I love him and hate him at the same time, it's best to leave it at that. That happens to be my same attitude towards another much criticized subject, Fox News

But because I can't resist - In terms of the "worst president ever", please have some historical perspective. In terms of "living memory", both of Carter's domestic and foreign policies were dramatically worse, and Clinton's foreign policy was worse as well.

In terms of impeachment, the main thing people argue for is his lying about the war. If he actually did lie, he would have followed through and lied about finding WMDs as well - and Bill Clinton wouldn't have argued the same thing either. In terms of war crimes, proponents of impeachment should be a little more realistic about the horrors of war. Besides, compared to the atomic bombings, the Dresden fire bombing, the use of flamethrowers, and the My Lai Massacre, what we've done now pales in comparison to what we've done in the past.

One could argue that Clinton missed numerous opportunities to nab bin Laden, which saddled Bush with his foreign policy dilemma.

And that's not even covering Clinton's mismanagement of China, which has led to them being a viable threat to us (receiving campaign money from them, allowing them to spy and steal nuclear, space, etc. secrets from us with impunity, allowing them to buy an old us military port in California which they used to flood the Cali streets with AK-47 armed gang members, the list goes on and on). Nor his gutting of the military, leaving us unprepared for the challenges of the 21st century, or Rwanda, or his strengthening of the terrorist Arafat.

The Chinese smuggled in AK-47s to be sold to the gangs, they weren't the gangs themselves. I know, my wording was a little odd on that one.

Considering Sudan offered him to Clinton on a silver platter, and that a drone had a kill shot on him on another occasion, to me, that's Clinton being too afraid of ruffling a few feathers while protecting American security.

Greg the White wrote:

but Reagan actually raised taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars

Reagan lowered taxes for the most part. He only raised them on a couple select items. It was a net gain for the American people.

Greg the White wrote:

while Bush was anti-free-market by allowing businesses no-bid contracts, and giving tax cuts to only specific companies

Bush only allowed no-bids once. The free market is a lot bigger than just one government contract. It's more about government non-interference with the natural flow of the market. Unfortunately, the bailout bill contradicts this, which Bush admits.

Tax cuts only to specific companies? He lowered the capital gains tax, practically eliminated the death tax, and gave us a child tax credit. That's all in addition to the corporate tax cuts that helped add jobs to the economy after the 9/11 recession, and which has just recently stopped as the mortgage crisis began.

mjl1783 wrote:

In 1996, we would have had no legal grounds to detain him.

I guess you forgot about the first WTC attack that occurred in 1993.

mjl1783 wrote:

Actually, that's the first time I've heard that. I tried looking it up and there's not much out there about it.

IIRC, it's from Dick Morris who was a Clinton staffer. Obviously, no one tied to Clinton would want to discuss it, but because they had a falling out, Morris is able to speak freely. Unlike Sandy Berger who stole classified documents by stuffing them in his pants prior to the 9/11 Commission in order to protect Clinton from receiving any culpability.

mjl1783 wrote:

I guess that depends on how you define "American people" and "net gain." Many American people saw a net increase in their taxes under Reagan... But I'm guessing you're saying most people paid less in taxes under Reagan than they had previously, which is not true.

I'm at work, so all my Reagan books are at home, so I can't cite specific examples, but consider that in the 80s my father was still in the middle class at that time and he paid a very low amount in taxes.

mjl1783 wrote:

Which barely make up for the jobs SUBTRACTED from the economy during the same time. In fact, most of the jobs added were either GOVERNMENT jobs or low-paying service jobs.

So it's unimportant that Bush was able to recover the economy post-9/11? You should be thankful jobs were regained instead of looking at the negative side.

mjl1783 wrote:

...there is no direct correlation between taxes and economic growth. Never has been.

Someone needs to retake Econ 101. Lower taxes increase revenues by giving people more reason to invest and spend, increasing the flow of money back to the government. Low corporate taxes compound this positive effect by increasing profit margins and allowing businesses to hire more people with their increased business, creating thousands of jobs for the economy.

No matter how hard the dems don't want to believe it, most of the time, higher taxes end up hurting the economy. When people have more of their own money in their pockets, they end up spending a good portion of it, expanding the economy.

mjl1783 wrote:

We had no evidence to pin it on him at the time. When the Sudanese apparently (I say that because it's still in dispute) offered Bin Laden up, Bin Laden was only suspected of being a financier of terror, what were we supposed to charge him with?

