing voters and independents as much as his conservative base. I see his general popularity as a myth, the numbers in the link above has proven that quite well.

[jyl]

You can't compare Reagan's popularity today with Clinton's popularity today. You have to wait until they've both been out of office a long time. Time has rose-colored glasses.

Presidents often become more popular after they've been out of office a long time, especially if they've just died and enjoyed a well-planned week-long media extravaganza, the cover of every newsmagazine, casket lying in state, heck President Reagan has practically been canonized these past days. But it applies generally - even Carter is more popular today than he was while in office, Nixon has made something of a comeback as a senior statesman, etc.

Originally posted by island911
Keyword; WAS.
Perhaps we should look at who is more popular now, rather than who was then. . . .so I mean is-is rather than is-was.

btw, what is with this Regan Bashing? I think you should consider moving to France.

[mikester]

Originally posted by techweenie
We've heard for the last week how 'beloved' Ronald Reagan was as a president. this has been a continuing theme of Rush Limbaugh among others for the past 3 years or so.

In truth, Reagan was almost *exactly* as popular as Bill Clinton in terms of approval and disapproval ratings through each year of his presidency.

Wow...

I never met a warmonger socialist before.

I meant that in the nicest possible way - Seriously.

[techweenie]

[pwd72s]

out of context, techweenie...WAY out!

[cegerer]

I try to avoid these political rant threads, but jesus christ .... what's with you man? The guy's dead - move on with your life, go drive your car, do something constructive.

BILL CLINTON'S KNOWN LIES



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July 1991: Question: "Have you ever used Marijuana or any illegal drugs?" Answer: "I've never broken any drug law." - Arkansas Gazette, July 24th, 1991, p. 8B
Asked this 3 times, on 3 separate occasions, by 3 different interviewers, your Great White Hope repeated this claim. Until faced with irrefutable proof, that is.

Then he said:

March 29th, 1992: "I've never broken a state law. But when I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two..."

Later, in that same interview, "No one has ever asked me that question point-blank."

- The New York Times, March 30th, 1992, p.A15.


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On Jan. 19, 1992 Bill Clinton said, "I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy."

But on Jan. 14, 1993 at a press conference, Bill Clinton said, "From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle-class tax cut. "I never did meet any voter who thought that."


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On Sept. 8,1992, Bill Clinton said, "The only people who will pay more income taxes are the wealthiest 2 percent, those living in households making over $200,000 a year."

In response to a Bush-Quayle ad that people with incomes of as little as $36,000 would pay more taxes under the Clinton plan, Bill Clinton said on Oct. 1, 1992, "It's a disgrace to the American people that the president (Bush) of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, that is so without foundation, so shameless in its attempt to get votes under false pretenses."

Yet the NY TIMES in the analysis of Clinton's budget wrote, "There are tax increases for every family making more than $20,000 a year!"

"While Clinton continued to defend his middle-class tax cut publicly, he privately expressed the view to his advisers that it was intellectually dishonest." (The Agenda, by Bob Woodward, p. 31)


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In Business Week, July 6, 1992, Bill Clinton was quoted as saying, "When I began the campaign, the projected deficit was $250 billion. Now its up to $400 billion."

However in Time Magazine. 2 weeks later, Bill Clinton was quoted as saying, "When I started in New Hampshire working with those numbers, we felt the deficit was going to be around $250 billion a year, not $400 billion." Which is it, Bill?

But then he said on Feb. 10, 1993, "The deficit of this country is about $50 billion a year bigger than I was told it was going to be before the election." --our President said this after "discovering" that the deficit was $290 billion, $110 Billion LESS than he had claimed in July! Which story are we to believe from our president??


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President Clinton said on March 23, 1993 at a press conference: "M economic package will cut $500 billion from the deficit in five years." Yet the projected deficit in 1998 with Clinton's budget is $234 billion, the projected deficit in 2001 with Clinton budget is $401 billion.(These figures come from Bill Clinton's budget document, "A Vision of Change for America."-Feb. 1993.


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The Wall Street Journal Opinion-Editorial Page 2/21/95
NUMBERS GAME

It's the season to cut government, or at least to claim to, so we perked up when we heard President Clinton declare in his State of the Union address that he had cut (quote) more than 100,000 positions from the federal bureaucracy in the last two years alone (unquote).

As they say in detective work, interesting - if true. So we decided to pull out the new federal budget to check. What we discovered is that Mr. Clinton isn't lying, but he isn't telling the whole truth either. His speeches need an asterisk.

From 1993 to Fiscal Year 1996, the Clinton Administration will in fact have cut the federal government by 157,000 full-time positions. But there's a catch: 131,000 of those positions are civilian Defense jobs. Those cuts reflect the inevitable post-cold War decline in military spending, not some brave retrenchment in the overall size of government.

There's another catch: Of the 26,000 positions to be cut from the non-Defense side of Leviathan, 9,500 come from the Resolution Trust Corp. and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Those two banking agencies grew like Topsy to manage the savings and loan debacle, but are now cutting back as the bailout ends. The RTC is even supposed to go out of business this year. The bottom line is that over the course of the Clinton presidency, the non-Defense, non-S&L part of the government will cut a measly 16,500 full-time positions out of some 1.2 million. In essence the domestic government is conducting business as usual.

