Who is the better Democrat President

[PETE'S BROTHER]

We can't fairly rate Obama until he has left office. LBJ killed the most people. Clinton deregulated the banking industry and opened the door to all the speculating and abuse that led up to Obama having to bail the banks out to quell civil unrest.

What pisses me off about Obama is he would have signed that shitty healthcare bill into law. He would pass cap and trade. He's a big government spend-a-hollic and is expanding the wars in the middle east. 1.6 million dead Iraqis so far.

I would say all three were losers. That last good American President that actually cared about the citizens was Kennedy.

wayne.jpg

[Baby's On Fire]

Clinton is doing all this charity stuff now and it's a no brainer why. He desperately wants another reputation besides being the president that shoved cigars up vaginas and tasted them and shot kak all over blue dresses. One thing for sure. Clinton won't be forgotten. The Lewinsky affair will be his legacy as with the famous words,"I did not have sex with that woman!"

Whenever there is a natural disaster a Bush and Clinton suddenly pop up taking charge and asking for money. The Clit and the Bush seems to be insepparable now.

So it never occured to you that maybe Clinton is just a good and caring man? He has rasied hundreds of millions for charitable causes, primarily in Africa. I doubt his motivation is to simply improve his reputation.

What the fuck has Chimpy done since retiring? Not a fucking thing.

Even after Obama tasked Clinton and Chimp to lead the Haitian relief efforts, we haven't heard fuck all from Chimp.

[Sensible Shoes]

Clinton is doing all this charity stuff now and it's a no brainer why. He desperately wants another reputation besides being the president that shoved cigars up vaginas and tasted them and shot kak all over blue dresses. One thing for sure. Clinton won't be forgotten. The Lewinsky affair will be his legacy as with the famous words,"I did not have sex with that woman!"

Given most of the conversation here, I don't understand why everybody doesn't consider him a folk hero for everything mentioned above.

[Terry]

LBJ.

Even in spite of Vietnam, it's not even close.

Am tending to think more and more that Clinton was just lucky re: where his two terms fell and the relative economic/foreign stability that surrounded them (neither of which he had that much to do with).

Obama it's too soon to tell, although it'd be nice to see the guy get fired up and put it all on the line for some really big "doable" ideas.

[kwame k]

If you go by what LBJ signed into law and only that criteria he'd win.........

I thought most of the stuff LBJ signed into law was just Kennedy's unfinished business, anyways. I can't give the guy a free pass on Vietnam, dumb war and useless.

Clinton was in the right place at the right time and although he was smart enough to not fuck with what was already in place, he did ease regulations, helped start the housing bubble and he did sign NAFTA into law. The dot com bubble wasn't handled correctly, either. He had his own failed Health Care debacle, too. To his credit he gave us a surplus. Never really cared or was effected by who he was dipping his Willy in.

Obama....I'll go with the consensus here.....too early to tell.

[ZahZoo]

I tend to think this is a bogus argument I hear from time to time a bit. Yes, Clinton had some luck, but I would argue that the internet had as much to do with principles as it did with booming and leaching out. You could argue that his pragmatist moderate-liberal point of view is what fostered the web to begin with. It started with DARPA, and was fostered with legislation by mostly Democrats like...........................

WAIT FOR IT!!

YUP!!

Al Gore. I think the Republican approach would be to let the private sector stifle innovation by preventing anything they cannot directly control and profit from (one of the nice ironic contradictions of the free market system, which really isn't all that free)...

You're points are valid but I'd take that as more spin of Washington trying to take credit for something they had no hand in.

The dot.com bubble was a product of first the shift to B2B (business to business) distributed technology via the net. This opened doors for companies like Dell, Wal-mart, etc to shift to real time parts/product distribution to meet manufacturing and product distribution capabilities. Then a few visionaries hit on start-ups like Amazon and search engines like Yahoo and realized you could take both B2B and consumer markets to the net.

The timing was ripe as the Reagan tax cuts had brought a ton of growth in available investment capital. This also coincided with the huge capital spending ramping up for Y2K upgrades that started around 97 and exploded late 98 thru 99.

