My Life by Clinton

Ref: Bill Clinton (2004). My Life.

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Summary­

• “Billy (Bill Clinton), when you grow up, you’re either going to be governor or get in a lot of trouble. It all depends on whether you learn when to talk and when to keep quiet.” Turns out she was right on both counts.”

• My people have always believed in two great ideas: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that every one of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.

• I judge my presidency primarily in terms of its impact on people’s lives. That is how I kept score: all the millions of people with new jobs, new homes, and college aid; the kids with health insurance and after-school programs; the people who left welfare for work; the families helped by the family leave law; the people living in safer neighborhoods—all those people have stories, and they’re better ones now. Life got better for all Americans because the air and water were cleaner and more of our natural heritage was preserved. And we brought more hope for peace, freedom, security, and prosperity to people all over the world. They have their stories, too.

• Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment. Whether I had made the most of mine was for others to judge.

• The interdependent world we live in is inherently unstable, full of both opportunity and forces of destruction. It will remain so until we find our way from interdependence to a more integrated global community of shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and shared values. Building that kind of world, and defeating terror, cannot be done quickly; it will be the great challenge of the first half of the twenty-first century. I believe there are five things the United States should be doing to lead the way: fight terror and the spread of weapons of mass destruction and improve our defenses against them; make more friends and fewer terrorists by helping the 50 percent of the world not reaping the benefits of globalization to overcome poverty, ignorance, disease, and bad government; strengthen the institutions of global cooperation and work through them to promote security and prosperity and combat our shared problems, from terror to AIDS to global warming; continue to make America a better model of how we want the world to work; and work to end the age-old compulsion to believe that our differences are more important than our common humanity.

• In our time, there is no longer a clear division between what is foreign and what is domestic. The world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the world arms race-they affect us all…America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make.

• The forces I opposed all of my life—those who had defended the old order of racial discrimination and segregation in the South and played on the insecurities and fears of the white working class in which I grew up; who had opposed the women’s movement, the environmental movement, the gay-rights movement, and other efforts to expand our national community as assaults on the natural order; who believed government should be run for the benefit of powerful entrenched interests and favored tax cuts for the wealthy over health care and better education for children.

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Major Events

• 19 Aug, 1946: Birth of William Jefferson Blythe III (Bill Clinton) in Hope, AR.

  • “In the early 1950s Roy ran for the legislature and won. On election day, I handed out cards for him in my neighborhood, as close to the polling station as the law would allow. It was my first political experience.”

  • “Sometime in my 16th year I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official.”

• 1964-1968: Bill attends Georgetown University, graduating with a BS in Foreign Service in 1968. Upon graduation, Clinton is awarded a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford.

  • 1964-1965: Bill serves as class President.

  • 1964-1967: Bill serves as an intern and later clerk in the office of AR Senator Fulbright.

• 1968-1969: Bill attends University College, Oxford, departing after a year for law school, as he did not anticipate a second year due to the Vietnam draft.

  • “I had considered being a resister myself, and accepted the draft “in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system.” I also admitted that I had asked to be accepted in the ROTC program because it was the only way I could “possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance.”

• 1970-1973: Bill attends Yale Law School, graduating with a JD.

  • 1971: Bill and Hillary begin dating.

  • 1972: Bill and Hillary join the DNC national staff , working in Miami Beach, concentrating on the SC and AR delegations, as part of the McGovern campaign.

• 1973-1976: Bill and Hillary work as assistant professors at the U. of Arkansas. In three years and three months at U. AR, Bill taught eight courses in five semesters and a summer session, taught two courses to law-enforcement officers in Little Rock, ran for office twice, and managed the Carter campaign.

• 1974: Bill runs for AR 3rd congressional district, comprised of 21 counties in the NW quadrant of AR; one of the Americas most rural congressional districts, but is defeated 89,324 to 83,030 by Rep. candidate John Paul Hammerschmidt.

  • “In 1974, I saw firsthand, in thousands of encounters, that middle-class voters would support government activism to solve their problems, and those of the poor, but only if the effort was made with due care for their tax dollars, and if efforts to increase opportunity were coupled with an insistence on responsibility.”

• 11 Oct, 1975: Marriage of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham. 

• 1976: Bill runs for AR AG and is elected.

• 3 Jan, 1977- 9 Jan, 1979: Bill serves as AR Attorney General; in addition to issuing opinions on questions of state law, the AG’s office prosecuted and defended civil suits on behalf of the state; represented the state in criminal appeals to the state supreme court and in criminal cases in federal court; provided legal advice to state boards and commissions; and protected consumer interests through lawsuits, lobbying the legislature, and appearing in utility-rate cases before the state Public Service Commission (PSC).

• 1978: Bill is elected AR Sate Governor.

• 1979-1981: Bill Clinton serves as AR state governor.

• 1980: Bill Clinton is defeated for reelection as AR State Governor.

  • “You can have good policy without good politics, but you can’t give the people good government without both.”

  • “At that moment, there didn’t seem to be much future for me in politics. I was the first AR governor in a quarter of a century denied a second 2y term, and probably the youngest ex-governor in American history.”

  • “It was a near-death experience, but an invaluable one, forcing me to be more sensitive to the political problems inherent in progressive politics: the system can absorb only so much change at once; no one can beat all the entrenched interests at the same time; and if people think you’ve stopped listening, you’re sunk.”

• 1981-1983: Bill works as a lawyer with the law firm Wright, Lindsey & Jennings.

• 1982: Bill is elected AR State Governor.

• 11 Jan, 1983-1992: Bill serves as AR state governor.

  • 15 Jan, 1991: With ten-year-old Chelsea holding the Bible for me, I took the oath of office in Little Rock for the last time.

• 1992: Bill is elected POTUS after campaigning against George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot.

  • “Bush went around the country doing what only incumbents can do: spending federal money to get votes. He pledged aid to wheat farmers and the victims of Hurricane Andrew, which had devastated much of S. Florida, and he offered to sell 150 F-16 fighter planes to Taiwan and 72 F-15s to Saudi Arabia, securing jobs in defense plants located in critical states.”

  • “I was very young; was the governor of a state most Americans knew little about; had opposed the Vietnam War and avoided military service; held liberal views on race and rights for women and gays; often seemed slick when I spoke of achieving ambitious goals that, at least on the surface, seemed mutually exclusive; and had lived a far from perfect life.”

  • “Here’s how Washington works,” he said. “The press has to have somebody in every election, and we’re going to give them you.” He went on to say the press were elitists who would believe any tales they were told about backwater Arkansas. “We’ll spend whatever we have to spend to get whoever we have to get to say whatever they have to say to take you out. And we’ll do it early.”

  • “Successful presidential campaigns require three basic things. First, people have to be able to look at you and imagine you as President. Then you have to have enough money and support to become known. After that, it’s a battle of ideas, message, and issues.”

  • “When all 104,600,366 votes were counted, the final margin of victory was about 5.5%. I finished with 43% of the vote, to 37.4% for President Bush and 19% for Ross Perot. The victory margin in the electoral college was larger. President Bush won 18 states with 168 electoral votes. I received 370 electoral votes.”

  • “Voters’ most important concerns were, in order, jobs, health-care reform, welfare reform, and then deficit reduction.”

• 1993-2001: Bill Clinton serves as POTUS.

  • “Bush was helpful to me, telling other world leaders he wanted me to “succeed as President” and that they would find me “a good man to work with” on important problems.”

• 1993-2001: Bill Clinton serves as POTUS

  • “Bush was helpful to me, telling other world leaders he wanted me to “succeed as President” and that they would find me “a good man to work with” on important problems.”

• 1993: POTUS Clinton’s 1st year in office is marked by the Waco Siege, the WTC Attack, the Great Mississippi flood, Iraqi strikes, and Black Hawk Down. Clinton enacts the Family & Medical Leave Law, the CO Wilderness Act, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act, AmeriCorps, the Brady Bill, and the National Child Protection Act.

  • “I made a mistake in not appointing a prominent Republican to a cabinet post as a demonstration of my desire to build bipartisan cooperation.”

• 1994: POTUS Clinton’s 2nd year in office is marked by Great LA Earthquake, the Rwandan Genocide, Haitian government terrorism, a near invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, the Rep. Revolution in the midterm elections, and the first Chechen War. Clinton enacts the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, IASA, the CA Desert Protection Act, and GATT.

• 8 Nov, 1994: US Midterm elections; Democrats lose eight Senate seats and 54 House seats, the largest defeat for the Democratic Party since 1946.-My Life by Clinton.

  • “Gingrich provides his Rep platform with a list of words to use in defining their democratic opponents. His PAC, GOPAC, publishes a pamphlet entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” suggesting labels for democrats including betray, cheat, collapse, corruption, crisis, decay, destruction, failure, hypocrisy, incompetent, insecure, liberal, lie, pathetic, permissive, shallow, sick, traitors…Gingrich didn’t stop there. The core of his argument was not just that his ideas were better than ours; he said his values were better than ours, because Democrats were weak on family, work, welfare, crime, and defense, and because, being crippled by the self-indulgent sixties, we couldn’t draw distinctions between right and wrong.”

  • “We were trying to do too many things at once, creating an impression of disarray and preventing the people from hearing what we had actually accomplished; our lack of a clear message made otherwise minor issues look as if I was governing on the cultural and political left, not from the dynamic center, as I had promised.”

  • “One positive change we made was to unclutter my day, providing two hours in the middle of most days for me to read, think, rest, and make phone calls. It would make a big difference.”

  • “Republicans offered a taste of the budget to come by proposing a package of cuts, called rescissions, in the current year’s budget, which included the elimination of 15,000 AmeriCorps positions, 1.2M summer jobs for young people, and $1.7B in education funds, including nearly half of our drug-prevention funds. Worst of all, they wanted to cut the school lunch program and WIC, the nutrition program for women, infants, and children under five. Another GOP proposal that met stiff resistance was its move to eliminate the Department of Education.”

• 1995: POTUS Clinton’s 3rd year in office is marked by the Mexican Financial Crisis, the Sarin gas subway attack in Tokyo, the OKC Bombing, the West Bank Accord, the assassination of Israeli PM Rabin, and the Monica Lewinsky Affair.

• 1996: POTUS Clinton’s 4th year in office is marked by the Khobar towers attack, the downing of TWA Flight 800, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Taliban seizure of Kabul, and strikes on Iraq. Clinton enacts the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity act, the Telecom act, the Agriculture Improvement and Reform act, the Line Item Veto, Megan’s Law, the Food Quality protection act, the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, welfare reform, and creates Grand Staircase Escalante NP.

  • “I believed the first term produced six important accomplishments: (1) restoring economic growth by replacing supply-side economics with our more disciplined “invest and grow” policy; (2) resolving the debate over the role of government in our lives by demonstrating that it is neither the enemy nor the solution, but the instrument to give our people the tools and conditions to make the most of their own lives; (3) reaffirming the primacy of community as the operative political model for America, and rejecting divisions by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political philosophy; (4) replacing rhetoric with reality in our social policy, actually proving government action could make a difference in areas like welfare and crime if it reflected common sense and creative thinking, rather than just tough talk and hot rhetoric; (5) reestablishing the family as the primary unit of society, one that government could strengthen with policies like the family leave law, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the minimum wage increase, the V-chip, the anti–teen smoking initiative, efforts to increase adoption, and new reforms in health and education; and (6) reasserting America’s leadership in the post–Cold War world as a force for democracy, shared prosperity, and peace, and against the new security threats of terror, weapons of mass destruction, organized crime, narco-trafficking, and racial and religious conflicts.

  • “To keep pursuing positive changes. I had learned in my first term that if you give equal time to all the things you do, you run the risk of having everything become a blur in the public’s mind, leaving no clear impression that anything important was being done.

• Nov, 1996: Bill is re-elected as POTUS.

  • The election went as Mark Penn predicted: there was a record low turnout, and I won 49 to 41%. The electoral vote was 379 to 159, as I lost three states I had carried in 1992, Montana, Colorado, and Georgia, and won two new ones, Arizona and Florida, for a net gain of nine electoral votes.

  • Big issues were cultural issues like guns, gays, and abortion.

• 1997: POTUS Clinton’s 5th year in office is marked by the Asian financial crisis and the founding act. Clinton enacts CHIP, signs the Kyoto accords, balances the budget, increases college aid by the largest amount in 50y, increases children’s health coverage by the largest amount since 1965, expands NATO, signs the chemical weapons convention, passes sweeping reforms of adoption law and the FDA to speed the introduction of lifesaving medicines and medical devices, and enacts the One America initiative.

• 1998: POTUS Clinton’s 6th year in office is marked by the Kosovo War including the accidental bombing of the Chinese Consulate, the Good Friday Agreement, aQ’s fatwa against the West, US Embassy bombings in East Africa, North Korean U enrichment, strikes against aQ in Afghanistan and Sudan, the Clinton v. Jones affair, and Clinton’s impeachment by the House. Clinton enacts PPD 62, 63 and produces a $70B budget surplus.