Mr. Clinton also says he's making the federal establishment (quote) the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President (unquote). But again, excluding Defense, total executive branch employment will be 1,181,000 in 1996. Back in 1963, when JFK was President, total non-Defense employment was a mere 861,000. Maybe that should be the 1996 goal for Republican budget- cutters; they could say they got the idea from the President.

Are you referring to the guy who absolutely, positively guaranteed that if he was elected governor of Arkansas in 1990 he would serve 4 years? The one who said that a 4% income tax rate on the wealthiest 2% of the population would raise 165 billion dollars, reduce the deficit, and allow a middle class tax cut? The one who claimed that the republicans had killed the Lani Guinier nomination? The one who claimed that he had decided to make himself available to the draft after 4 acquaintances were killed in Viet Nam (rather than after his birthday had been drawn #311 in the draft lottery)? The one who claimed that "affirmative action "benefits white men?

Are you referring to that Clinton?

No, he said that the new gasoline tax (4 cent per gallon) would go to a deficit reduction trust fund. No such fund has been established to date... it is going to the general fund to fund their increased social programs... check it out... call the government accounting office and ask... they are stealing your money...

And I give you my word to do it without the blame game of the last twelve years of Reagan and Bush.

Good, OOPS, that lasted almost a whole day!

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The NY Times reported that people earning under $100,000 paid an additional $3 billion in '94.

But wait, Clinton and the media claimed that only the top 2% were going to pay more taxes. Was that another lie from the Clinton administration?


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According to liberal Democrats, anyone who makes a dollar more than you is the "rich". On the issue of "taxes on the rich", consider the following:

Most of the "rich" are smart business men & women... they own and run their own businesses. In addition, Clinton passed a 1% increase in corporate income taxes...

If you owned your own business, or if you were the CFO of a corporation, and your cost of doing business went up, what would you do ? You'd pass this cost on...

Should they feel the heat, so to speak, they pass the new costs on to the principle consumers of the goods and services they offer...The middle-class and poor....So who really is paying Clinton's new taxes ?

As the saying goes. "When the "rich" get a sniffle, the middle-class catches pneumonia."

The real problem with this attack on the rich is the underlying assumption that this is a static class of people. Not so.

A great many people start off "poor" and as they move up in the business world become successful and eventually become what the Democrats would currently characterize as "rich." Indeed most of the wealth in this country is in the hands of senior citizens. Many of these people at one time had no money at all.

So, the attack on the rich is not an attack on some evil group. Its mostly an attack on people who after much sacrifice and hard work have finally reached their peak earning years and are trying to enjoy and pass on the fruits of their labor.


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There were many other Clinton proposals that didn't fly (thank you) which would have further parted people from their capital....Here's a couple of winners he proposed in 1992....

Imputed rent...You would pay tax on "rent" that you would have collected FROM YOURSELF...Tax real, only...NO RENTAL INCOME !!!!!

Lower the inheritance threshold...From about $650,000 to around $200,000. What has been an exclusive tax of the rich, Clinton wanted to give as a gift to the middle-class...


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Newsweek reports that Clinton and the Democrats will no longer pursue the rich vs. middle class America class warfare strategy. They realize that it won't help them politically and, according to Newsweek, "President Clinton...doesn't really believe in it."

Newsweek noted that they are abandoning it, so apparently, they do not agree, nor do their sources. Clinton has been bashing the rich since his campaign, claiming disingenuously that they are not paying their "fair share" of taxes, i.e. falsely implying that they are paying less than they did in '80. Hillary went after the "greedy" pharmaceutical companies, after selling their stock short. They have made many self-serving moralistic statements about the "greed" of the '80's. Clinton and the Democrats condemn Republican. tax cut plans because they claim it will "help the rich."

If this is not class warfare, what is?

Clinton has pursued this strategy for about 3 years, and now he claims he **doesn't really believe in it?** Hey, I'll buy that!

Newsweek reported it as "news." How strangely non-judgmental that they would not question the sincerity of Clinton's claim when his actions speak otherwise.

Clinton's economic policies ???

1) A massive tax increase

2) "Hope" that interest rates would remain low

3) A few R & D credits for Al Gore's pet high tech industries

Was there anything else ?

In reference to the Social Security trust fund --

"But its important that we not panic; there is no immediate danger to retirement. Our accumulated surpluses would be sufficient to pay the liabilities to 2029 at current payroll tax rates."

From an interview; published in the May '95 issue of Money magazine.

Hasn't anyone told him that the Social Security trust fund has no money -- Congress borrowed it all and left IOUs with no plans yet on how to redeem those IOU's?

Given that Clinton seems so concerned about the hateful rhetoric in: politics these days, I wonder if he intends to limits such violent: statements as "taking food from the mouths of children", "war on the poor", "throwing the elderly out on the streets", and "contract _on_ America, Evil, Extreme, Mean Spirited and on and on and on.

We've given more power to states and localities and to private citizens. Our proposals would further accelerate those trends. Bill Clinton, White House press conference, 3/3/95

Fact: Clinton lobbied to defeat the Balance Budget Amendment in the Senate, so states and localities are prevented from getting the chance to even debate the amendment. His Administration opposes giving block grants to the states. He is opposing all Block Grants as well.

We support adding 100,000 new police officers. Bill Clinton, same news conference.

