From outside the box

The following is a response to my last blog entitled "Republicans have no right to complain." I interjected my own comments thruout....Joe

Dane....While I understand your frustration and commend your speaking out, I have to disagree with you on a lot this.
I'll start by saying that you're right about the Republican Congress. We elected them to turn around the wastefull spending and corruption of the democrats, but they got into office and did the same thing.

Joe....True, but the democratic congress you speak of existed under Reagan and Bush senior, and those presidents had to sign those spending bills. Clinton vetoed excessive spending bills when he had a republican congress which is partly why he balanced the budget and shrinked the deficit.

Dane....You're wrong to claim that democrats have done things differently, or to give a "what if" argument about Al Gore. The invasion of afghanistan after 9/11 was a no-brainer, and I was proud then that Congress supported that war in a bi-partisan manner, even if some peace freaks protested it. Gore would not have opposed the country on that one. You could make the argument that Gore would not have invaded Iraq. Fighting to give democracy a toehold in the middle east took a lot of guts and Gore didn't have that.

Joe....So now we went there to give the middle east democracy? It started out as WMD's, 911, and Sadams support of Osama....the democracy excuse surfaced about 2004 or 05 when the other excuses proved unwarranted.

Dane....The outcome of that action (while still being determined) may fail, but it took guts to try.

Joe....Having guts means nothing. Hitler had guts when he invaded Europe. Nixon had guts when he ok'd watergate. Ken Lay had guts when he defrauded people out of their pensions. Greedy men, mad men, and psychos, all have guts, and guts in itself is not a quality.

Dane....Within our own borders Gore would have followed much of the same lines that Bill Clinton did, and Bill Clinton was no saint for individual liberty in this country either. Whenever I think of Bill Clinton's legacy I remember the image of a SWAT agent pointing an automatic rifle at a scared cuban boy in Florida. I don't believe Al Gore would have gone against the Patriot Act and I don't think he would have done any better.
Republican distaste for Bill Clinton was never only about sex. The media, and many of you on the left, have posed the argument that way to discredit our other arguments about Clinton. The Clinton government intruded on invdividuals, and murderously so, as seen in the incidents at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Joe....What swat did and what happened at Ruby Ridge (wasn't this before Clinton?) as well as Waco was not done by Clinton directly, but people he put in power unlike the Iraq war and refusal to veto spending bills which was a direct decision by Bush. Personally, I never liked Janet Reno and I do blame Clinton for having her on board.

Dane....The Clinton administration displayed corruption in taking money from chinese donors and in renting out the Lincoln bedroom.

Joe....Compared to what Bush has done (see my last blog), people spending the night in the Lincoln bedroom and Clinton doing Monica is NOTHING! You republicans don't realize how you are hurting your own credibility by constantly bringing up these kinds of comparisons. It's like comparing apples to herds of elephants.

Dane....If you want to forgive Clinton for the sex scandals, I suppose that's fine with me, the Lewinsky stuff was nationally embarrassing but hardly the end of the world.

Joe....I don't forgive Clinton for the Monica debacle. He looked us in the face and lied and that was cheap and disgusting. Plus, because of Monica he, in part, cost Gore the white house.

Dane....It's typical male-chauvanist behavior so he's no different there. But when Juanita Brodderick accused this man of having raped her, and was then called a tramp and shunned by the press, that kind of bothers me. I am bothered by the idea of a rapist in the white house, regardless of their political party. I am bothered that democrats, and especially feminists, would ignore all of this because "he's their man."

Joe....We will never know for sure about the rape. But calling Clinton a rapist is on par with calling George Bush a coke head. When it comes to Bushes military record, drug and alchohol abuse, failed businesses, relationship with the Saudi royal family, DUI's, all these things that happened before he was president, we are supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt because we don't know for sure, no proof. But it's ok to call Clinton a rapist? Based on what proof? We have more proof about Georges drug and alchohol abuse than we do about Clintons sexual shenanigans.

Dane....You have a right to your opinion, and to blame republicans for all that goes wrong in government, but you'll never get true reform if you turn a blind eye to the corruption of your own preferred party. Democrats in Congress promised many reforms in campaign finance laws, and have given us nothing since they took office nearly a year ago. I predict only more of the same. Perhaps you should simply label them all "republicrats" and voice an argument for something new altogether?

Joe....Democrats don't have enough majority do get much done without some republican cooperation and in election times the republicans are and have been stopping everything the democrats have tried to do. I think there is plenty of blame to go around to both parties. If I thought a 3rd party had a chance in hell, Id be on board. Since Ralph Nader made the difference in Florida which helped Bush get elected, Im a bit hesitant to join any 3rd party. To me, the democrats are just the lesser of 2 evils, and for now that is what a lot of disenchanted liberals are stuck with. It's a shame that politics in America has come down to this....I have said before that I believe in much of what the old school republicans stood for. But they have abandoned those principals and therefore I don't think they have the right to keep preaching them. Thanks for your comments.