• Nov, 1998: US Mid Term Elections; although democrats are predicted to lose 4-6 senate seats, there is no change in the senate. Democrats gain back 5 House seats.

  • “The election had presented a simple choice: the Democrats wanted to save Social Security first, hire 100,000 teachers, modernize schools, raise the minimum wage, and pass the Patients’ Bill of Rights. The Republicans were against all that. By and large they ran a single-issue campaign, on impeachment, although in some states they also ran anti-gay ads, essentially saying that if the Democrats won Congress, we would force every state to recognize gay marriages.”

• 1999: POTUS Clinton’s 7th year in office is marked by his impeachment acquittal in the Senate, the approval of new NATO members, the Columbine attack, the Pakistan Military Coup, and the Elian Gonzalez affair. Clinton passes a massive millennium debt-relief initiative for poor countries (if they agreed to put all the savings into education, health care, or economic development), makes gun safety proposals, continues efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine, to include environmental and labor rights in trade talks, to restore health and disability benefits to legal immigrants, proposes a Medicaid plan to cover disabled Americans who couldn’t meet the costs of treatments if they lost their health-care coverage because they entered the workforce, introduces legislation to help older children who leave foster care to make the adjustment to independent living, and proposes a plan to modernize Medicare and extend the life of its trust fund.

• 2000: POTUS Clinton’s 8th and final year in office is marked by the USS Cole attack and the contentious election between Gore and Bush. Clinton enacts Coral Reef Conservation Act, passes a budget with a $200B surplus, becomes part of the ICC, normalizes trade with China, and vetoes the Nuclear Waste Bill.

  • “I offered three observations about the future, saying that we should stay on the path to fiscal responsibility; that our security and prosperity required us to lead in the fight for prosperity and freedom and against terrorism, organized crime, narco-trafficking, the spread of deadly weapons, environmental degradation, disease, and global poverty; and finally, that we must continue to “weave the threads of our coat of many colors into the fabric of one America.”

• 2001: Clinton turns over with George W. Bush.

  • “I told George that based on the last 8y, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda; the absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al Qaeda; North Korea; and then Iraq.”

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Hillary Rodham Clinton

• 26 Oct, 1947: Birth of Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hugh Rodham and Dorothy Howell in NY, USA.

• Summer, 1970: Hillary is awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman’s WA Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There, she researched various migrant workers issues including education, health, and housing (Wiki).

• 1970: Hillary is recruited by political advisor Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of CT US Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, her first job in politics (Wiki).

• Spring, 1971: Hillary and Bill began dating.

• 1972: Bill and Hillary campaign in TX for Dem. Presidential candidate George McGovern.

• 1973: Hillary graduates Yale Law School with a JD.  

• 1973: Hillary publishes her first scholarly article, “Children Under the Law” in the Harvard Educational Review, discussing the new Children’s rights movement (Wiki).

• Feb, 1977: Hillary begins working at Rose Law Firm.

• “Hillary switched her politics from Rep. to Dem. because of civil rights and the Vietnam war.”-Bill Clinton.

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Life Lessons

“I could take a hard hit, a lesson that I would relearn a couple more times in my childhood and later in life.”

“I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can’t be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only, response to pain. Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story—of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness.”

“Tribes of bumblebees give intruders one fair warning but not two.”

“Phrases like “or not at all” are often used by candidates who forget that politics is a contact sport.”

“Naïveté is a problem all well-meaning people have to guard against. But hardheadedness has its own perils. In politics, when you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is to quit digging; if you’re blind to the possibility of error or determined not to admit it, you just look for a bigger shovel.”

“My daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing.”

“My favorite movie is High Noon—I probably saw it half a dozen times during its run in Hope, and have seen it more than a dozen times since. It’s still my favorite movie, because it’s not your typical macho western. I loved the movie because from start to finish Gary Cooper is scared to death but does the right thing anyway. I often thought of the look in Gary Cooper’s eyes as he stares into the face of almost certain defeat, and how he keeps walking through his fears toward his duty. It works pretty well in real life too.”

“We always had a great relationship except once, when I used a new word on him. We were playing with Rose in my backyard when I told him his epidermis was showing. That made him mad. Then I told him the epidermises of his mother and father were showing too. That did it. He went home, got a knife, came back, and threw it at me. Even though he missed, I’ve been leery of big words ever since.”

“The question of secrets is one I’ve thought about a lot over the years. We all have them and I think we’re entitled to them. They make our lives more interesting, and when we decide to share them, our relationships become more meaningful. The place where secrets are kept can also provide a haven, a retreat from the rest of the world, where one’s identity can be shaped and reaffirmed, where being alone can bring security and peace. Still, secrets can be an awful burden to bear, especially if some sense of shame is attached to them, even if the source of the shame is not the secret holder. Or the allure of our secrets can be too strong, strong enough to make us feel we can’t live without them, that we wouldn’t even be who we are without them.”

“She taught me to get up every day and keep going; to look for the best in people even when they saw the worst in me; to be grateful for every day and greet it with a smile; to believe I could do or be anything I put my mind to if I were willing to make the requisite effort; to believe that, in the end, love and kindness would prevail over cruelty and selfishness.”

“I was sensitive to the daily struggles of women and men who do things we want someone else to do but don’t want to pay much for. It made me hate ingratitude more and resolve to be more grateful myself. And it made me even more determined to enjoy life’s lucky breaks without taking them too seriously, knowing that one turn of fate’s screw could put me back to square one or worse.”

“Two of Quigley’s insights had a particularly lasting impact. First, he said that societies have to develop organized instruments to achieve their military, political, economic, social, religious, and intellectual objectives. The problem, according to Quigley, is that all instruments eventually become “institutionalized”—that is, vested interests more committed to preserving their own prerogatives than to meeting the needs for which they were created. Once this happens, change can come only through reform or circumvention of the institutions. If these fail, reaction and decline set in. His second lasting insight concerned the key to the greatness of Western civilization, and its continuing capacity for reform and renewal. He said our civilization’s success is rooted in unique religious and philosophical convictions: that man is basically good; that there is truth, but no finite mortal has it; that we can get closer to the truth only by working together; and that through faith and good works, we can have a better life in this world and a reward in the next.”

“All elections are about the future. I was supposed to do a good job, just like everyone else who worked for a living. A good record is helpful mostly as evidence that you’ll do what you say if reelected.”

“Our society can absorb only so much change at a time, and when we move forward, we must do it in a way that reaffirms our core convictions of opportunity and responsibility, work and family, strength and compassion—the values that have been the bedrock of America’s success.”

“Marvin Chirelstein taught me both Corporate Finance and Taxation. I was lousy in Taxation. The tax code was riddled with too many artificial distinctions I couldn’t care less about; they seemed to me to provide more opportunities for tax lawyers to reduce their clients’ obligation to help pay America’s way than to advance worthy social goals.”

“If someone can shift the heat from himself to you, he’ll do it every time.”

“Everyone is for change in general, but against it in particular, when they themselves have to change.”

“Runoffs elections are about voter turnout, about which candidate will do a better job of getting his own voters back to the polls, and a better job of persuading those who voted for candidates who were eliminated or people who didn’t vote the first time to support him.”

“As soon as I finished a task, I moved on to the next one, without doing a lot of follow-up communications. In politics, if you don’t toot your own horn, it usually stays untooted.”

“Government programs don’t work as well in a culture that devalues family, work, and mutual respect.”

“No one can be as angry as I was without doing himself harm. It took me too long to figure that out.”

“The President’s news coverage depends less on his actual performance in office than on the media’s cynical bias. The press nearly always magnifies the bad and underplays the good.”

“I had learned from the press coverage over the gays-in-the-military issue that if I gave a meaty answer to a question on whatever the press was obsessing about, it would be on the evening news, blocking out whatever else I was doing in the public interest that day, and the American people would think I was spending all my time defending myself instead of working for them.”

“The press is naturally focused on today’s story, not yesterdays, and conflict makes news. That tends to reward the aggressor, whether the underlying attack is fair or not.”

“Polls can be helpful in telling a President what the American people think, and which arguments may be most persuasive at a particular time, but they cannot dictate a decision that requires looking down the road and around the corner.”

“Good times are to be seized and built upon, not coasted through.”

“In foreign affairs, polls are often useless; people hire leaders to win for them, and it’s the results that matter. Many of my most important foreign policy decisions had not been popular at first.”

“Life always humbles you if you give in to anger or take too much satisfaction in having defeated someone, or think that no matter how bad your own sins are, those of your adversaries are worse.”

“We’d failed in Arkansas in my first term by doing too many things at once, without a clear story line and an effort to prepare people for a long, sustained struggle. Then she told them about the success we’d had the second time around, by focusing on one or two issues every two years, and laying out long-term goals, along with short-term benchmarks of progress against which we could be judged.”

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---Agenda---

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Arkansas Agenda

• Economic

  • Expand the AR Housing Development Agency’s authority to issue revenue bonds to increase housing and create jobs.

  • Establish enterprise zones in high-unemployment areas in order to provide greater incentives to invest in them.

  • Give a jobs tax credit to employers who created new jobs.

  • Create an AR Science and Technology Authority.

  • Provide more capital to people who had the potential to operate profitable small businesses but couldn’t borrow the money to get started.

  • Invest in new technologies.

  • Economic growth through free and fair trade.

• Welfare

  • Get the growing number of poor children off to a good start in life by increasing health-care coverage for poor mothers and children, starting with prenatal care in order to lower the infant-mortality rate and reduce avoidable damage to newborns.

  • Increase parenting education for mothers of at-risk children.

  • Provide more special education in early childhood to kids with learning problems.

  • Increase the availability of affordable child care.

  • Strengthen child-support enforcement.

  • Increase investment and opportunity for poor people and distressed areas.

  • Require welfare recipients with children >3y old to sign a contract committing themselves to a course of independence, through literacy, job training, and work and be assigned a caseworker committed to a successful transition to self-sufficiency.

• Healthcare: Introduce school health clinics to fight teen pregnancy and provide health coverage through schools for uninsured children.

• Education

  • Give parents’ and students’ the right to choose to attend a public school other than the one in their geographical area.

  • Expand the HIPPY preschool program to all seventy-five counties.

  • Issue each school a report card on every school, every year, comparing students’ performance with the previous year and with other schools in the state, provision for state takeover of failing school districts.

  • Expand adult literacy programs, designed to make AR the first state to “obliterate adult illiteracy among working-age citizens.”

  • Provide apprenticeships for non-college-bound youths.

  • Give scholarships for all middle-class and low-income kids who take required course and maintain a B-average while staying off drugs.

  • Open a residential HS for math and science students.

  • Convert 14 vo-tech schools into 2y colleges.

  • Raise $4K for teachers over 2y- I asked the legislature to raise the sales tax half a cent and the corporate income tax half a percent to pay for them.

  • College Aid for young people in return for national service.

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USA Agenda

• Revenue (Taxes): BALANCE THE BUDGET with a focus on health care, education, and the environment; paid for with real cuts in spending and fair taxes.

  • Abandon the middle-class tax cuts and implement targeted tax cuts to support home ownership, long-term care, college education, and child-rearing.

  • Cut government admin expenses (to save $9B) and reduce the size of the federal workforce by 100K.

  • Increase the top income tax rate from 31-36% on incomes over $180K, with a 10% surcharge on incomes over $250,000 and raise the corporate income tax rate from 34-36 % on incomes over $10M.

  • Tax breaks for charitable contributions by low- and moderate-income citizens who couldn’t claim one now because they didn’t itemize their deductions.

  • Tax relief from the so-called marriage penalty.

  • Expand the EITC.

  • Subject more of the income of the best-off Social Security recipients to taxation.

• Defense

  • Modest defense Downsizing while modernizing defense weapons to meet new security challenges.

  • Achieve a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and ratify the convention controlling chemical weapons.

  • Achieve permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which expired in 1995 and fully fund the Nunn-Lugar program to secure and destroy Russian nuclear weapons and materials.

  • Expand NATO, the North Korea Nuclear agreement, and extend the Bosnia mission.

  • A global ban on AP land mines (which kill or maim ~25K people each year), of which there are ~100M land mines, mostly relics of past wars.

• Foreign Policy: Increase engagement with China and obtain “Fast track” authority in trade negotiations, which requires Congress to vote on trade agreements up or down without amendments.

• Health: Extend healthcare and slow spiraling healthcare costs.

• Welfare

  • Provide more incentives to employers and states to hire recipients and more training, transportation, and child-care support to help people go to work.

  • Increase jobs for people on welfare.

  • Investment in poor urban and rural areas.

  • Greater support for faith-based efforts to fight poverty and drug abuse and help teen mothers.

  • Greater incentives to teach English and civics to new immigrants.

  • Passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

• Jobs

  • Shift more public and private spending from consumption to investment in order to create more jobs.

  • Permanent investment tax credit for small businesses, which employed 40% of the workforce but were creating most of our new jobs.