Fact: There are no "100,000 police officers". Never has been, never will be. Even liberal columnist DeWayne Wickam concluded in USA Today: "Many of the 100,00 cops promised in the crime bill will never materialize". On the day AFTER Clinton signed the bill into law, The New York Times reported that "some law enforcement analyst said the Administration has in effect misled local officials by vastly overstating the number of police officers who can be hired under the program".

It's called lying where I come from, how about where you came from?


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Everyone knows that I have tougher ethic rules than any other President. Bill Clinton, news conference 3/3/95 defending the ethical standards of his administration.

Fact: In addition to his own Whitewater troubles and many high-level resignations, several members of his cabinet are currently facing probes in their conduct, including four "Special Prosecutors..

The budget which came from the President said,, I've given up; that as long I am President of the United States there will never be a balanced budget. That is an astonishing statement. Paul Tsongas, at a Capitol Hill press conference, 2/7/95.

Clinton said, "Who do these people think they are?" referring to people who stockpile guns, "No other government in the world would allow their citizens to do that."


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How about this!

Sara Brady was quoted in several papers and magazines at an Hand Gun Incorporated rally a couple of weeks before the Senate vote saying..." Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn't matter if you have to distort facts or even lie.

"Our task of creating a Socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed." -- Sarah Brady (President of Handgun Control, Inc. and wife of James Brady, whom the Brady Bill was named for and was recently "honored" by Clinton)

Democratic Rep. David Obey said "I think most of us learned some time ago that if you don't like the president's position on a particular issue, you simply need to wait a few weeks."

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Foreign Policy?

Well, let's see, start with Somalia. It's not the first, but its one of the best known. In the winter of 1992 George Bush ordered US troops to guard food shipments in and around the ports. The deployment ended in March, a resounding success. A couple of months later Clinton got suckered into sending the Marines back in as 'nation builders'. In the course of which he deliberately violated Executive Orders of the Presidency not to engage in deliberate or willful assassination of foreign political or military leaders; you DO remember the AC130 gunships firing wildly into civilian occupied apartment buildings, in an effort to murder a Somali warlord and his followers, don't you? I didn't think so. Long term memory is not a strong suite of the Clintonestae.

Want a small disaster? At the opening of the Holocaust Memorial, 1993. A luncheon was served afterwards for the distinguished Jewish guests and foreign dignitaries. The main entree' was Honey baked Ham.

Bosnia. Bosnia is always good for a laugh. On the campaign trail, Candidate Clinton said that he was qualified as Commander In Chief of the Arkansas National Guard to make military decisions. As an example, he bragged that if he were elected, he would bomb the Serbs. In May of 1993, he sent Warren Christopher to convince the Europeans to allow him to do just that. Christopher went with the 'strongest message possible' to urge England, France, and Germany that he was fully committed to this course. Even as the Secretary of State was waiting to meet with them in Geneva, Your Great White Hope appeared on the tube and said that 'bombing the Serbs probably wouldn't be necessary'. Warren Christopher is not noted for emotional displays: Some have suggested that he has had the centers in his brain responsible for emotion surgically removed. After Christopher heard what Fearless Leader did, he ALMOST cracked a frown. The Europeans went ballistic. This year Clinton pushed the bombing schtick again to make himself look tougher than the average weenie and we all know what happened: The Serbs have basically gone on to conquer Bosnia. In that sad country you now have Serbian held territory and UN funded and run Serbian concentration camps disguised as 'safe havens'. The only reason these haven't been overrun is the Serbs haven't got the vaguest idea what to do with the refugees huddled in them.

"OH!" you shriek hysterically, "PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS HAVE HAD FAILURES, TOO! IT'S NOT FAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIRRRRR THAT BILL

CLINTON IS BEING JUDGED SO HARSHLY!!!!" Previous administrations had more successes than failures. George Bush built an international coalition to defeat Iraq in the Gulf War - even got the Arabs to talk to the Israelis afterwards. Ronald Reagan stopped the advance of Marxism in this hemisphere and cracked the will of the Soviets hard-liners to continue the Cold War. Carter, whatever else he may have failed at, can always look back at the Camp David Accords. Ford wasn't President long enough to do more than handle domestic problems, but Nixon reopened the dialogue with China. And so on back through American history. Yes, they had failures, but never were so many failures in so short a time the result of INCREDIBLE INCOMPETENCE by an Administration.

Dan Rather responding to congratulations to him and Connie Chung during and interview shortly after they teamed up together, "If we could be one-hundredth as gret as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been together in the White House," the supposedly objective newsman said, "we'd take it right now and walk away winners."

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans"

- President Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)


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Vice President Al Gore's interview on ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," Sunday, August 25, 1996

Vice President Al Gore made a number of assertions during this interview which we feel require additional clarification.

Medicare

"Beyond that, the Republican Party, specifically Speaker Gingrich, said that he wanted to make changes that would cause Medicare to wither on the vine." --Al Gore, ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," 8/25/96

Wrong! Al Gore quoted Speaker Gingrich out of context. What the Speaker actually said was:

"Okay, what do you think the Health Care Financing Administration is? It's a centralized command bureaucracy. It's everything we're telling Boris Yeltzin to get rid of. Now we don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart. We don't think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe its going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it -- voluntarily." --Speaker Newt Gingrich, remarks to Blue Cross/Blue Shield conference, 10/24/95

In their 1992 campaign, Clinton and Gore endorsed scrapping the Health Care Financing Administration:

"We will scrap the Health Care Financing Administration and replace it with a health standards board -- made up of consumers, providers, business, labor and government -- that will establish annual health budget targets and outline a core benefits package." --Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Putting People First, 1992


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100,000 Cops

"The president has formed an alliance with the law enforcement officers around this country and experts in fighting crime, passed legislation, over the opposition of Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, that is now putting 100,000 extra community police officers on the streets." --Al Gore, ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," 8/25/96

Wrong again!