The same thing we would charge him with concerning 9/11, considering his role was the same. He financed the attack in 1993 & financed the attack in 2001. (See also the emphasisized portion of the Morris quote below, showing that Clinton had plans to put him on trial.)

mjl1783 wrote:

I see nothing in this rant that backs up you "kill shot" statement, but okay.

Here's a link to an article written by Morris about it then:

http://www.caglepost.com/column/Dick+Morris+and+Eileen+McGann/692/Missing+Bin+Laden.html

I apparently misremembered the details, but here is what he said:

Dick Morris wrote:

Our first shot at bin Laden came in Feb. 13, 1998, when President Bill Clinton's aides scuttled a CIA plot that had been eight months in the planning to kidnap Osama, using local Afghan tribesmen and to ferry him to the United States to stand trial. Why did they torpedo the mission? Because they worried that bin Laden might be killed! To quote the 9/11 Commission report: They worried that "the purpose . . . of the operation would be subject to unavoidable misinterpretation and misrepresentation — and probably recriminations — in the event that bin Laden, despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive." The kidnapping was blocked because the Clinton people worried that it might be perceived as "an assassination."

(My emphasis)

I think I remember an interview of Morris around the time of the article where he talked about the events surrounding the decision more in detail where the ultimate decision on whether to carry through with the plot was needed, and Clinton backed down. I think that, along with the "assassination" thoughts was where I came up with the "kill shot" detail. (It's been four years).

Morris' chronology is a bit off when he says "our first shot at bin laden came in...1998", as he has also mentioned the aforementioned event in 1996 when Sudan offered bin Laden to Clinton, in lieu of just banishing him (which is what Sudan ended up doing, resulting in him going to Afghanistan where he later gave the go-ahead for 9/11):

http://thehill.com/dick-morris/the-real-clinton-emerges-2006-09-26.html

Dick Morris wrote:

Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to “certify” him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.

mjl1783 wrote:

let's just for fun ask the congressional budget office. According to them, the bottom 40% of earners saw their effective rates increase from 1979-89, while the middle 20% got a lousy 2% cut. I'll concede the most americans (barely) wound up paying less, but it was certainly far from everyone.... ...Ooops, I guess we'd better tell guys at the CBO, Treasury Dept., Joint Comission on taxation, the White House's Council on Economic Advisers, and the conservative American Enterprise Institute that they need to go back to school.

Most, if not all, of the groups you named are subject to partisanship (with the possible exception of the CBO, but I don't trust the efficiency or bias of any civil worker. I would also note that I have heard the current Council of Economic Advisers to Bush and the American Enterprise Institute state the exact opposite numerous times.). Whoever controls Congress and/or the presidency appoints the members. For example, the Joint Economic Committee (JEC), when in control of the GOP, released a report stating the exact opposite:

http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm


Then there's the Cato Institute, which is an independent group, but has a libertarian bias, released a report which came up with the exact opposite report:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1120&full=1

In particular, it stated that:

Cato wrote:

Median Household Incomes. Real median household income rose by $4,000 in the Reagan years--from $37,868 in 1981 to $42,049 in 1989, as shown in Figure 2. This improvement was a stark reversal of the income trends in the late 1970s and the 1990s: median family income was unchanged in the eight pre-Reagan years, and incomes have fallen by $1,438 in the anti-supply-side 1990s, following the 1990 and 1993 tax hikes. [14] Most of the declines in take-home pay occurred on George Bush's watch. Under Bill Clinton's tenure, there has been zero income growth in median household income.

That study looks like an interesting read. I'm going to try to read the rest of it when I have time during my lunch break.

mjl1783 wrote:

Considering where the economy is right now, I think it's fair to criticize him.

That I can at least partially agree with you on. Other parts of Bush's policies are somewhat responsible for some of our current problems, and some we have yet to face. The budget deficits have cost us dearly, and when added to the cost of the current bailout bill, inflation is going to become worse and worse. He really should have cut some entitlement/domestic spending while the Congress was in control of the GOP, but he didn't seem to know how to veto bills at that point.

It could be much worse though, as without the tax cuts, the four or five years in which the economy expanded under Bush would have been a continued recession, or at best, a stagnant 0% GDP growth rate. (The natural economic cycle notwithstanding).

mjl1783 wrote:

It's the idea that Reaganomics is an unimpeachable doctrine, that tax cuts ALWAYS increase revenues, growth, jobs, etc. etc. with which I take issue.

I'm definitely not arguing that. It would be naive to think that all rules or policies work all the time. There's an exception to every rule, and the individual situation dictates what needs to be done. There are definitely rare times where a tax increase is needed. However, most of the time, cutting taxes is in the country's best interests.