  • Establish community development banks and empowerment zones.

  • End the tax subsidy that makes it more profitable for a company to shut down its American operations and move overseas than to reinvest at home.

• Infrastructure: Increase money for roads, bridges, mass transit, and high-tech information systems.

• Environment: Increase money for environmental cleanups to increase productivity and employment and support a broad-based energy tax (a BPU tax).

• Social Programs: Pass a family leave law, implement tougher child support enforcement.

• Education: Increase investments in Public School education and infrastructure.

  • Develop national standards and associated testing for public schools, and incentives to encourage more students to go to college, including a national service initiative.

  • Certify 100,000 Master Teachers by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

  • Put more children in Pre-school and implement the America Reads tutoring initiative for 8yo’s.

  • Public School choice in every state and character education in every school.

  • A $1,500 HOPE Scholarship tax credit for the first 2y of college and a $10,000 tuition tax deduction for all higher education after high school.

  • A “GI Bill” for America’s workers to give a skill grant to adults who needed further training.

  • Connect every classroom and library to the Internet by 2000.

• Crime: Pass the Bray Bill and Hate Crimes Bill, put 100K new police on the street, and military-style boot camps for first-time nonviolent offenders.

• Campaign Finance: Enact Campaign Finance Reform, require lobbyists to register, and eliminate the tax deduction for lobbyist expenses.

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---Politics---

• Politics is about compromise, and people expect Presidents to win, not posture for them.

• Politics at its best is about the competition of ideas and policy.

• 1968, the year that broke open the nation and shattered the Democratic Party; the year that conservative populism replaced progressive populism as the dominant political force in our nation; the year that law and order and strength became the province of Republicans, and Democrats became associated with chaos, weakness, and out-of-touch, self-indulgent elites; the year that led to Nixon, then Reagan, then Gingrich, then George W. Bush. The middle-class backlash would shape and distort American politics for the rest of the century.

• When the national party under Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson began to embrace the cause of civil rights, the southern conservatives migrated to the Republican Party, which, beginning in the 1970s, formed an alliance with the rising religious right-wing movement.

• The Reagan years solidified the hold of the Republican Party on white conservative southerners, and the Republicans made them feel welcome.

• Democratic Leadership Council’s (DLC): The DLC has five core beliefs: Andrew Jackson’s credo of opportunity for all and special privileges for none; the basic American values of work and family, freedom and responsibility, faith, tolerance, and inclusion; John Kennedy’s ethic of mutual responsibility, asking citizens to give something back to their country; the advancement of democratic and humanitarian values around the world, and prosperity and upward mobility at home; and Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to innovation, to modernizing government for the information age and encouraging people by giving them the tools to make the most of their own lives.

• Every year we used the State of the Union as an organizing tool for the cabinet and staff to come up with new policy ideas, and then we worked hard on how best to present them. On the day of the speech, we held several rehearsals in the movie theater located between the residence and the East Wing. The White House Communications Agency, which also recorded all my public statements, set up a TelePrompTer and a podium, and various staff members moved in and out through the day in an informal process managed by my communications director, Don Baer. We all worked together, listening to each sentence, imagining how it would be received in the Congress and in the country, and improving the language.

• New Democrat philosophy (Clinton-1992): 1) Change may be the only constant in today’s American economy; 2) human capital is probably more important than physical capital now; 3) a more constructive partnership between business and government is far more important than the dominance of either; 4) as we try to solve problems which arise out of the internationalization of American life and the changes in our own population, cooperation in every area is far more important than conflict…We have to share responsibilities and opportunities—we’re going up or down together; 5) waste is going to be punished…it appears to me that we are spending billions of dollars of investment capital increasing the debt of corporations without increasing their productivity. More debt should mean increased productivity, growth, and profitability. Now it means, too often, less employment, less investment for research and development, and forced restructuring to service nonproductive debt; 6) a strong America requires a resurgent sense of community, a strong sense of mutual obligations, and a conviction that we cannot pursue our individual interests independent of the needs of our fellow citizens.

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---Foreign Affairs---

·       Increasing global interdependence is erasing the divide between foreign and domestic policy.

·       “Success in foreign affairs is often defined by preventing or defusing problems before they develop into headaches and headline grabbers.”-Tony Lake (Clinton’s NSA).

·       Globalization imposed on its beneficiaries the responsibility of sharing its gains and its burdens and empowering more people to participate in it. Essentially, I advocated a Third Way approach to globalization: trade plus a concerted effort to give people and nations the tools and conditions to make the most of it.

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Iran

• Iran had held several elections in recent years, for the presidency, for parliament, and for municipal offices. In every case the reformers had won between two-thirds and 70% of the vote. The problem was that under the Iranian constitution, a council of Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei held enormous power; they could nullify certain legislation and prohibit candidates from running for office. And they controlled Iran’s foreign intelligence operations and funded its support for terrorism.

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China

• Finding the right balance between economic pragmatism and aggressive nationalism was a constant challenge for China’s leaders.

• America had a big economic stake in maintaining peace and stability in Asia. The Asians bought half our exports, and those purchases supported three million jobs.

• I went to bed thinking that China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open, and that in the new century it was more likely that our nations would be partners than adversaries.

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---Defense---

• Clinton’s Initial National Security Team

  • Secretary of State: Warren Christopher.

  • Secretary of Defense: Les Aspin.

  • UN Ambassador: Madeleine Albright.

  • National Security Advisor: Tony Lake.

  • CIA Director: Jim Woolsey.

  • President’s Foreign Intel Advisory Board: Admiral Bill Crowe.

• Land Mines: “Near the end of negotiations on the treaty, I had asked for two amendments: an exception for the heavily marked UN-sanctioned minefield along the Korean border, which protected the people of South Korea and our troops there; and a rewording of the provision approving anti-tank missiles that covered those manufactured in Europe but not ours. Ours were just as safe and worked better to protect our troops. Both amendments were rejected, partly because the Landmine Conference was determined to pass the strongest possible treaty in the wake of the death of its most famous champion, Princess Diana, and partly because some people at the conference just wanted to embarrass the United States.”

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NATO

• “I had to make sure NATO expansion didn’t simply lead to a new division of Europe farther to the east.”-POTUS Clinton. 

• When I told Boris I wanted NATO both to expand and to sign an agreement with Russia, he asked me to commit secretly—in his words, “in a closet”—to limiting future NATO expansion to the Warsaw Pact nations, thus excluding the states of the former Soviet Union, like the Baltics and Ukraine. I said I couldn’t do that because, first of all, it wouldn’t remain secret, and doing so would undermine the credibility of the Partnership for Peace. I pointed out that a declaration that NATO would stop its expansion with the Warsaw Pact nations would be tantamount to announcing a new dividing line in Europe, with a smaller Russian empire.

• “Boris, do you really think I would allow NATO to attack Russia from bases in Poland?” “No,” he replied, “I don’t, but a lot of older people who live in the W part of Russia and listen to Zyuganov do.” He reminded me that, unlike the US, Russia had been invaded twice—by Napoleon and by Hitler—and the trauma of those events still colored the country’s collective psychology and shaped its politics.

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Vietnam War Draft (1964-1972)

• During the Vietnam era, 16M men avoided military service through legal means; 8.7M enlisted; 2.2M were drafted; only 209K were alleged to have dodged the draft or resisted, of whom 8,750 were convicted.

• I was always interested to see how others who took a pass and later got into public life dealt with military issues and political dissent. Some of them turned out to be superhawks and hyperpatriots, claiming that personal considerations justified their failure to serve while still condemning those who opposed a war they themselves had avoided.

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Bosnian War (1991-1995)

• In his book To End a War, Holbrooke ascribes the failure to five factors: (1) a misreading of Balkan history, holding that the ethnic strife was too ancient and ingrained to be prevented by outsiders; (2) the apparent loss of Yugoslavia’s strategic importance after the end of the Cold War; (3) the triumph of nationalism over democracy as the dominant ideology of post-Communist Yugoslavia; (4) the reluctance of the Bush administration to undertake another military commitment so soon after the 1991 Iraq war; and (5) the decision of the US to turn the issue over to Europe instead of NATO, and the confused and passive European response. To Holbrooke’s list I would add a sixth factor: some European leaders were not eager to have a Muslim state in the heart of the Balkans, fearing it might become a base for exporting extremism, a result that their neglect made more, not less, likely.

• No Fly Zone: Enacted by NATO to keep the Serbs from bombing Bosnian Muslims; and to maintain a fire-free zone around Sarajevo and other populated areas.

• The Bosnian Serb practice of UN hostage-taking had exposed the fundamental flaw of the UN’s strategy. The peacekeepers could protect the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians only as long as the Serbs believed NATO would punish their aggression. Now the hostage-taking had erased that fear and given the Serbs a free hand in eastern Bosnia.

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Kosovo War (1998-1999)

• 1974: Yugoslavian President Tito grants autonomy to Kosovo, allowing it self-government and control over its schools.

• 1989: Serbian President Milosevic removes autonomy from Kosovo. Tensions rise and explode after the independence of Bosnia is secured in 1995.

• The United States and NATO wanted Kosovo to have the political autonomy it had enjoyed under the Yugoslav constitution between 1974 and 1989, until Milosevic took it away, and we wanted a NATO-led peacekeeping force to guarantee the peace and the safety of Kosovo’s civilians, including the Serb minority. Milosevic wanted to keep control of Kosovo, and was opposed to any foreign troop deployments there. The Kosovar Albanians wanted independence.

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---Welfare---

• I pledged to support initiatives to empower inner-city residents, by initiating enterprise zones to encourage private investment and community development banks to make loans to low- and moderate-income people.

• Good people who were doing the best they could deserved to be able to feed their families, and no matter how strapped he was, (my grandpa) never denied them groceries on credit. Maybe that’s why I’ve always believed in food stamps.

• More should be done to keep people off welfare in the first place, by reducing adult illiteracy, teen pregnancy, the school dropout rate, and alcohol and drug abuse.

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---Race---

• Most blacks were Democrats because of FDR, and Truman’s stand for civil rights, and their sense that Kennedy would be more aggressive than Nixon on the issue of civil rights.

• We would retain the principle of affirmative action but reform its practices to ensure that there were no quotas, no preferences for unqualified persons or companies, no reverse discrimination against whites, and no continuation of programs after their equal opportunity purpose had been achieved.

• There were obvious economic and social forces behind the disappearance of work in our inner cities, the breakdown of the family, the problems in schools, and the rise of welfare dependency, out-of-wedlock births, and violence. But the crushing combination of difficulties had created a culture that accepted as normal the presence of violence and the absence of work and two-parent families, and I was convinced that government alone could not change that culture.

• “But, he (MLK) would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-old’s just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do. I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don’t amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work but not to have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon…There are changes we can make from the outside in; that’s the job of the President and the Congress and the governors and the mayors and the social service agencies. And then there’s some changes we’re going to have to make from the inside out, or the others won’t matter…Sometimes there are no answers from the outside in; sometimes all the answers have to come from the values and the stirrings and the voices that speak to us from within…Where there are no families, where there is no order, where there is no hope…who will be there to give structure, discipline, and love to these children? You must do that. And we must help you.”-Bill Clinton (13 Nov, 1993 in Memphis, TN to 5000 African American ministers addressing the problem of crime and violence in Black America).

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---Economics---

• Most of America’s job growth of the 1980s came in the high-technology and service sectors, and was concentrated in and around urban areas, primarily in states on or near the East and West coasts. The industrial and agricultural heartland was still in bad shape. The pattern was so pronounced that people began to refer to America as having a “bicoastal” economy.

• The multinational corporations and their political supporters had largely been content to create a global economy that served their needs, believing that the growth resulting from trade would create wealth and jobs everywhere.

• My economic proposals were innovative but too complex to be well understood or widely supported.

• The Fed chairman has enormous influence over the economy, largely through the Fed’s setting of short-term interest rates, which in turn affect long-term rates on business and consumer loans, including home mortgages.

• Economic Agenda: Micro-loan programs to support budding entrepreneurs, including welfare recipients eager to get off the rolls, who often had good ideas but couldn’t meet the credit standards of traditional lenders; increased the volume of Small Business Administration loans, especially to women and minorities; and named a National Commission to Ensure a Strong and Competitive Airline Industry, chaired by former VA governor Jerry Baliles.

• According to traditional Keynesian economic theory, governments should run deficits in bad economic times and balanced budgets or surpluses in good times.

• There seemed to be three ways to continue to increase growth without inflation: sell more products and services overseas; increase the workforce participation of particular populations, like welfare recipients; and bring growth to new markets in America where investment was too low and unemployment too high.

• I felt very strongly that the country had to change direction. Our growth was fueled primarily by big increases in defense spending and large tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans and drove up the deficit. The big deficits led to high interest rates, as the government competed with private borrowers for money, and that in turn drove up the value of the dollar, making imports cheaper and American exports more expensive.