"What I am advised is that there are 17,000 officers that can be identified as being on the streets." --Attorney General Janet Reno, media availability, 5/16/96

Worse, not all of these cops are fighting crime:

"At least $7.2 million in COPS grants has been used to hire 86 officers for state parks, marinas and other areas seemingly far removed from violent crime." --Investor's Business Daily, 7/16/96

Reducing government

"We have downsized the federal government during the last four years by 250,000 people." --Al Gore, ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," 8/25/96

What Gore didn't say was that Clinton accomplished this by gutting Defense:

"President Clinton's plan three years ago to 'reinvent' government and cut the federal work force by nearly 252,000 jobs never mentioned that the military would absorb 75 percent of the cuts." --The Washington Times, 8/23/96


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The national debt

"The debt, which was just ballooning out of control under the previous two administrations, has now been cut by 60 percent." --Al Gore, ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," 8/25/96

Wrong! According to statistics released in February, 1996 by Clinton's own Office of Management and Budget, the gross federal debt for fiscal year 1992 was $4.002 trillion. By fiscal year 1995 it had "ballooned" to $4.921 trillion -- an increase of 23 percent.

Bill Clinton during a visit in Italy, to his hosts: "Just think, we are walking on the very ground where Romulus and Remus walked".

-- Bill Clinton (They are fictional characters)

"There is a feeling among reporters that the truth and Clinton don't often go together. Reporters have a feeling he is a man without conviction." -- Ken Auletta, a media columnist for the New Yorker

http://www.patriotsforbush.com/

My final thoughts
I was not alive for John F. Kennedy's funeral. It must have been something to see.

More than one major network said that Ronald Reagan's funeral was just as memorable. I do not wish to compare the two, this is not a competition.

Men do not like to expose their feelings in public. We like to keep them hidden, but on this occasion, I am not afraid to admit that I did not spend much of the day without tears in my eyes. While Reagan's policies will be the subject of much debate, we will leave that for another day.

Ronald Reagan was my hero. I do not say that lightly. My life has been shaped by this man. His service to our country directly inspired me to join the military. His optimism inspired a nation to greatness. And his memory should inspire the two major political parties in this country to work together instead of working against each other.

I never knew my grandfathers. One died before I was born and the other shortly after I was born. I like to think that if they lived, they would have been like Ronald Reagan. The 40th President was a grandfather to all of us. He took the helm of a country that had lost its way and steered it back on course. In the shadow of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis, his optimism, his perseverance and his dedication made us all proud to be Americans once again.

Most of you do not know that Ronald Reagan insisted that Jimmy Carter greet the returning hostages. That was the kind of man he was, he never sought the limelight, even when it sought him out. If you listened to the many eulogies, you now realize that Ronald Reagan was a man without an ounce of vanity within him. He never sought the credit for his accomplishments, he simply did his job and moved on to the next.

Ronald Reagan was the model of the perfect husband. His letters to Nancy are a testament to the love they shared. Behind every good man stands a great woman and Nancy Regan was his rock of Gibraltar. She stood by him during his entire life. Her love and companionship never faltered. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Nancy Reagan for it was she who bore the burden of taking care of Ronald Reagan in the last decade of his life. And it was she who protected him and kept our memories of him intact. We remember the Ronald Reagan of the 1980's and not a man ravaged by Alzheimer’s Disease. We have Nancy Reagan to thank for that. Nancy.... I salute you. You and your family are in my prayers.

The other woman I want to thank is Margaret Thatcher. While we would like to give Ronald Reagan all the credit for the downfall of communism, Lady Thatcher deserves much of it as well. It was her conversation with Ronald Reagan in which she referred to Mikhail Gorbachev as "a man we can do business with" which was the catalyst to the treaties that followed and the end of the cold war.

Ronald Reagan also loved the military. He was the first president to salute the troops that served under him, a tradition that continues to this day. He knew that many young Americans were sacrificing several years of their lives to keep America free. He was also there when several of those men, who died in Beirut, return home. He comforted their families in their time of need and rededicated himself to defending America as a tribute to their memories.

I was also moved by the tremendous eulogies given by George H.W. Bush, Brian Mulroney and President George W. Bush. All of them spoke of the gentleman that Ronald Reagan was. They spoke with great eloquence of friendship, kindness, kinship that they shared with President Reagan.

I would like to thank Democrats everywhere who have had kind words to say about Ronald Reagan. We certainly appreciate your kindness and your prayers during this diffucult time. Perhaps we could take the example of President Reagan and work together to better America.

While my I am feeling a sadness I cannot describe, I am comforted to know that Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill are sitting in heaven and sharing jokes with each other and looking down on us all.

While it is time to say goodbye to the 40th President of the United States, he will live on in our hearts and minds, and his legacy will be that of a liberator, the man who restored confidence in the American People and the captain who put America back on course.