The problem with the dot.com bubble was anyone with a sharp business plan and a fancy web site design could get their hands on $$millions$$ in venture capital. Down-side was most of that money was spent on fancy offices, hardware, houses, cars and boats... with a couple of tech-geeks in the back room trying to pull it off. The bigger issue was could you get the non-tech savy consumer market to trust spending money on the web.

The ideas were great... problem was secure money transactions and the infrastructure for product distribution was too immature to handle it. Add to that consumers fear to embrace net business over brick and motar. Once the frenzy wore off and too many business ventures failed to produce returns it popped the bubble real hard and quick. People thought they could launch what we have today in a matter of a year or less back in the late 90's... clearly the expectations were too aggressive.

In the mean time back in Washington... they were struggling to adopt decades old laws and legislation based on ancient telephony regulations to catchup to this new technology. They were also struggling with trade regulation for electronic transactions. What Gore and Clinton did accomplish was helping bring some of the old regulatory elements up to times to meet the blooming electronic commerce industry...that's about it.

[Terry]

If you go by what LBJ signed into law and only that criteria he'd win.........

I thought most of the stuff LBJ signed into law was just Kennedy's unfinished business, anyways. I can't give the guy a free pass on Vietnam, dumb war and useless.

Clinton was in the right place at the right time and although he was smart enough to not fuck with what was already in place, he did ease regulations, helped start the housing bubble and he did sign NAFTA into law. The dot com bubble wasn't handled correctly, either. He had his own failed Health Care debacle, too. To his credit he gave us a surplus. Never really cared or was effected by who he was dipping his Willy in.

Obama....I'll go with the consensus here.....too early to tell.

There is some merit to the idea that LBJ was advancing Kennedy's unfinished business...

...however, had JFK lived, one can't say for sure that Civil Rights legislation and the domestic programs that comprised the Great Society would have passed had JFK been in the WH; Kennedy didn't have the relationship with Congress that LBJ did.

Clinton did leave us with a surplus. Although it was being able to take advantage of circumstances that were beyond his control that enabled him to do so. Can't say as I cared much about his extramarital affairs, either.

[Blackflag]

What pisses me off about Obama is he would have signed that shitty healthcare bill into law. He would pass cap and trade. He's a big government spend-a-hollic and is expanding the wars in the middle east.

Here's your tax dollars at work:

U.S. Air Force building supercomputer from PS3s - Plugged In - Yahoo! Games

[Blackflag]

How is he "expanding the wars in the middle east?" We're gradually withdrawing from Iraq, and the U.S. Marine Corp no longer is present there...

You need to stop selling that shit and face reality. Nobody's buying it.

[Blackflag]

I would argue that the internet had as much to do with principles as it did with booming and leaching out. You could argue that his pragmatist moderate-liberal point of view is what fostered the web to begin with. It started with DARPA, and was fostered with legislation by mostly Democrats like...........................

Uh... what?

What's "liberal" about darpa? It's defense research. And it was started under a republican president.

What?

I do like the Al Gore joke, though.

[BigBadBrian]

LBJ, Clinton or Obama.

Uh...uh...er....Jimmah Peanut?

[Seshmeister]

Carter achieved more in the Middle East than the rest of them.

There are strong rumors he was stitched up over the Iranian hostages and since being president he's done lots of humanitarian work unlike the Republican ex presidents who seem to concentrate on getting themselves more money and power from regimes like the Saudis.

[sadaist]

...lots of humanitarian work unlike the Republican ex presidents who seem to concentrate on getting themselves more money and power from regimes like the Saudis.

Only two Republican ex-Presidents currently breathing. The Elder Bush has done a lot actually, albeit partnered with Clinton. Reagan can't be faulted for anything he did after he was in office. He was locked away at his ranch with Alzheimer's. And George W., we'll just have to see what he ends up doing. Only been out of office a year. I don't blame him much for laying low the first year.

[Seshmeister]

The main thing that Reagan did after his presidency was to campaign for the repeal of the 22nd Amendment, which prohibits a president from serving more than two terms.

Even though he was mentally ill.

Nixon did fuck all and Bush senior may have stood beside Clinton in recent years but for more than 10 years prior to that it was about extending his empire of money and power.

The Democrats easily win the best ex presidents competition.

[Nickdfresh]

You need to stop selling that shit and face reality. Nobody's buying it.

"Buying" what? Specifically...Speak for yourself...