• One of the reasons for New England’s prosperity seemed to be the extraordinary cooperation of small-business people in sharing facilities and administrative and marketing costs, as northern Italian artisans had been doing for centuries, since the development of medieval guilds. Once more I had found an idea I thought might work in Arkansas. When I got home, we helped a group of unemployed sheet-metal workers set up businesses and cooperate in cost-sharing and marketing as I had observed Italian leatherworkers and furniture makers doing.

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Deficit

• The budget deficit required us to import tremendous amounts of capital every year to finance our overspending. To attract that kind of money and avoid a precipitous drop in the value of the dollar, we had to keep interest rates far higher than they should have been during the economic downturn that preceded my election. Those high interest rates inhibited economic growth and amounted to a huge indirect tax on middle-class Americans who paid more for home mortgages, car payments, and all other purchases financed through borrowing. My conclusion was that if we didn’t deal with the deficit, we couldn’t achieve sustained strong growth

• The deficit was the inevitable result of so-called supply-side economics, the theory that the more you cut taxes, the more the economy will grow, with the growth producing more tax revenue at lower rates than previously had been collected at higher ones. Of course it didn’t work, and the deficits exploded throughout the recovery of the 1980s.

• Raising the debt limit is merely a technical act that recognizes the inevitable: as long as America continues to run deficits, the annual debt will increase, and the government will be required to sell more bonds to finance it. Increasing the debt limit simply gives the Treasury Department authority to do that.

• Deficit reduction is not an end in itself, but the means to achieve the real objectives—economic growth, more jobs, and higher incomes; that our plan represented a fundamental change in the way government had been working, ending the irresponsibility and unfairness of the past by asking the wealthy big corporations, and other special interests that had benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts and deficits of the 1980s to pay their fair share of cleaning up the mess; and that we should not say we were asking people to “sacrifice” but to “contribute” to America’s renewal, a more patriotic and positive formulation.

• If we went for deficit reduction only, a stagnant economy with anemic revenues couldn’t cut it in half anyway.

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Budget

• The Federal budget, unlike all other legislation, isn’t subject to the filibuster rule.

• With the FY2000 budget just enacted, there would be enough money to pay $600B of the debt down over 4y, and if we stayed on the present course, we would be debt-free by 2010, freeing up twelve cents of every tax dollar for tax cuts or new investments.

• Government spends too much on yesterday and today- interest on debt, defense, more money for the same health care- and too little on tomorrow: education, environment, research and development, infrastructure.

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Trade

• NAFTA had inadvertently hurt Central America and the Caribbean nations by putting them at a competitive disadvantage with Mexico.

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---Education---

• Educational standards include required kindergarten; a maximum class size of 20 through 3rd grade; counselors in all elementary schools; uniform testing of all students in 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades, with mandatory retention of those who failed the 8th-grade test; a requirement that any school in which more than 15% of students failed, to develop a plan to improve performance and, if its students didn’t improve within 2y, be subject to management changes; more math, science, and foreign language courses; a required high school curriculum of 4y of English and 3y of math, science, and history or social studies; more time on academic work during the school day and an increase in the school year from 175 to 180 days; special opportunities for gifted children; and a requirement that students stay in school until the age of 16.

• The most controversial educational proposal I made as AR Governor was to require all teachers and administrators to pass the National Teacher Examination in 1984, “by the standards now applied to new college graduates who take the test.” When the test was first given in 1984, 10% failed. About the same percentage failed in subsequent attempts. In the end, 1,215 teachers, about 3.5% of our total, had to leave the classroom because they couldn’t pass the test. Another 1,600 lost their certification because they never took it.

  • The Arkansas Education Association (AEA) went ballistic, accusing me of degrading teachers and using them as scapegoats. For the first time in my life, I was charged with racism, on the assumption that a higher percentage of black teachers would fail the test.

• I have become convinced that school performance depended more on the quality of a principal’s leadership than on any other single factor.

• I had become a convert to William Julius Wilson’s argument, articulated in his book The Truly Disadvantaged, that there were no race-specific solutions to hard-core unemployment and poverty. The only answers were schools, adult education and training, and jobs.

• Almost without exception, school districts that require uniforms experience higher student attendance, less violence, and increased student learning. The distinctions between poor and wealthier students diminish as well.

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---Healthcare---

• My Healthcare plan included basic principles: security, simplicity, savings, choice, quality, and responsibility. Everyone would have coverage, through private insurers, that would not be lost when there was an illness or a job change; there would be far less paperwork because of a uniform minimum-benefit package; we would reap large savings through lower administrative costs, which were then significantly higher than those of other wealthy nations, and a crackdown on fraud and abuse. Under our plan, Americans would be able to choose their own health plan and keep their own doctors, choices that were vanishing for more and more Americans whose insurance was carried by health maintenance organizations (HMOs), which tried to hold down costs by restricting patient choices and conducting extensive reviews before approving expensive treatments. Quality would be assured by the issuance of report cards on health-care plans to consumers, and the provision of more information to doctors. Responsibility would be enforced across the board against health insurance companies that wrongfully denied care, providers who padded their bills, drug companies that overcharged, lawyers who brought bogus suits, and citizens whose irresponsible choices weakened their health and exploded costs to everyone else.

  • To provide universal coverage, we had either to include a provision for backup price controls in the plan, raise taxes and cut other spending even further, or reduce the deficit target, which might adversely affect our strategy to lower interest rates.

• Medicare: Government provided healthcare to the elderly; funded by a 1.45% payroll tax.

• Diabetes and its complications account for a staggering 25% of all Medicaid costs.

• I accepted the recommendation of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission that human cloning was “morally unacceptable. I sought to ban discrimination based on genetic screening.

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Abortion

• Viable: Able to live outside the mother’s womb.

• After viability, SCOTUS ruled, the state could protect a child’s interest in being born against the mother’s decision not to have it, unless her life or health would be threatened by continued pregnancy or childbirth.

• I thought then, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is the most difficult of all judicial decisions. Whatever they decided, the Court had to play God. Everyone knows life begins biologically at conception. No one knows when biology turns into humanity or, for the religious, when the soul enters the body. Most abortions that don’t involve the life or health of the mother are chosen by scared young women and girls who don’t know what else to do. Most people who are pro-choice understand that abortions terminate potential life and believe that they should be legal, safe, and rare and that we should support young mothers who decide to complete their pregnancies, as most of them do. Most ardent pro-lifers are all for prosecuting doctors but grow less certain when their argument that an abortion is a crime is carried to its logical conclusion: prosecuting the mother for murder.

• For most of the last 30y, during which a woman’s right to choose has been secure, pro-choice voters have felt free to vote for or against candidates on other issues, while for anti-abortion voters, the other issues often didn’t matter.

• Abortion was a big issue in the 1992 Presidential campaign because it was assumed that if President Bush were reelected, he would have enough Supreme Court vacancies to fill to secure a majority for reversing Roe v. Wade. I had always supported Roe but opposed public funding of abortions for poor women, so my position didn’t really please either side. It wasn’t fair to poor women, but I had a hard time justifying funding abortions with the money of taxpayers who believed it was the equivalent of murder. Also, the question was really moot, since even the Democratic Congress had repeatedly failed to provide abortion funding.

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---Environment---

• Al Gore and I tried for years without success to get them to adopt a 25% tax credit for the production or purchase of clean energy and energy conservation technology, with mountains of evidence to support our position. The Republicans blocked it every time.

• I strongly favored setting aggressive targets for the reduction of GHG emissions for both developed and developing nations, but I wanted to achieve the targets not through regulations and taxes but through market incentives to promote energy conservation and the use of clean energy technology.

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Infidelity?

• Gennifer Flowers: Stated that she carried on a 12y affair with Bill Clinton.

• Paula Jones: A former AR State employee sues POTUS Clinton in 1994 for sexual harassment while the two worked together at the Excelsior Hotel on 8 May, 1991. Clinton v. Jones eventually reaches SCOTUS on 27 May, 1997 and the case is later settled by a federal appeals court on 13 Nov, 1998. The case provided the impetus for independent counsel Ken Starr to broaden his ongoing investigation into Clinton’s pre-presidency financial dealings with Whitewater Land Company, and resulted in Clinton’s impeachment in the House and subsequent acquittal in the Senate on 12 Feb, 1999. Jones suit was dismissed as lacking legal merit prior to Clinton’s impeachment and the exposure of the Lewinsky affair. However, in Aug, 1998, Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky was brought to light allowing Jones to appeal, for which Clinton agreed to an $850K out-of-court settlement (Wiki).

  • “I had promised the American people I would spend the next two years working for them; I had no business spending five more minutes on the Jones case. The settlement took about half our life savings and we were already deeply in debt with legal bills.”-Bill Clinton.

• Monica Lewinsky: Began working at the WH in the summer of 1995 as an intern and then in a staff job from Dec, 1995- Apr, 1996, when she was transferred to the Pentagon. During the government shutdown in late 1995, when very few people were allowed to come to work in the White House and those who were there were working late, I’d had an inappropriate encounter with Monica Lewinsky and would do so again on other occasions between November and April, when she left the White House for the Pentagon. For the next ten months, I didn’t see her, although we talked on the phone from time to time. In the Summer, 1996, Monica Lewinsky began talking to a co-worker, Linda Tripp, about her relationship with me. A year later, Tripp had started taping their telephone conversations. In Oct, 1997, Tripp offered to play the tapes for a Newsweek reporter and did play them for Lucianne Goldberg, a conservative Republican publicist. Late on Monday, January 12, 1998, Tripp phoned Starr’s office, described her secret taping of Lewinsky, and made arrangements to turn over those tapes. She was concerned about her own criminal liability, because the kind of taping she had done was a felony under Maryland law, but Starr’s people promised to protect her. The next day Starr had FBI agents wire Tripp so that she could secretly record a conversation with Lewinsky over lunch at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton. A couple of days later, Starr asked the Justice Department for permission to expand his authority to encompass the investigation of Lewinsky. One of Starr’s lawyers told her she should cooperate if she wanted to avoid going to jail and offered her an immunity deal that expired at midnight.

• The standard for appointing an independent counsel under both the old law, which had expired, and the new one being considered by Congress was “credible evidence” of wrongdoing. Asking for the prosecutor would set a terrible precedent, basically changing the standard from requiring credible evidence of wrongdoing to giving in whenever a media frenzy could be stirred up. The next day the White House asked Janet Reno to appoint a special prosecutor. It was the worst presidential decision I ever made, wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, wrong on the politics, wrong for the presidency and the Constitution.

• On Saturday morning, August 15, with the grand jury testimony looming and after a miserable, sleepless night, I woke up Hillary and told her the truth about what had happened between me and Monica Lewinsky. She looked at me as if I had punched her in the gut, almost as angry at me for lying to her in January as for what I had done. All I could do was tell her that I was sorry, and that I had felt I couldn’t tell anyone, even her, what had happened. I told her that I loved her and I didn’t want to hurt her or Chelsea, that I was ashamed of what I had done, and that I had kept everything to myself in an effort to avoid hurting my family and undermining the presidency.

Infidelity Timeline

• 12 Feb, 1999: The US Senate votes to acquit POTUS Clinton of impeachment.

• 19 Dec, 1998: The US House votes to impeach POTUS Clinton.

  • “We were doing it because we can.”-Newt Gingrich on Clinton’s Impeachment.

• 13 Nov, 1998: Clinton v. Jones is settled by a federal appeals court with Clinton agreeing to pay $850K to drop the suit.

• 15 Aug, 1998: Bill tells Hillary the truth of the affair.

• Aug, 1998: POTUS Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky is brought to light.

• ~15 Jan, 1998: Starr asks the Justice department for permission to expand his authority to encompass the investigation of Lewinsky.

• 13 Jan, 1998: Starr has FBI agents wire Tripp so she can secretly record a conversation with Lewinsky over lunch at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton.

• 12 Jan, 1998: Tripp phones Starr’s office, describing her secret taping of Lewinsky, and makes arrangements to turn over the tapes.

• Oct, 1997: Tripp offers and then plays the tapes to Newsweek reporting Lucianne Goldberg, a conservative Republican publicist.

• Summer, 1997: Linda Tripp begins taping her telephone conversations with Monica.

• 27 May, 1997: Clinton v. Jones is argued in the SCOTUS.

• Summer, 1996: Lewinsky begins talking to a co-worker, Linda Tripp, about her relationship with POTUS Clinton.

• Apr, 1996: Monica Lewinsky is transferred to the Pentagon; Clinton and Lewinsky continue talking by phone.

• Dec, 1995- Apr, 1996: Monica Lewinsky works at the WH in a staff job.

• Nov, 1995- Apr, 1996: POTUS Clinton and Monica Lewinsky maintain a sexual relationship.

• Late, 1995: USG Shutdown; the federal workforce is minimal.

• Summer, 1995: Monica Lewinsky begins working at the WH first as an intern.

• 1994: Paula Jones sues POTUS Clinton for sexual harassment.

