Ah, yes. The alleged bribes where Hillary's brother apparently accepted money, and then told the President how to do his job. However, selling presidential pardons? Big time no no. Clinton would be serving time right now in found guilty of that. As would Hillary's brother. A loooong time.
Or selling history for other people to share and enjoy. Truly an evil man. =l (To be absolutely fair, I find it a little disrespectful. But sharing a nations history isn't exactly a bad thing)
Allowing former presidents to help with negotiations is nothing new for any president, and is usually a sign of respect for former presidents who wish to use their influence to help American interests abroad and at home. Absolutely insidious.
As for gutting the CIA, he asked them to reduce spending where? It's not just, "Yeah, everything you're doing. 40% of that needs to go." Budget cuts, ESPECIALLY in DoD areas, are always targeted of purpose, like the Cold War funding budget cuts and reallocation. However, his counter-terrorism had not suffered nearly as much, especially by the idea he gave authorization to the euthanasia of Bin Laden. The big thing about CIA budget is, we're not allowed to know it. So when and if it finds itself getting "gutted" it's either at the admission of the CIA director, the President, or someone who has some form of control over that, like Congress. It's easy for some field workers to say, "Yeah, we got budget cuts, so we can't perform our job as well," or "Since there was a reallocation of resources, it prevented us from performing as well as we have," or "Yeah, Clinton's budget-cuts in no way show the leaks America has always suffered since the days of WW2, where American's have constantly pointed the finger at other countries who developed technologies fairly similar to American technologies." This leads to -
The truth of the matter with "selling secrets" is 1) The most likely case is, Clinton is trying to show good faith towards a country you've ALWAYS had a problem with, and they're sort of your friend for now. Remember, even back then, China was an emerging economic power. Not making friends with people who you sort of want to make money off of is not very smart. 2) China is not constructed of idiots. Eventually they WILL figure out rocket technology. With 1 billion people there, it's not hard to believe a group of them might eventually figure out how to put a cylinder into space. Iran can do it, and I'm fairly sure they don't need Clinton selling our government secrets for that. 3) Companies share and sell information all the time. It's a cornerstone of business industry. "You scratch my back by doing my work for cheaper, I'll scratch your back by sharing some information. We all win." America definitely should not take one out of Russia's book, and just go into supreme isolation, rather than try to build bridges with the world's largest populated country. It worked out great for Russia being isolated, after all. Pretty sure that Soviet Union is just chugging along well without any allies to speak of. But the real thing of this is, nobody really KNOWS if Clinton did it. Especially as it was all allegedly tied to illegal funding. As it's highly f'ing illegal to do so, Clinton (if caught doing it) would be serving quite a long sentence in prison right now.
Also, carpet bombing several thought of al-Quaeda facilities. Not a real reaction at all. It's not like Clinton got some form of backfire for destroying any Sudanese pharmaceutical plants in the crossfire or anything like that.
I forgot about the evil CRA revision. Clinton's plan to refine examinations along more consistent qualities, reduce paperwork needed, extend credit to everybody, and to reduce costs was part of his evil, overarching plan to cripple the country itself. Evil indeed. Dr. Doom would learn well from Clinton. Because, it is well known in no way could the situation be taken advantage of in unforeseen ways like many laws and technologies do by industry leaders and individuals themselves.
Clinton didn't like, "Yeah, I'm gonna totally jump start a recession," and then dump it on the next president. Recessions and growths are common. During the 90's growth, which would be the longest growth America had ever seen economically under Clinton's watch, America had achieved an economic surplus it had never seen before. Unfortunately, it would be things like the dotcom bubble burst, terrorist attacks, and other factors which led to an extremely minor recession. This recession would only last for a single year in 2001, and would not see another recession for another six years in 2007. In 2002, America was believed to be in a non progressing, yet non recessing economy. Many people believe the terrorist attacks were what put the nail in the coffin for the recession at all, and could have possibly been avoided.
As for Travelgate, what I remember about it was: Clinton fired his Travel Dept because the FBI had told him they were embezzling money, and would in turn hire another firm he knew (which wasn't necessarily as devious as it sounds, as it was a travel firm they used back in Arkansas regularly). The courts stepped in, told him to give them jobs elsewhere, and replace the firm. Some people were charged with embezzlement, but were never convicted as guilty ultimately. Apparently, the Travel Office had an "off the books" ledger, with over a dozen thousand dollars unaccounted for, and is most likely assumed to have been used for personal reasons, or to accommodate the press which regularly visited. This was not helped by the idea one of the staffers held highly messed up paperwork. In the end, the President was not found guilty of any wrongdoing, or conspiracy to serve his own agenda.
In all honesty, if those are the WORST things a president of the United States ever has to come against, allegations of wrongdoing, with the only charge sticking is his adultery with Monica and Gennifer, and the rest having no evidence for, then he actually was a pretty good president. Hardly anything here holds any weight other than allegations without substantial evidence to back them. Most of the charges of adultery fall apart when under scrutiny, and the rest of it just personal hatred for whatever reason.
I mean, was the guy the all time best president America ever had? No. But he didn't dress up in a cape, wring his hands menacingly, cackle at night by lightning storms, have horses jump and run at the sound of his name, or scheme world domination plans as the leader of the Bilderberg Group in their Fortress of Evil. It's not ignorant to call your hatred irrational, when really, the guy is being accused of unfair things.
It's one thing to hate a man on principle for cheating on his wife. Fully understood, and fully sympathized. It's another to hear about something he might have done, grip it as the absolute fact of existence, and launch cannons at the guy with no evidence for it.
Now, if you -have- evidence for it, I'd love to see it. I'm always willing to review evidence I'm not aware of previously (especially in politics, since information is always on an emerging scale). But if not, cool off, take a few breaths, and relax.