Thank you President Reagan for all you have done for me, for America and for the world. We will never meet another human being quite like you. But we will carry your spirit in our hearts until the day we meet you in heaven.

May god rest the soul of Ronald Reagan and may God bless America.

Bill Clinton's Lies
"Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?"
Bob Kerrey [D-Neb.], Esquire, 1/96)
Senator and Chairman of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee



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SOMALIA, 1993:
Clinton pledged never to deploy American troops overseas unless U.S. strategic interests were threatened and there was a clear military goal with a firm exit strategy.
BOSNIA, 1995
Clinton said he would deploy troops to Bosnia for only 18 months, and then they would come home.
BOSNIA, 1998
The Clinton administration confirmed plans to maintain thousands of troops on an open-ended peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina with no exit strategy.`The policy is to remain there. It's
open-ended.'
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GENNIFER FLOWERS, 1992
Clinton emphatically denied having affair with Gennifer Flowers
GENNIFER FLOWERS, 1998
Clinton admits in deposition to having sexual affair with Gennifer Flowers
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100 DAY PLAN: June 23, 1992
Bill Clinton:
"I intend to have a legislative program ready on the desks of Congress on the day after I'm inaugurated. I intend
to have an explosive 100 day action period. Why do I think it will pass? Well, first of all, I'm running on it."

100 DAY PLAN: Jan 14, 1993
Question from member of press:
"We were originally led to believe you would have an outline for congress even before the inauguration and
presented on day one or shortly thereafter - and now we're told it may be a couple weeks down the road with a
full plan ready in March. When will it be ready?"
Reply by Bill Clinton:
"Well, I don't know who led you to believe that, but I'm the Only one who's authorized to talk about that ---"


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Bill Clinton, June 8 1996
"I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child."
THE TRUTH: NOT A SINGLE BLACK CHURCH BURNED IN ARKANSAS WHEN HE WAS GROWING UP.


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Bill Clinton, Feb 12, 1996
"Since I was a little boy, I've heard about the Iowa caucuses. That's why I would really like to do well in them."
THE TRUTH: THE IOWA CAUCUSES DIDN'T BEGIN UNTIL 1972 when Clinton was at Oxford in England.


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THE LIE:
Bill Clinton, 1992
I will not raised taxes, I will impose tax cuts for the American People

THE TRUTH,
In 1993, Clinton's "tax cut" was the single largest tax increase in American history.


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THE LIE
Bill Clinton, 1992
"The [Bush] administration continues to coddle China, despite its continuing crackdown on democratic reform"


THE TRUTH
Bill Clinton, 1994
I have decided that the United States should renew Most Favored Nation trading status toward China."I am moving, therefore, to delink human rights from the annual extension of Most Favored Nation trading status for China."


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Bill Clinton, 6/11/92
"I would support a balanced-budget amendment"

Bill Clinton, 2/28/95
"Obviously, I don't support it [a balanced budget amendment]."


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Bill Clinton, 1992
[We] Oppose federal excise gas tax increases. Instead of a backbreaking federal gas tax, we should try conservation, increased use of natural gas, and increased use of alternative fuels."

THE TRUTH
President Clinton raised the federal gasoline tax a total of 6.8 cents per gallon in 1996


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Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, long-time fund-raising pal of ex-President Clinton, told a whopper Sunday about his old boss on ABC's "This Week," while attacking President Bush as part of a GOP-bashing campaign before the midterm elections.

McAuliffe maintained that, unlike Bush, Clinton took the high ground and didn't "blame his predecessors" for the economic woes he inherited in 1993.


DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe

"There are 1.6 million Americans today who have lost their jobs since George Bush became president. And what does this administration do? All they do is blame others," he told ABC's Sam Donaldson.

"When Bill Clinton became president, he had a 7 percent unemployment rate. We were in a recession (and) he had the largest budget deficit in the history of our country," McAuliffe went on.

"Did he blame his predecessors?" he said. "No, he got to work. He brought Democrats, Republicans together."

His statement is demonstrably untrue, yet Donaldson left it unchallenged and quickly moved on to the next question ("Let's talk about your party, the Democratic Party. Joe Lieberman ...").

Lexis-Nexis – the database that archives old media articles and transcripts of speeches and press conferences going back decades – doesn't have as short a memory as Donaldson or McAuliffe.

Here are just a few of the many complaints that Clinton, as both president and candidate, made about what he called the "failed" economic policies of his Republican predecessors, Presidents Bush and Reagan (who, it should be noted, implemented markedly different fiscal policies during their terms, despite Clinton's attempt to link them together as one seamless policy over their combined 12 years).


"Twenty-one months ago, I moved to Washington. Remember the challenges we faced when I went there? We'd had four years of the slowest economic growth since the Great Depression, four years in which Pennsylvania lost 8,300 jobs," Clinton reminded party faithful at an Oct. 31, 1994, fund-raiser for Pennsylvanian Democratic candidates.
"We were dealing with 12 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, which exploded our deficits and sent our jobs overseas, and divided our people," Clinton added.


Clinton piled it on a month later in a Dec. 2, 1994, speech to the National League of Cities: "We've worked too hard to build an economic recovery and a job strategy, and to reduce this deficit that 12 years of irresponsible, explosive spending left us."