• 1992: Ginner Flowers, in a tabloid newspaper during the Clinton Campaign, states she carried on a 12y affair with Clinton.

• Mid Sep, 1991: A disgruntled former employee of the Development Finance Authority first raised the “sex question” against me. When Simmons asked me about the charges, I just suggested he call the women. He did, they all denied it, and the story basically died.

• 8 May, 1991: Bill Clinton allegedly sexual harasses Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in AR.

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Bush v. Gore Election

• The Bush-Cheney ticket had settled on a two-pronged campaign message. The positive argument was “compassionate conservatism,” giving America the same good conditions we had provided, but with a smaller government and a bigger tax cut. The negative one was that they would elevate the moral tone and end bitter partisanship in Washington.

• All VPs who run for President have two problems: most people don’t know what they’ve done and don’t give them credit for the accomplishments of the administration, and they tend to get typecast as number two men.

Recount

• Al was at a disadvantage going into the election recount in FL because the chief election official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was a conservative Republican who was close to Governor Jeb Bush, and the state legislature that would certify the electors was dominated by conservative Republicans.

• The FL Supreme Court ordered the inclusion of more recounted votes in Palm Beach and Dade counties, and the recount of 45,000 more votes according to the standard of FL law: a ballot was to be counted only if the intent of the voter was clear. Bush’s margin was now down to 154 votes. Governor Bush immediately appealed to the SCOTUS to stop the recount.

• For SCOTUS to stop the recount, a party must show that irreparable harm would result unless the activity is stopped. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Scalia wrote an astonishingly honest opinion granting the injunction. What was the irreparable harm? Scalia said. That counting the ballots might “cast a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” The five justices who didn’t want the votes counted by any standard claimed to advance equal protection by depriving thousands of people of their constitutional right to have their votes counted even if their intent was crystal clear.

• Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made.  

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Misc Quotes

“What seems funny to the strong can be cruel and humiliating to the weak.”-POTUS Clinton.

“When I grew up and got into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to give people a chance to have better stories.”-POTUS Clinton.

“Someone once said that the two things people should never watch being made are sausages and laws.”-POTUS Clinton.

“No redneck wants a dog that won’t bite.”-FL Governor Lawton Chiles.

“Choosing a career is like choosing a wife from ten girlfriends. Even if you pick the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the kindest woman, there is still the pain of losing the other nine.”-POTUS Clinton.

“You do not make peace with your friends.”-Yitzhak Rabin.

“Success in foreign affairs is often defined by preventing or defusing problems before they develop into headaches and headline grabbers.”-Tony Lake (Clinton’s NSA).

“Just as war is freedom’s cost, disagreement is freedom’s privilege.”-POTUS Clinton.

“As so often happens with government programs, attempts to correct problems go too far in the other direction.”-Bill Clinton.

“Someone once said that politics is show business for ugly people.”-POTUS Clinton.

“I always preferred failure in a worthy effort to inaction for fear of failure.”-POTUS Clinton.

“Democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”-POTUS Clinton.

“Life’s greatest curse is the answered prayer.”-POTUS Clinton.

“How to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.”-Immanuel Kant’s test of life.

“Either we invest more in human capital and develop our people’s capacity to cooperate or we are headed for long-term decline.”-POTUS Clinton.

“The essence of political responsibility is being able to concentrate on what is really important for a long period of time until the problem is solved.”-POTUS Clinton.

“At the time I thought she was three bricks shy of a full load.”-Bill Clinton.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”-Robert Kennedy.

“He wrote withering comments in the margins of essays, calling one of his students “a capricious little bilge pump.”-Bill Clinton on one of his College Professors. 

“Drunkenness was inconsistent with both his values and his self-image and he gave up liquor completely, sealing the only crack in his armor with his iron will.”-Bill Clinton on Fulbright.

“The classic liberal trap of making the perfect the enemy of the good.”-POTUS Clinton.

“An A’s worth of knowledge can be hidden in the bushes of an F presentation.”-Bill Clinton.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We now know that it is bad economics.”-FDR.

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, unremembered acts of kindness and love.”-Wordsworth.

“America, to endure, would have to change. . . . Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.”-Bill Clinton.

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”-Bill Clinton.

“We must do what America does best: offer more opportunity to all and demand responsibility from all.”-Bill Clinton. 

“Find out what he drinks, and give it to the other generals.”-POTUS Lincoln on General Grant.

“We campaign in poetry but we govern in prose.”-Mario Cuomo.

“In this life we see through a glass darkly and know in part.”-Saint Paul.

“When the accident of situation is to give us a place in history, for which nature had not prepared us by corresponding endowments, it is the duty of those about us carefully to veil from the public eye the weaknesses, and still more, the vices of our character.”-Thomas Jefferson.

“Crime requires committing a forbidden act, intentionally or recklessly; just being something society deems undesirable isn’t enough.”-Bill Clinton.

“When they ask me if I’m a Christian, I say, ‘I sure hope so, and I’ve always tried to be. But I really think that’s a question only God can judge.’ That usually shuts them up.”-Bill Clinton.

“My family had been identified to the rampaging killers as Tutsis by Hutu neighbors that my children had played with for years. I was badly wounded by a machete and left for dead. I awoke in a pool of my own blood to find my husband and six children lying dead beside me.” She told Hillary and me that she had cried out to God in despair that she had survived, then came to understand “that my life must have been spared for a reason, and it could not be something as mean as vengeance. So, I do what I can to help us start again…they have had me for 27 years. If I keep hating them, they will still have me.’ I wanted to be free, and so I let it go.”-A victim of the Rwandan Genocide.

“America refuses to accept that our civilizations must collide. We respect Islam…the traditional values of Islam, devotion to faith and good work, to family and society, are in harmony with the best of American ideals. Therefore, we know our people, our faiths, our cultures can live in harmony with each other.”-POTUS Clinton.

“Give respect before you expect it, treat people the way you want to be treated, remember the mission, set the example, keep going.”-Baker’s Creed.

“If you want to live like a Republican, you better vote for the Democrats.”-Harry Truman.

“Think hard, feel deeply, and choose wisely. And remember . . . keep putting people first. Keep building those bridges. And don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”-POTUS Clinton.

“Everyone counts; everyone has a role to play; and we all do better when we help each other.”-POTUS Clinton. 

“What the movers and shakers of the world needed was a shared vision. When good people with energy act on a shared vision, most of the problems get worked out.”-POTUS Clinton.

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Resources

• Arkansas Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project; Funded by the ultra-conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife from Pittsburgh, who had also pumped money into the American Spectator to fund its negative stories on the Clintons. For example, the project had paid one former state trooper $10,000 for the ridiculous yarn accusing me of drug smuggling.

• Habitat for Humanity: https://www.habitat.org/; the brainchild of Millard Fuller, Habitat uses volunteers to build houses for and with poor people, who then pay for the cost of the materials.

• Home Instruction Programs for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY): http://www.arhomevisiting.org/modelname/hippy-arkansas/; A program that helps to develop both parenting skills and children’s ability to learn. Hillary set up HIPPY programs all across the state.

• World Economic Forum: An important annual gathering of international political and business leaders.

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People

• William “Averell” Harriman (1891-1986): American Democratic statesmen who served as FDRs envoy to Churchill and Stalin, Truman’s Commerce Secretary, the 48th Governor of NY, and the US negotiator at the Paris Peace Conference with N. Vietnam. Harriman was a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as “The Wise Men.”

• H. Ross Perot (1930-2019): A TX billionaire who had made his fortune as founder and CEO of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Perot Systems. Perot ran as an independent candidate in the 1992 & 1996 US Presidential elections, the latter as the nominee of the Reform party.

  • Perot had become nationally known when he financed and engineered the rescue of EDS employees from Iran after the fall of the Shah.

• Thomas Franklin “Mack” McLarty III (1946- Present): American business and political leader who was governor of Boys State, all-star quarterback, state legislator, successful businessman, and then POTUS Clinton’s first WH CoS (1993-Jun, 1994).

• Vinton Cerf (1943- Present): American internet pioneer recognized as one of the “Father of the Internet.”

• Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (1957-2011): Saudi Arabian born militant and founder of the pan-Islamic military organization al-Qaeda (aQ), which was responsible for terrorist and mass-casualty attacks around the world including the 1998 US Embassy Bombings, the 1999 USS Cole attack, and 9-11.

  • “By all accounts, bin Laden was poisoned by the conviction that he was in possession of the absolute truth and therefore free to play God by killing innocent people.”-POTUS Clinton.

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Terminology

• Acid Reflux: A relatively common condition in which stomach acid comes back up the esophagus and scalds the vocal cords, usually during sleep.

• Antitrust Law: A law designating the government to prevent the formation of monopolies as well as other noncompetitive practices in order to preserve a functioning, fair free-market economy.

• Bola Escola: A Brazilian social program that made monthly cash payments to poor Brazilians if their children attended school at least 85% of the time.

• Byrd Rule: Prohibits the inclusion of non-generic items in the budget-reconciliation bill.

• Citizens United: A right-wing group that spreads false stories about Democrats. 

• Chaver (Hebrew): The comradeship of soul mates in common cause.

• Chicanos: 20c term for Mexican-Americans in the USA. 

• Continuing resolution (CR): Authorizes funding for departments until their new budgets are enacted.

• Dual Key Approach: A requirement that both NATO and the UN approve kinetic strikes.

• Duma: Russia’s parliament.

• Filibuster: The Senate practice that allows just 41 senators to kill any bill by debating it to death, blocking a vote until the Senate has to move on to other business.

• Future Preference: The belief that the future can be better than the past, and each individual has a personal, moral obligation to make it so.

• G-7: The seven largest industrial nations—the US, Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Canada, and Japan. Russia was later added, making the G8.

• Hezbollah: Armed by Iran and aided by Syria; conducts operations against Israel from S. Lebanon.

• Iraqgate: The channeling of USG backed credits to Iraq through the Atlanta branch of a bank owned by the Italian government. Ostensibly for agricultural purposes, the credits had been siphoned off by Saddam Hussein to rebuild his military and weapons program after the Iran-Iraq war. $2B of the credits were never repaid, leaving US taxpayers with the bill.

• Knesset: The Israeli parliament.

• Moral Majority: Founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a conservative Baptist minister from VA who had won a large TV following and was using it to build a national organization committed to Christian fundamentalism and right-wing politics.

• Most Favored Nation (MFN): A term that normalizes trade relations without any extra tariffs or barriers.

• Oligarch: An ultra-rich businessman.

• Right-to-Work Laws: Enable people to work in plants with unionized workforces without paying union dues.

• Sea of Galilee: A unique body of water: the bottom part is salt water fed by underground springs, while the top layer is fresh water. Because fresh water is lighter, care had to be taken not to draw down the lake too much in any given year lest the covering layer of fresh water becomes too light to hold the salt water down. If the fresh water were to fall below a certain point, the salt water could rush upward and mix with it, taking out a water supply that is essential for Israel.

• Temple Mount: (‘Haram al-Sharif’- Arabic); the location of Dome of the Rock above the Western Wall in Jerusalem.  

• Triangulation: Bridging the divide between Republicans and Democrats and taking the best ideas of both.

• Voodoo: Originated in Benin, W. Africa where it means ‘God’ or ‘Spirit’ without the connotations of black magic and witchcraft. Voodoo’s central ritual is a dance during which spirits possess believers. In voodoo, God is manifest to humans through spirits that represent forces of light and darkness, good and evil, which are more or less in balance.

• Tetrodotoxin: A Toxin extracted from puffer fish. In proper doses, it can paralyze the body and reduce respiration to such low levels that even the attending doctor believes a person is dead.

• Y2K: Widespread concern that many computer systems would not make the change to the year 2000, which would cause havoc in the economy and disrupt the affairs of millions of Americans.

• Yad Vashem: Israel’s Holocaust memorial

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Chronology

• 2004: Haitian President Aristide resigns and flees into exile amidst violence and strife.-My Life by Clinton.

• 2003: SCOTUS declares that consensual homosexual relations are protected by the right to privacy.-My Life by Clinton.

• 2003: SCOTUS upholds the principle of affirmative action.-My Life by Clinton.

• Feb, 2001: Ariel Sharon is elected Israeli PM in a landslide. Sharon takes a hard line toward PLO Leader Arafat.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Jan, 2001: The USG under POTUS Clinton announces the protection of 60M acres of national forest in 39 states from road-building and logging, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the last great temperate rain forest in America.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Dec, 2000: The USG under POTUS Clinton joins the ICC.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 2000: POTUS Clinton announces a $200B budget surplus, with a 10-yr projected surplus of >$4T, recommending that the US lock away the Social Security surplus (~$2.3T) and save ~$550B for Medicare.-My Life by Clinton.

• 15 Dec, 2000: Ukraine seals the final reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.-My Life by Clinton.

• 2000: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Coral Reef Conservation Act, permanently protect the coral reefs of the NW Hawaiian Islands, more than 60% of America’s total, stretching over 2000 km.-My Life by Clinton.

