Mid-Term Election Post Mortem |
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So, the Democrats have a majority in Congress. The bad times are over. The evil ones have been vanquished. Let's go ahead and declare world peace, an end to global warming, and -- while we're at it -- the cancellation of The O'Reilly Factor. I mean, what could be better, right? Hmm, we could also have a Democratic president to go along with a Democratic Senate and Democratic House. Can you say Hillary Rodham Clinton, boys and girls? Imagine that: A pinko by the name of Clinton running the White House with a merry band of liberals calling all the shots in Congress. How grand it would be... Well, if you want a good idea of how things may go under the above scenario, you might want to reflect back upon the years of 1993 and 1994 because that's when President William Jefferson Clinton was enjoying the "advantage" of a Democratically controlled Congress. In just two years, the notorious liberal managed to abandon his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees, renege on his promise to "take a firm stand" against the armed forces' ban on gays and lesbians, and back away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), increased the Pentagon budget by another $25 billion, fired Jocelyn Elders, dumped Lani Guinier, ordered the bombing of Iraq and the Balkans, renewed the murderous sanctions on Iraq, ignored genocide in Rwanda, deported hundreds of thousands of "illegal" immigrants, and passed a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death. (All this came before the much-hyped Republican "revolution" in 1994. Can someone please explain to me why the right wing didn't like this guy?)
Then we have the environment-allegedly
Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore's domain. In 1996, David
Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, penned a Los Angeles
Times op-ed entitled, "Why I Won't Vote for Clinton." In this
piece, Brower offered a litany of Clinton administration moves, which
utterly smashed the public image of Bubba and Gore as
"pro-environment." Some of these moves include: The passage of the
salvage logging rider, the continuation of the use of methyl bromide,
the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, the lowering of grazing
fees on land, subsidizing Florida's sugar industry, weakening the Safe
Drinking Water Act, reversing the ban on the production and
importation of PCBs, and allowing the export of Alaskan oil. Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most recently 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at: www.mickeyz.net.
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