Clinton had kicked off the year with the same negative theme, lecturing Republicans in Congress in his Jan. 25, 1994, State of the Union speech: "For the 12 years of trickle-down economics, we built a false prosperity on a hollow basis.
"Our national debt quadrupled," he added. "From 1989 to 1992, we experienced the slowest growth in a half-century."


On July 28, 1993, Clinton told reporters gathered at the White House: "For 12 years, we have followed a path that worked in the short run, but caused us great grief in the long time – and that is supply-side economics, which basically says we're going to cut taxes and increase spending.
"It took us from a $1 (trillion) to a $4 trillion debt (and) a huge deficit," he added.


On July 17, 1992, candidate Clinton told a crowd outside his hotel in York, Pa.: "We are in the grip of a failed economic program."
"Trickle-down has had 12 years," he added. "I'm tired of it. We're not going to do the same thing for four more years."


In announcing his candidacy in Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 3, 1991, Clinton said: "For 12 years, the Republicans have been telling us at the national level that America's problems are not their problems. They have washed their hands of responsibility for the economy."

Then there's Clinton's statements in his "Putting People First" campaign pamphlet: "For twelve years, the driving idea behind American economic policy has been cutting taxes on the richest individuals and corporations and hoping that their new wealth would 'trickle down' to the rest of us.
"This policy has failed," he said. "The Republicans in Washington have compiled the worst economic record in 50 years."

Of course, the 1990-91 recession was one of the mildest on record. In fact, Clinton inherited an economy that was rebounding at a brisk 5.4 percent pace in the last quarter of 1992.

Moreover, the large deficit he inherited was actually an overly pessimistic Bush administration projection based on estimated slower revenues from the recession and estimated higher spending from the savings-and-loan bailout. Clinton benefited from positive surprises on both fronts (although he conveniently kept his predecessor's unrealistic budget projections as a yardstick).

Referring to other incendiary statements McAuliffe made about Bush in a DNC speech over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot said his counterpart is prone to "hyperbole," but stopped short of calling him dishonest.

"He is incredibly inaccurate," he told the Sean Hannity radio show Monday, "and sometimes almost reckless."

Sep 13, 2001
By John Solomon
Associated Press Writer

Bob's Note: Let me put this simply. If BJ Clinton had gone ahead and attacked Osama bin Laden thousands and thousands of people would likely be alive today. Criminal Clinton's gutless inaction to end this terrorists life is the proximate cause of the massive carnage of Sept. 11, 2001. The only times that he attacked bin Laden was first to divert attention from the Senate hearing on his lying about Monica Lewinsky. The next time was for exactly the two days that the Senate debated whether to convict him of crimes serious enough to remove him from the presidency after the House of Representatives Impeached him. He wasted so many Tomahawk cruise missles shooting all over Afganistan and at Saudi aspirin factories (for which the owner was never compensated for his losses caused by Blow Job Bill) that there was a shortage to use in his next foray. His next foray was to befriend and protect the drug dealing and violently criminal Moslem "ethnic Albanians" from the Christian Serbs. He used Tomahawks so generously in that epic that less than 100 were left in the ENTIRE US arsenal.

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the waning days of the Clinton presidency, senior officials received specific intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and weighed a military plan to strike the suspected terrorist mastermind's location. The administration ultimately opted against an attack.

The information spurred a high-level debate inside the White House in December 2000 about whether the classified information provided the last best chance for President Clinton to punish bin Laden before he left office, the officials said.

Now nine month later, officials are discussing the incident as bin Laden's name increasingly is being connected with Tuesday's suicide attacks in New York and Washington.

Some in Congress have expressed anger that the United States has not been able to put bin Laden more on the defensive in Afghanistan with military strikes after years of intelligence linking him to global acts of terrorism against Americans.

"We should have put bin Laden on the defensive so he would be thinking about how we are going to get him rather than him plotting massive terrorist plots," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said.

Officials said the Clinton administration in its closing months reviewed several opportunities to possibly strike at bin Laden, but never felt they had enough information to risk such an operation.

"There were a couple of points, including in December, where there was intelligence indicative of bin Laden's whereabouts. But I can categorically tell you that at no point was it ripe enough to act," former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told The Associated Press.

Officials said the December meeting was the most pointed in a series of discussions over several months. Several officials familiar with the debate said top military and national security officials convened in the White House to discuss the options.

One individual familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting was prompted by "eyes-on intelligence" about bin Laden's whereabouts - a term used to indicate a human or satellite spotting.

According to officials:

-Military officials presented a possible military strike option, and the pros and cons were debated.

-Among the concerns voiced was whether the intelligence wasn't already stale given bin Laden's tendency to move quickly and go into hiding. There also was discussion of possible collateral damage if such an attack occurred.

-Ultimately, the president and aides decided not to strike. Berger and one other official said military officials never made a formal recommendation to proceed with the attack.

"There was never a recommendation from the Pentagon," Berger said.

Military strikes were aimed at bin Laden once before. After U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa three years ago, Washington retaliated with a missile attack in August 1998, sending more than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles into eastern Afghanistan targeting training camps operated by bin Laden.

The U.S. attacks killed about 20 followers but bin Laden escaped unhurt. Since then he has been forced by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to stop giving interviews and making statements.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001
By Paul Sperry

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- The dozen or so Islamic terrorists who pulled off the plot to strike at America's nerve centers in New York and Washington spent months, if not years, researching, planning and coordinating the surprise attacks, U.S. security officials say. And they did it completely in secret, using the world's most sophisticated telecommunications equipment, some secured by advanced encryption technology that most armies don't have.