• Nov, 2000: US Presidential Election; Rep. TX Governor George W. Bush defeats Dem. VP Al Gore following a 5-4 SCOTUS decision to stop the FL recount that would have likely given Gore the requisite electoral votes to win the election (he had already won the popular vote).

  • “I’ll give you the same good conditions you have now, with a smaller government and a bigger tax cut. Wouldn’t you like that?”-Presidential Candidate George W. Bush.

• 12 Oct, 2000: USS Cole Attack; A small boat laden with explosives is detonated against the USS Cole, in port in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 USN Sailors.-My Life by Clinton.

• End Sep, 2000: Slobodan Milosevic is defeated for the presidency of Serbia by Vojislav Kostunica.-My Life by Clinton.

• 28 Sep, 2000: Ariel Sharon becomes the first leading Israeli politician to walk on the Temple Mount since Israel had captured it in the 1967 war. At the time, Moshe Dayan had said that Muslim religious sites would be respected, and thereafter the mount was overseen by Muslims.-My Life by Clinton.

• Sep, 2000: The USG under POTUS Clinton establishes normal trade relations with China.-My Life by Clinton.

• 25 Apr, 2000: POTUS Clinton vetoes the Nuclear Waste Bill that would have put all of the US’ low-level nuclear waste in NV.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Dec, 1999: Resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin; succeeded by the increasingly popular Vladimir Putin.-My Life by Clinton.

• 21 Nov, 1999: Elián Gonzales, his mother Elizabeth, and 12 others departs Cuba on a small Al boat with a faulty engine. Gonzales’ mother and 10 others die in the crossing. Gonzales and two survivors float at sea until they are rescued by fishermen, who hand them over to the USCG (Wiki). Elián is taken to Miami and placed into the temporary custody of a great-uncle, however his father in Cuba wanted him back. The Cuban-American community made Elián’s case a crusade, saying that his mother had died trying to bring her son to freedom and it would be wrong to send him back to Castro’s dictatorship. By law, the INS was to determine whether the boy’s father was a fit parent; if he was, Elián had to be returned to him. An INS team went to Cuba and discovered that though Elián’s parents were divorced, they had maintained a good relationship and had shared child-rearing duties. In fact, Elián had spent about half his time with his father, who lived closer to the boy’s school. The INS found that Juan Miguel González was a fit parent. The Miami family refused to recognize the father’s custody rights and AG Janet Reno authorized a pre-dawn raid on the great-uncle’s house by federal officials, which lasted 3 minutes and hurt no one. Elián was returned to his father.-My Life by Clinton.

• Oct, 1999: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts legislation extending Medicare and Medicaid benefits to disabled people in the workforce. It was the most important piece of legislation for the disabled community since the passage of the ADA, allowing otherwise uninsurable people with AIDS, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s, diabetes, or crippling injuries to “buy into” the Medicare program.-My Life by Clinton.

• 12 Oct, 1999: Pakistani Military Coup; PM Nawaz Sharif is overthrown in a military coup headed by General Musharraf, who had led the Pakistani armed forces over the Line of Control in Kashmir. Musharraf’s ascendancy had one immediate consequence: the program to send Pakistani commandos into Afghanistan to catch or kill Osama bin Laden was canceled.-My Life by Clinton.

• Jul, 1999: POTUS Clinton signs an executive order placing economic sanctions on the Taliban, freezing its assets and prohibiting commercial exchanges.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3 May- 26 Jul, 1999: The Kargil War (‘OP Vijay’ in India) is fought between India and Pakistan in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir along the Line of Control (LOC) and results in India retaking possession of the Kargil (Wiki).

• 20 Apr, 1999: The Columbine School Shooting; two armed students open fire on their classmates, killing 12 and injuring 20 others before turning their guns on themselves.-My Life by Clinton.

• Mar, 1999: NATO votes to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1999: The US and UK launch a 4d series of attacks targeting Iraqi military and national security targets after inspectors are denied access to Ba’ath Party HQ.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 1999: Ho Lee, a Chinese-American employee of our national energy lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, is accused of stealing sensitive technology for China.-My Life by Clinton.

• 12 Feb, 1999: The US Senate votes to acquit POTUS Clinton of impeachment.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3 Jan, 1999: Newt Gingrich resigns as speaker of the House.-My Life by Clinton.

• 19 Dec, 1998: Impeachment of POTUS Clinton; the House passes two of the four articles of impeachment approved by the Hyde committee. The first, accusing me of lying to the grand jury, passed 228–206, with five Republicans voting against it. The second, alleging that I had obstructed justice by suborning perjury and hiding gifts, passed 221–212, with twelve Republicans voting no.-My Life by Clinton.

• 13 Nov, 1998: Clinton v. Jones is settled by a federal appeals court with Clinton agreeing to pay $850K to drop the suit.-My Life by Clinton.

• Nov, 1998: US Mid Term Elections; although democrats are predicted to lose 4-6 senate seats, there is no change in the senate. Democrats gain back 5 House seats.-My Life by Clinton.

• Fall, 1998: News reports indicate that, according to DNA tests, Thomas Jefferson had fathered several children with his slave Sally Hemings.-My Life by Clinton.

• 6 Oct, 1998: Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, is beaten death in WY because of his sexual orientation.-My Life by Clinton.

• 30 Sep, 1998: POTUS Clinton announces an ~$70B budget surplus, the first in 29 years.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Aug, 1998: POTUS Clinton issues Executive Order 13099 imposing economic sanctions on bin Laden and aQ. The sanctions are later extended to the Taliban.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Aug, 1998: POTUS Clinton orders US Navy destroyers in the N. Arabian Sea and the Red Sea to launch cruise missiles at aQ targets in Afghanistan and chemical plants in Sudan, respectively. Most of the missiles hit the targets, but bin Laden was not in the camp where the CIA thought he would be when the missiles hit it. Several people associated with aQ are killed, as were some Pakistani officers who were reported to be there to train Kashmiri terrorists. The Sudanese chemical plant was destroyed.-My Life by Clinton.

  • “In response to the cruise missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan. Some people in the media tried to push the possibility that the action was a real-life version of Wag the Dog, a movie in which a fictional President starts a made-for-TV war to distract public attention from his personal problems.”-My Life by Clinton.

• 15 Aug, 1998: A breakaway faction of the IRA detonates a VBIED in a crowded shopping area of Omagh, Northern Ireland that kills 29.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1998: North Korea begins producing highly enriched U; a clear violation of earlier agreements.-My Life by Clinton.

• 7 Aug, 1998: US Embassy Bombings; al Qaeda detonates VBIEDs outside US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing 257 people including 12 Americans and injuring 5000 others.-My Life by Clinton.

• 22 May, 1998: POTUS Clinton signs PPD 62 & 63. PPD 62 creates a ten-point CT initiative that includes terrorist prevention, prosecution, disruption and PDD-63 establishes a National Infrastructure Protection Center to prepare for the first time a comprehensive plan to protect US critical infrastructure, such as transportation, telecommunications, and water systems.-My Life by Clinton.

• 13 May, 1998: The Pokhran-II Nuclear Tests; India conducts five underground nuclear tests. Two weeks later, Pakistan responds with six tests of its own. India claimed its nuclear weapons were needed as a deterrent to China; Pakistan said it was responding to India.-My Life by Clinton.

• Good Friday, 10 Apr, 1998: The Good Friday (‘Belfast’) Agreement is signed by all parties in Northern Ireland, agreeing to end 30y of sectarian violence.-My Life by Clinton.

• 28 Feb, 1998- 11 Jun, 1999: The Kosovo War is fought between the forces of the Federal Rep. of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ends when NATO intervenes in Mar, 1999 with airstrikes in support of the KLA that force Yugoslavian forces to withdraw from Kosovo (Wiki).

  • 12 Jun, 1999: A NATO peacekeeping force enters Kosovo (Wiki).

  • 11 Jun, 1999: Russian forces enter Kosovo from Bosnia and occupy the Pristina airport without advance agreement from NATO, four hours before the NATO troops authorized by the UN arrive. The Russians asserted their intention to keep control of the airport.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 9 Jun, 1999: The Kumanovo Agreement is signed with Yugoslav and Serbian forces agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence (Wiki).

  • 2 June, 1999: NATO bombing raids on the Serbs finally break Milosevic’s will to resist. Victor Chernomyrdin and Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari personally hand NATO’s demands to Milosevic. Milosevic and the Serbian parliament agreed to them the following day.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 7 May, 1999: NATO inadvertently bombs the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens. Although the bombs had hit their intended target, it had been erroneously identified on the basis of old CIA maps as a Serbian government building used for military purposes.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 23 Mar, 1999: NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, with full US support, directs US General Wes Clark to begin air strikes. The same day, the Senate votes 58-41 to support the action (the House had previously voted 219-191 to support sending US troops to Kosovo if there was a peace agreement). NATO air strikes would last for 11w, as Milosevic continued to kill Kosovar Albanians and drive ~1M people from their homes.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 6 Feb, 1999: Serbia and Kosovar diplomats meet at Rambouillet to work out the details of an agreement that would restore autonomy, protect the Kosovars from oppression with a NATO-led operation, disarm the KLA, and allow the Serb army to continue to patrol the border.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 20 Mar, 1999: Yugoslav forces begin a massive campaign of repression and expulsions of Kosovar Albanians following the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) and the failure of the Rambouillet Agreement (Wiki).

  • Jan, 1999: Serbian forces escalate their campaign against Kosovar Albanians.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 13 Oct, 1998: NATO threatens to attack Serbian forces within 4d unless the UN resolutions are observed. The air strikes are delayed when 4K Yugoslav special police officers are withdrawn from Kosovo.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Jul, 1998: Serbian forces attack armed and unarmed Kosovars.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Apr, 1998: The UN imposes an arms embargo, and the US and its allies impose economic sanctions on Serbia for its failure to end the hostilities and begin a dialogue with the Kosovar Albanians.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Early, 1998: KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo result in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathizers and political opponents; the campaign kills 1500-2000 civilians and KLA combatants and displaces 370K Kosovar Albanians (by Mar 1999) (Wiki).

• Late Feb, 1998: Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network issues a fatwa calling for on American military and civilian targets anywhere in the world.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1 Dec, 1997: Kyoto global warming talks open.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Sep, 1997: Death of Mother Teresa.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Aug, 1997: Death of British Princess Diana, killed in an auto crash in Paris.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Aug, 1997: The USG under POTUS Clinton passes the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), providing health care to millions of children in the largest expansion of health insurance since Medicaid was enacted in 1965.-My Life by Clinton.

• 2 Jul, 1997-1998: The Asian Financial Crisis begins in Thailand (‘Tom Yam Kung’ crisis) following the financial collapse of the Thai baht that triggers capital flight (Wiki). The crisis spreads across E and SE Asia from Indonesia to S. Korea and Russia. Although the details of each nation’s problem were somewhat different, there were some common elements: flawed banking systems, bad loans, crony capitalism, and a general loss of confidence. Recovery in 1998-1999 is rapid.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 17 Aug, 1998: Russia defaults on its foreign debt, causing large drops in stock markets across the world and wiping out the markets gains of 1998.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 21 May, 1998: Indonesian President Suharto is forced to step down from power in the wake of widespread rioting that followed sharp increases price increases caused by a drastic devaluation of the rupiah during the Asian Financial Crisis (Wiki).

• 27 May, 1997: France, NATO, and Russian sign the Founding Act on mutual relations, cooperation, and security, a road map for would-be NATO-Russia cooperation.-My Life by Clinton.

• 24 Apr, 1997: The USG under POTUS Clinton sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).-My Life by Clinton.

• Jan, 1997: Mexico repays its loan to the US in full, with interest, >3y ahead of schedule. Mexico had borrowed $10.5B of the $20B we made available, and it paid a total of $1.4B in interest.-My Life by Clinton.

• Oct, 1996: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu authorizes the creation of an exit from the tunnel system under the Western Wall leading to the Via Dolorosa, underneath the Ummariya mardrasah. When the tunnel was opened, the Palestinians saw it as a threat to their religious and political interests, and riots broke out resulting in 60 deaths and many wounded over a 3d period.-My Life by Clinton.

• 18 Sep, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton establishes the 1.7M–acre Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in the red rock area of S. Utah, which contains fossils of dinosaurs and the remains of the ancient Anasazi Indian civilization. Action was necessary to stop a large coal mine that would have fundamentally changed the character of the area.-My Life by Clinton.

• Early Sep, 1996: Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein assault and occupy the town of Irbil in the Kurdish area of N Iraq, a violation of restrictions imposed on him at the end of the Gulf War. Two Kurdish factions had been vying for control of the area; after one of them decided to support Saddam, he had attacked the other. POTUS Clinton orders bomb and missile attacks on Iraqi forces causing them to withdrew.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1996: The JCS endorses Danzig’s recommendation to vaccinate the entire military force against anthrax, and Congress moved to tighten control over biological agents in American labs, after a fanatic, using false identification, was caught buying three vials of plague virus from a lab for about $300.-My Life by Clinton.

• Sep, 1996: The Taliban (with Pakistani support) capture Kabul and begin seizing other areas of the country. The Pakistani intelligence service uses some of the same camps that bin Laden and al Qaeda do to train the Taliban and insurgents who fight in Kashmir.-My Life by Clinton.

• 22 Aug, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton signs a landmark welfare reform bill, which had passed with bipartisan majorities of more than 70% in both houses. The new legislation retains the federal guarantee of medical care and food aid, increases federal child-care assistance by 40% to $14B, contains measures for tougher child-support enforcement, and gives states the ability to convert monthly welfare payments into wage subsidies as an incentive for employers to hire welfare recipients.-My Life by Clinton.

• 22 Aug, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, allowing people to take their health insurance from job to job while prohibiting insurance companies from denying anyone coverage because of a preexisting health problem.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3 Aug, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Food Quality Protection Act, to increase the safeguarding of vegetables, fruits, and grains from harmful pesticides; and the Safe Drinking Water Act, to reduce pollution and provide $10B in loans to upgrade municipal water systems.-My Life by Clinton.

• 27 Jul, 1996: Eric Rudolph detonates a pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, killing 2 people.-My Life by Clinton.

• 17 Jul, 1996: TWA Flight 800 explodes off Long Island, killing ~230 people.-My Life by Clinton.

• 25 Jun, 1996: Khobar Towers Attack; a VBIED is detonated outside a military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 19 USAF personnel and injuring hundreds more.-My Life by Clinton.

• May, 1996: Bin Laden departs Sudan for Afghanistan, where he is welcomed by Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, a militant Sunni sect that bent on establishing a radical Muslim theocracy in Afghanistan.-My Life by Clinton.

• 17 May, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton passes Megan’s Law, named after a little girl who had been killed by a sex offender, the legislation gave states the power to notify communities of the presence of violent sex offenders as several studies had shown they are rarely rehabilitated.-My Life by Clinton.

• 9 Apr, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts legislation granting a line-item veto to the President.-My Life by Clinton.

• Apr, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act to improve the farm credit system. The bill provides greater flexibility for farmers in choosing what crops to plant without losing aid; money for economic development in rural communities; funds to help farmers prevent soil erosion, air and water pollution, and the loss of wetlands; and $200M to begin work on one the restoration of FL’s Everglades.-My Life by Clinton.

• Mar, 1996: China “test”-fires three missiles close to Taiwan in an apparent attempt to discourage Taiwanese politicians from pushing for independence in the election campaign then under way. POTUS Clinton orders a carrier task group to the Taiwan Strait.-My Life by Clinton.

• Mar, 1996: Hamas detonates several IEDs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, killing >30 people and wounding many more.-My Life by Clinton.

• 12 Mar, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act (‘Helms- Burton Act’) which strengthens and continues the US embargo against Cuba, extending the territorial application of the initial embargo to apply to foreign companies trading with Cuba, and penalizes foreign companies allegedly “trafficking” in property formerly owned by US Citizens but confiscated by Cuba after the Cuban revolution (Wiki).

• 24 Feb, 1996: A Cuban Air Force Mig 29 shoots down two civilian planes flown by the anti-Castro group ‘Brothers to the Rescue’, killing 4 people. In response, the US suspends charter flights to Cuba, restricts travel by Cuban officials in the US, expands the reach of Radio Martí, which beams pro-democracy messages into Cuba, and asks Congress to authorize compensation out of Cuba’s blocked assets in the US to the families of the men who were killed.-My Life by Clinton.

• Late Feb, 1996: Hamas explodes two IEDs killing 26 people.-My Life by Clinton.

• 8 Feb, 1996: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Telecommunications Act, which introduces the V-chip, allowing parents to control their children’s access to TV programs and mandating discounted internet access rates for schools, libraries, and hospitals. By the end of Feb, executives from most TV networks agree to have a rating system for their programs in place by 1997.-My Life by Clinton.

• Jan, 1996: The CIA establishes a station focused exclusively on Osama bin Laden and his network within its CT Center.-My Life by Clinton.

• Nov, 1995- Apr, 1996: POTUS Clinton and Monica Lewinsky maintain a sexual relationship.-My Life by Clinton.

• 4 Nov, 1995: Assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. Shimon Perez becomes Israeli PM.-My Life by Clinton.

• 28 Sep, 1995: The West Bank Accord is signed by Israeli PM Rabin and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat at the White House,  turning over a substantial portion of land to Palestinian control.-My Life by Clinton.

• 8 Aug, 1995: Two of Saddam Hussein’s daughters and their husband’s defect to Jordan and are given asylum by King Hussein. One of the men, Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, had headed Saddam’s secret effort to develop WMD and would supply valuable information on Iraq’s remaining WMD stocks, the size and significance of which contradicted what the UN inspectors had been told by Iraqi officials. When confronted with the evidence, the Iraqis simply acknowledged that Saddam’s son-in-law was telling the truth and took the inspectors to the sites he had identified.-My Life by Clinton.

• 21 Jun, 1995: POTUS Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 39 allocating responsibilities among various government agencies for preventing and dealing with terrorist attacks, and reducing terrorists’ capabilities through covert action and aggressive efforts to capture terrorists abroad.-My Life by Clinton.

• 19 Apr, 1995: The Oklahoma City Bombing; a truck bomb, planted by military veteran Timothy McVeigh, explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in OK City, leveling the building and killing 169 people including 19 children. April 19th was chosen because it was the anniversary of the FBI raid on the Branch Davidians at Waco, an event that, to right-wing extremists, represented the ultimate exercise of arbitrary, abusive government power.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Following the OK City bombing, the USG required that markers, called taggants, be put into all explosive materials so that they could be traced and the two blocks of PA Avenue in front of the White House was closed to vehicular traffic.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Mar, 1995: The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo releases Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway killing 10 and injuring nearly 5000, 20% of them seriously (Wiki).

• 31 Jan, 1995: The USG under POTUS Clinton extends money to Mexico from the exchange stabilization fund to assist with the nations financial problems- Mexico’s reserves were down to $2B, and the value of the peso had declined precipitously. In addition to the US funding, IMF director Michel Camdessus puts together almost $18B in aid that the IMF would extend if the US acted.-My Life by Clinton.

  • “First, Mexico was our third-largest trading partner. If it couldn’t buy our products, American companies and employees would be hurt. Second, economic dislocation in Mexico could lead to a 30% increase in illegal immigration, or half a million more people each year. Third, an impoverished Mexico would almost certainly become more vulnerable to increased activity by illegal drug cartels, which were already sending large quantities of narcotics across the border into the United States. Finally, a default by Mexico could have a damaging impact on other countries, by shaking investors’ confidence in emerging markets.”-Bill Clinton.

• Jan, 1995: Mexican Financial Crisis; the Peso declines, devaluing Mexican reserves. Mexico issues tesobonos, short-term debt instruments, to raise money.-My Life by Clinton.

• Jan, 1995: POTUS Clinton enacts legislation requiring the nation’s lawmakers to comply with all the requirements they imposed on other employers.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 1994: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Act, which reduces tariffs worldwide by $740B, opens previously closed markets to American products and services, gives poor countries a chance to sell products to consumers beyond their borders, and provides for the establishment of the WTO to create uniform trade rules and adjudicate disputes.-My Life by Clinton.

• 11 Dec, 1994- 31 Aug, 1996: The First Chechen War; after invading the Muslim Rep. of Chechnya, Russia withdraws following a series of bloody battles against separatists.-My Life by Clinton.

• 8 Nov, 1994: US Midterm elections; Democrats lose eight Senate seats and 54 House seats, the largest defeat for the Democratic Party since 1946.-My Life by Clinton.

  • “I had contributed to the demise by allowing my first weeks to be defined by gays in the military; by failing to concentrate on the campaign until it was too late; and by trying to do too much too fast in a news climate in which my victories were minimized, my losses were magnified, and the overall impression was created that I was just another pro-tax, big-government liberal, not the New Democrat who had won the presidency.”-Bill Clinton.

• 31 Oct, 1994: The USG passes the California Desert Protection Act, protecting 7.5M acres of land in the wilderness and national park systems including Death Valley, Mojave, and Joshua Tree.-My Life by Clinton.

• 21 Oct, 1994: North Korea signs a framework agreement in Geneva committing North Korea to freeze all activity at existing nuclear reactors and allow them to be monitored; ship 8,000 unloaded fuel rods out of the country; dismantle its existing nuclear facilities; and ultimately account for the spent fuel it had produced in the past. In return, the US would organize an international consortium to build light water reactors that didn’t produce usable amounts of weapons-grade material; we would guarantee 500,000 tons of heavy oil per year; trade, investment, and diplomatic barriers would be reduced; and the US would give formal assurances against the use or the threat to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Oct, 1994: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA), reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, ending the practice of uncritically giving poor children a watered-down curriculum, providing incentives to increase parental involvement; providing federal support to allow students and parents to choose a public school other than the one to which they were assigned; and funding public charter schools designed to promote innovation and allowing them to operate free of school district requirements that can stifle creativity.-My Life by Clinton.

• 17 Oct, 1994: Israeli PM Rabin and Jordanian King Hussein announce a peace agreement.-My Life by Clinton.

• 9 Oct, 1994: Kuwait moves most of their 18K-man army to the border.-My Life by Clinton.

• 7 Oct, 1994: Iraq masses a large number of troops 4km from the Kuwait border, raising the specter of another Gulf War. POTUS Clinton rapidly deploys 36K troops to Kuwait, backed up by an aircraft carrier battle group and fighter planes.-My Life by Clinton.

• 27 Sep, 1994: New Gingrich gathers more than 300 Republican incumbents and candidates for a rally on the Capitol steps to sign a “Contract with America.” The contract called for a constitutional balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto, which enables the President to delete specific items in appropriations bills without having to veto the entire piece of legislation; stiffer penalties for criminals and repeal of the prevention programs in my crime bill; welfare reform, with a two-year limit on able-bodied recipients; a $500 child tax credit, another $500 credit for the care of a parent or grandparent, and tougher child-support enforcement; repeal of the taxes on upper-income Social Security recipients that were part of the 1993 budget; a 50% cut in the capital gains tax, and other tax cuts; an end to unfunded federal mandates on state and local government; a large increase in defense spending; tort reform to limit punitive damages; term limits for senators and representatives; a requirement that Congress, as an employer, follow all laws it has imposed on other employers; a reduction in congressional committee staffs by a third; and a requirement that 60% of each house of Congress approve any future tax increase.-My Life by Clinton.

• 13 Sep, 1994: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (‘Clinton Crime Bill’), the largest crime bill in US history. The bill provides for 100K new police officers and $9.7B in funding for prisons (Wiki).

• Sep, 1994: Haitian General Cedras and his thugs intensify their reign of terror, executing orphaned children, raping young girls, killing priests, mutilating people and leaving body parts in the open to terrify others, and slashing the faces of mothers with machetes while their children watched. The UN was unanimous in supporting the ouster of Cedras.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 17 Sep, 1994: US General Shelton leads the first of a 15K multinational peacekeeping force into Haiti.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 16 Sep, 1994: Former POTUS Carter, Colin Powell, and Sum Nunn persuade General Cedras and his supporters in the military and parliament to peacefully accept Aristide’s return to power and Cedras departure from the country, staving off a US led invasion of Haiti at the final hour.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Aug, 1994: The IRA announces a total cessation of violence, opening the way for Sinn Fein’s participation in the peace talks.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Aug, 1994: Russian president Boris Yeltsin withdraws Russian forces from Estonia.-My Life by Clinton.

• 25 Jul, 1994: The Washington Declaration is signed by Jordans King Hussein and Israeli PM Rabin, formally ending the state of belligerency between Jordan and Israel and committing themselves to negotiating a full peace agreement.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1994: Osama Bin Laden loses his Saudi citizenship; he takes up residence in Sudan.-My Life by Clinton.

• 8 Jul, 1994: Death of North Korean President (and founder) Kim II Sung.-My Life by Clinton.

• May, 1994: POTUS Clinton nominates Judge Breyer to the SCOTUS.-My Life by Clinton.

• 7 Apr- 15 Jul, 1994: The Rwandan Genocide; a plane crash that kills the Rwandan and Burundi presidents sparks the beginning of a horrendous slaughter inflicted by leaders of the majority Hutu on the Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers. The Tutsis constituted only 15% of the population but were thought to have disproportionate economic and political power. Within 100d, >800,000 people in a country of only 8M are murdered, most with machetes.-My Life by Clinton.

  • “The US was so preoccupied with Bosnia, with the memory of Somalia just 6m old, and with opposition in Congress to military deployments in faraway places not vital to our national interests that neither I nor anyone on my foreign policy team adequately focused on sending troops to stop the slaughter. The failure to try to stop Rwanda’s tragedies became one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”-My Life by Clinton.