Where did they get such state-of-the-art, military-related gear?

First, you have to appreciate the high degree of communications activity their mission required at each stage.

In researching their targets, the terrorists picked ones relatively easy to hit at high air speeds, yet ones that would produce big casualties and provide symbolic blows to American morale. They had to pick airports close by, with weak security. They had to find jets with enough heft and wingspan and fuel to cause major damage, yet not so large that they required extra crew.

The Boeing 757s and 767s they hijacked were big, but all had just two pilots and no flight engineers, making it easier for terrorists to take the cockpits. And the heisted jets were from the same family of aircraft, obviating additional cockpit training.

They also apparently studied passenger traffic patterns of airlines in order to pick flights with relatively few people aboard. All four flights had light passenger loads. The Boeing jets have roughly 160-seat capacities, yet American Flight 11 carried 81 passengers; American Flight 77, only 58; United Flight 175, 56; and United Flight 93, a skeletal 38.

Fewer passengers, fewer heroes to worry about.

More key, the terrorists needed to select transcontinental flights with big fuel loads to turn the planes into giant petro-bombs. All four flights were bound for California. They also had to know flight patterns, and how to blind air-traffic controllers to the hijackings by turning off the planes' transponders, which send such warning signals, among other aviation information.

In planning the attack, they had to fashion weapons that they could sneak past airport security. Transportation Department officials think that they may have hedged their bets and even planted security people on the inside at Logan and Dulles airports, so that guards would look the other way when they came through metal detectors at the terminals.

The kamikaze pilots also had to log many hours on computer flight simulators with high-level graphics capability, to practice hitting their targets at full throttle. A Continental Airlines captain, who's flown both 757s and 767s, told WorldNetDaily he thinks they may have even added the World Trade Center and Pentagon to the simulator's visual database.

"At the airspeed of those strikes, which hit their targets dead on, the hand-eye coordination demands would be too high for casual flying skill -- with, or without, an autopilot engaged," he said.

They had to practice, moreover, navigating the jets to abruptly change their course, by as much as 180 degrees in some cases, after take-off. Flying them at low altitudes was also something they had to work on.

Synchronized terrorists

Finally, in executing their murderous missions, the 12 or so terrorists had to coordinate their activities, flawlessly, within a roughly two-hour stretch. And, for the most part, they did. They all got to the airport on time, they all got through security, they all boarded their flights, they all hijacked their flights and, with the exception of one group, they all hit their targets.

Pulling off such a complex plot would have generated an inordinate volume of communications -- whether by radio, cell phone, land line, fax or modem -- among the terrorists, among their Middle-Eastern sponsors and among commercial contacts here and abroad.

But somehow eavesdroppers at the super-secret National Security Agency -- with their billion-dollar satellite "birds" and other surveillance technology -- were deaf, dumb and blind to the wicked plot.

"The real issue in this tragedy is how the hell were these people able to plan and coordinate such a strike over a period of months without the NSA intercepting their signals?" demanded Peter M. Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department.

Leitner, who reviews commercial license applications for exports of some of the most sophisticated military-related technology, thinks he knows the answer.

"The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.

Leitner says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security.

"Syria is a terrorist-supporting nation," he said. "They provide infrastructure to bastards like [Osama] bin Laden. They provide backup and support and communications abilities to these terrorist cells."

So what kind of gear has Syria -- and likely bin Laden, by way of Syria -- gotten from America?

Spread-spectrum radios

"We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said.

Spread-spectrum radios, originally designed for military use only, change their frequency constantly.

"Bin Laden's cells aren't having any trouble communicating anymore," Leitner said.

Bin Laden, the world's No. 1 terrorist and the Pentagon's chief suspect in Tuesday's attacks, is known to use portable satellite telephones, advanced encryption cell phones and other encrypted telephony equipment, as well as secure computer networks -- all compliments of U.S. technology, Leitner says.

"If people are worried about how these people were able to coordinate and communicate something like this -- which had to be pretty extensively coordinated -- without it being intercepted, it's because of the crap we've been selling these people," he said.

"How can you penetrate their networks when you can't even eavesdrop on their conversations?" he said.

"You can't stop them when they're coming right at your building," he said. "But, damn it, you should be able to stop them months in advance by breaking up their networks."

Leitner posits that the NSA wasn't able to detect the Islamic terrorists' plot because of the "high quality of the communications gear that they've been acquiring over the last couple of years, thanks to the Clinton administration's decontrols on advanced telecommunications equipment."

Terrorists' secured telecom gear "makes it infinitely more difficult to get even early warning signs" about their activities, he said.

Tuesday's attacks took the entire U.S. government, including the intelligence community, by surprise.

"We had no specific warning of the U.S. attacks," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee.

Complete surprise

The Pentagon issued an alert of "Threat Con Alpha" the day before the attack, which meant that no threats were on the horizon. The same alert was issued the morning of the attack.

"We got no word of anything," Leitner said.

"We weren't warned of anything," another Pentagon official told WorldNetDaily.

Asked Tuesday if he had any inkling of the plot, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dodged the question: "We don't discuss intelligence matters."

Three weeks ago, some overseas papers quoted bin Laden saying that a major strike against the U.S. was coming soon. But there were no specifics. And bin Laden reportedly sent an e-mail to unknown government sources three days ago warning holy hell would break out. But again, he didn't say how, when or where.

Still, it's baffling that the U.S. intelligence community didn't pick up, early on, any specifics of the complex and long-planned plot through electronic intercepts and signals intelligence.

But it's actually not that baffling, Leitner asserts, against the backdrop of loose government controls on dual-use telecom exports.

"I've testified to Congress that it will take serious numbers of body bags before we wake up to the need to tighten dual-use export controls," he said. "Unfortunately, we've got them now."

"This is so tragic and yet so preventable," he said. "Now we're going to have to knock out their [terrorist] camps, just like we had to bomb the Iraqi's several times now to try to take out the fiber-optics network that the Chinese are installing in Iraq's air-defense systems."

"Yet, it was the Clinton administration that gave the Chinese the technology to give to Iraq," he noted.

NewsMax.com

Wednesday Sept. 13, 2001; 12:02 a.m. EDT

A former CIA official said late Wednesday that U.S. spy recruitment had been decimated by strict Clinton administration rules that tied the agency's hands in its war against terrorism, a development first reported by NewsMax.com's Executive Editor Christopher Ruddy.

"We don't have enough people on the ground in the right places," former Iraqi bureau station chief Whitney Bruner told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

"Partly it's because there's a culture that I think has developed in Washington concerning human operations over the last several years," Bruner said; a policy that limited the kind of people the agency could deal with.

"When you're dealing with a terrorist target you are dealing with what might charitably be called slimeballs - very, very unpleasant type people who probably have criminal records," the former station chief explained.

But the people in a position to know about terrorists' plans were off limits under Clinton-era CIA regulations.

"We're not allowed to deal with them ... if the person you are trying to recruit against a terrorist target has questions of human rights or other kinds of crime," Bruner revealed.

Nearly a day before the former CIA official spoke out, a CIA source identified only as "Roger" told NewsMax.com's Christopher Ruddy that the CIA's "Human Rights Scrub" policy, developed during the Clinton years, made the recruitment of intelligence assets nearly impossible.

"Previously, I wrote how Clinton effectively stopped the recruitment of Chinese nationals by demanding that only high-ranking embassy officials could be recruited knowing this is almost impossible. Roger told me that. Roger reminded me again of this today.

"He noted that Clinton policies reached their zenith under CIA Director John Deutch and his top assistant, Nora Slatkin. The pair ran Clinton's CIA in the mid-1990s and implemented a 'human rights scrub' policy.

"Here's how Roger described it in an e-mail Tuesday evening: 'Deutch and Nora, Clinton's anti-intelligence plants, implemented a universal human rights scrub of all assets, virtually shutting down operations for 6 months to a year. This was after something happened in Central America (there was an American woman involved who was the common law wife of a commie who went missing there) that got a lot of bad press for the agency.

"'After that, each asset had to be certified as being 'clean for human rights violations.'

"'What this did was to put off limits, in effect, terrorists, criminals, and anyone else who would have info on these kinds of people.'

"Roger says the CIA, even under new leadership, has never recovered from the 'Human Rights Scrub' policy."

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Carl Limbacher
Friday, Sept. 21, 2001

President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky may have interfered with his administration's failed attempts to eliminate Mideast terrorist Osama bin Laden, the Boston Globe reported Friday.

The liberal sister paper of the New York Times also raised questions about whether the ex-president's reckless personal behavior ultimately contributed to the deaths of 6,700 Americans in last week's terrorist attacks on the U.S.

"He authorized the attack (on bin Laden) on the same August weekend in 1998 he confessed his affair with Lewinsky to his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton," the Globe said.

The paper called the confession of adultery an "added strain" for the president, noting that, "Some wonder whether he wasn't distracted by the legal and political quagmire of the Monica S. Lewinsky case" at the time he launched 75 cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan.

"He met with national security and military advisers to plan the attacks between sessions with lawyers to prepare for his [Lewinsky] grand jury testimony," the Globe said.

"I think it is entirely possible that was a distraction," said Massachusett's Senator John Kerry, referring to Clinton's attempts to juggle his Lewinsky cover-up with military efforts to take out the terrorist who would later prove so deadly to U.S. civilians.

Others disagreed. Former Clinton national security official Nancy Soderberg insisted to the Globe that her ex-boss was able to "compartmentalize" the Lewinsky sex scandal while mapping out a strategy to get bin Laden.

She did not cite the best known example of Clinton's ability to compartmentalize sex and national security: a 1995 Oval Office phone call where he discussed troop deployment to Bosnia with Rep. Sonny Callahan.

The conversation was carried out while Ms. Lewinsky performed a sex act on the president.

As Clinton desperately tried to cover-up his affair with the young intern, the legal fight to preserve his presidency took up more and more of his time, staffers admitted. Meanwhile other issues like the war on terrorism were relegated to the back burner.

"Clearly, not enough was done," said Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "We should have caught this. Why this happened, I don't know. Responsibilities were given out. Resources were given. Authorities existed. We should have prevented this."

Even Soderberg, who declined to blame the Lewinsky scandal for the failure to get bin Laden, confessed that Clinton's war on terrorism was never the priority it should have been.

"In hindsight, it wasn't enough, and anyone involved in policy would have to admit that," she told the Globe.