• Late Mar, 1994: After agreeing in Feb to let inspectors from the IAEA check their declared nuclear sites on March 15, North Korea blocks them from completing their work. Within a week I had decided to send Patriot missiles to South Korea and to ask the UN to impose economic sanctions against North Korea.-My Life by Clinton.

• Late Feb, 1994: A militant Israeli settler, outraged at the prospect of turning the West Bank back to the Palestinians, guns down several worshippers at the Mosque of Abraham in Hebron. The murderer had struck during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews because it is thought to be the burial site of Abraham and his wife, Sarah.-My Life by Clinton.

• 21 Feb, 1994: The FBI arrest 31yo veteran CIA agent Aldrich Ames and his wife, breaking one of the biggest espionage cases in American history. For 9y, Ames had made a fortune giving up information that led to the deaths of >10 intel sources inside Russia, doing severe damage to our intelligence capability.-My Life by Clinton.

• 17 Jan, 1994: A M6.7 earthquake (Wiki) strikes Los Angeles, causing billions of dollars of damage to homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Dec, 1993: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the National Child Protection Act which creates a national database that any child-care provider could use to check the background of any job applicant.-My Life by Clinton.

• 15 Dec, 1993: The Downing Street Declaration (DSD) is a joint declaration issued by UK PM John Major and the Irish affirming both the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination, and that N. Ireland would be transferred to the Rep. of Ireland from the UK if a majority of its population was in favor of such a move. It also included the so-called “Irish Dimension”- the principle of consent that the people of the island of Ireland had the exclusive right to solve the issues between N. and S, by mutual consent. This latter statement would become one of the key points of the Good Friday Agreement (Wiki).

• 30 Nov, 1993: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Brady bill requiring a waiting period for all handgun purchases so the buyers background could be checked for criminal or mental-health problems.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3-4 Oct, 1993: Conflict between Yeltsin and his reactionary opponents in the Duma erupts into a battle on the streets of Moscow. Armed groups carrying hammer-and-sickle flags and portraits of Stalin fired RPGs into the building that housed a number of Russian television stations. The next day Russian military forces shelled the parliament building and threatened to storm it, forcing the surrender of the rebellion’s leaders.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3 Oct, 1993: Black Hawk Down; acting on a tip that two of Aidid’s top aides were in Mogadishu’s “Black Sea” neighborhood, which he controlled, MGEN Garrison orders Army SOF to mount an assault on the building where the men were thought to be. They flew into Mogadishu in Black Hawk helicopters in broad daylight. The Rangers stormed the building and captured Aidid’s lieutenants and some lesser figures. Then the raid went terribly wrong. Aidid’s forces fought back, downing two of the Black Hawks. The pilot of the first copter was pinned in the wreckage. The Rangers would not abandon him: they never leave their men on the field of battle, dead or alive. When they went back in, the real fireworks began. Before long, 90 US soldiers were surrounding the copter, engaged in a massive shootout with hundreds of Somalis. When the battle was over, 19 Americans were dead, dozens were wounded, and Black Hawk pilot Mike Durant had been captured. >500 Somalis were dead and >1000 wounded. There was no support in Congress for a larger military role in Somalia, as I learned in a White House meeting with several members; most of them demanded an immediate withdrawal of our forces. I strongly disagreed, and in the end we compromised on a six-month transition period. In the end, I agreed to dispatch Oakley on a mission to get Aidid to release Mike Durant, the captured pilot. His instructions were clear: The US would not retaliate if Durant was released immediately and unconditionally. I believe the raid was a mistake, because carrying it out in the daytime underestimated the strength and determination of Aidid’s forces and the attendant possibility of losing one or more of the helicopters. In wartime, the risks would have been acceptable.-My Life by Clinton.

• Sep, 1993: Hard-line Parliamentarians in Russia attempt to depose Yeltsin. In response, Yeltsin dissolves parliament and calls for new elections on 12 Dec.-My Life by Clinton.

• 22 Sep, 1993: The USG under POTUS Clinton signs a bill creating AmeriCorps, the US National Service program.-My Life by Clinton.

• 9 Sep, 1993: Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO reach a peace agreement during secret talks in Oslo.-My Life by Clinton.

• 13 Aug, 1993: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Colorado Wilderness Act, Clinton’s first major piece of environmental legislation, protecting more than 600,000 acres of national forests and public lands in the National Wilderness Preservation System.-My Life by Clinton.

• 10 Aug, 1993: The USG under POTUS Clinton enacts the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Although every Republican voted against the bill, the act increased the top federal income tax rate from 31% to 39.6%, increased the corporate income tax rate, raised fuel taxes, and raised other various taxes. The bill also included $255B in spending cuts over a 5y period (Wiki).

• 1 Aug, 1993: The Great Flood of 1993; the Mississippi River crests at 49.58’, the highest stage ever recorded, resulting in the most costly and devastating flood in modern US history (NWS).

• 26 Jun, 1993: POTUS Clinton orders the US Military to fire 23 Tomahawk missiles into Iraq’s intelligence HQ, in retaliation for a plot to assassinate former POTUS Bush during a trip he had made to Kuwait. More than a dozen people involved in the plot had been arrested in Kuwait on April 13, one day before the former President had been scheduled to arrive. The materials in their possession were conclusively traced to Iraqi intelligence, and on May 19 one of the arrested Iraqis confirmed to the FBI that the Iraqi intelligence service was behind the plot. Most of the Tomahawks hit the target, but four of them overshot, three landing in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood and killing eight civilians.-My Life by Clinton.

• Jun, 1993: The clan of Somali warlord Mohammed Aidid kills 24 Pakistani peacekeepers.-My Life by Clinton.

• 28 Feb- 19 Apr, 1993: The Waco Siege (‘Waco Massacre’); a siege by US Law enforcement on a compound belonging to David Koresh’ ‘Branch Davidian’ Cult results in a fire killing 86 people including 25 children (Wiki).

  • 18-19 Apr, 1993: The Waco Siege; Janet Reno came to the White House to tell me that the FBI wanted to storm the compound, apprehend Koresh and any of his followers who had taken part in killing the agents or some other crime, and free the rest of them. Janet said she was concerned by FBI reports that Koresh was sexually abusing children, most of them pre-teens, and that he might be planning a mass suicide. They wanted to raid the compound the next day, using armored vehicles to break holes in the buildings, then blast tear gas into them, a maneuver they estimated would force all the members to surrender within two hours. The standoff was costing the government ~$1M/week and tying up law-enforcement resources needed elsewhere; that the Branch Davidians could hold out longer than the Arkansas people had; and that the possibilities of child sexual abuse and mass suicide were real, because Koresh was crazy and so were many of his followers. After the FBI fired the tear gas into the buildings where the people were holed up, the Davidians started a fire. It got worse when they opened the windows to let the tear gas out and also let in a hard wind off the Texas plains, which stoked the flames. When it ended, more than eighty people had died, including twenty-five children; only nine survived.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 28 Feb, 1993: The Waco Incident; 4x ATF agents are killed and 16 others wounded at the onset of a confrontation with a religious cult, the Branch Davidians, at their compound outside Waco, Texas. The Davidians were suspected of illegal firearms violations. The sect’s messianic leader, David Koresh, believed he was Christ reincarnate, the only person who knew the secret of the seven seals referred to in the book of Revelation. Koresh had almost hypnotic mind control over the men, women, and children who followed him; a large arsenal of weapons and enough food to hold out for a long time. The standoff between the Davidians and the FBI dragged out for almost two months.-My Life by Clinton.

• 26 Feb, 1993: An 606kg Urea-NO3 VBIED (Wiki) is detonated at the WTC in Manhattan, killing 6 people and injuring 1042. The first arrests are made March 4; eventually, six of the conspirators were convicted in federal court in New York and each sentenced to 240 years in prison.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Feb, 1993: POTUS Clinton signs his first bill into law, enacting the Family and Medical Leave Act, guaranteeing workers some time off when a baby is born (3 months) or a family member is sick.-My Life by Clinton.

• 25 Jan, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi murders two CIA employees and wounds three others at CIA HQ.-My Life by Clinton.

• 22 Jan, 1993: POTUS Clinton issues executive orders ending the Reagan-Bush ban on fetal-tissue research; abolishing the so-called Mexico City rule, which prohibited federal aid to international planning agencies that were in any way involved in abortions; and reversing the Bush “gag rule” barring abortion counseling at family planning clinics that receive federal funds.-My Life by Clinton.

• 3 Jan, 1993: The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (START) II Treaty is signed by POTUS George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, establishing a limit on strategic weapons and requiring the reductions to be implemented in two phases (armscontrol.org).

• Dec, 1992: POTUS Bush pardons Caspar Weinberger and five others who had been indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 1992: POTUS Bush deploys troops to Somalia to assist the UN after >350K Somalis die in a bloody civil war, which had brought famine and disease.-My Life by Clinton.

• 29 April, 1992: The Los Angeles Riots begin after an all-white jury in neighboring Ventura County acquits four white Los Angeles police officers of charges involving the beating of Rodney King, in March 1991. After a three-day rampage in South Central LA, >50 people were dead, >2,300 were injured, thousands of people had been arrested, and damages from looting and burning were estimated to be higher than $700M.-My Life by Clinton.

• 6 Apr, 1992- 14 Dec, 1995: The Bosnian War (Serbo-Croatian War) is fought as part of the breakup of Yugoslavia between the forces of the Rep. of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the Herzeg-Bosnia and Rep. Srpska, proto states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively. The War was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia and was characterized by bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing, and systematic mass rape, mainly perpetrated by Serb, and to a lesser extent, Croat and Bosniak forces (Wiki). The Bosnian tragedy would drag on for >2y, leaving >250K dead and 2.5M driven from their homes, until NATO air attacks, aided by Serb military losses on the ground, led to an American diplomatic initiative that would bring the war to an end.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 14 Dec, 1995: The Dayton Accords are signed ending the Bosnian War.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 21 Nov, 1995: The Dayton Conference; the Presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia agree to a peace agreement to end the war in Bosnia. The agreement preserves Bosnia as a single state to be made up of two parts, the Bosnian Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic, with a resolution of the territorial disputes over which the war was begun. Sarajevo would remain the undivided capital city.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 28 Aug, 1995: NATO begins three days of air strikes on Serb positions after Bosnian Serbs lob mortar shells into the heart of Sarajevo, killing 38 people.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Aug, 1995: Croatian forces launch an offensive, retaking the Krajina, a part of Croatia that the local Serbs had proclaimed their territory. It was the first defeat for the Serbs in four years.-My Life by Clinton.

  • End Jul, 1995: Bosnian Serbs take Zepa.

  • 10 Jul, 1995: Bosnian Serbs take Srebrenica (Wiki).

  • 1995: Operation Deliberate Force; NATO intervenes in the Bosnian War on the side of Bosnia and Herzegovina following Serbian massacres at Srebrenica and Markale. NATO begins targeting the positions of the Army of the Rep. Srpska, which proves key in ending the war (Wiki).

  • End Nov, 1994: NATO bombs Serb airfields after Serb warplanes attack Croatian Muslims in W. Bosnia.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Apr, 1994: NATO bombs Serbian forces in Bosnia as they siege Gorazde.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 18 Mar, 1994: Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia sign an agreement that establishes a federation in the areas of Bosnia in which their populations were in a majority, and sets up a process to move toward a confederation with Croatia.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 28 Feb, 1994: NATO fighters shoot down four Serb planes for violating the no-fly zone, the first military action in the 44y history of the alliance.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Feb, 1994: Bosnian Serbs brutally shell the marketplace in Sarajevo, killing dozens of innocent people. NATO votes to bomb the Serbs if they don’t move their heavy guns >20km away from the city.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 27 Apr, 1992: Milosevic announces a new state of Yugoslavia comprising Serbia and Montenegro.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 6 Apr, 1992: The Bosnian War begins as a conflict between Yugoslav Army units in Bosnia (later transformed into the Army of Rep. of Srpska (VRS)) and the Army of the Rep. of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), largely composed of Bosniaks, and the Croat forces in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). The War increases throughout late, 1992 resulting in an escalation of the War in early 1993 (Wiki).

  • Apr, 1992: The European Community recognizes Bosnia as an independent state.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Mar-Apr, 1992: The Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadzic and supported by the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), mobilize their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure Serb territory (Wiki).

  • 1 Mar, 1992: A referendum is held on whether Bosnia should become an independent nation in which all citizens and groups would be treated equally. The result was an almost unanimous approval of independence, but only two-thirds of the electorate voted. Karadzic had ordered the Serbs to stay away from the polls and most of them did. By then, Serb paramilitary forces had begun killing unarmed Muslims, driving them from their homes in Serb-dominated areas in the hope of carving up Bosnia into ethnic enclaves, or “cantons,” by force. This cruel policy came to be known by a curiously antiseptic name: ethnic cleansing.-My Life by Clinton.

  • Late, 1991: The UN enacts an arms embargo against the Yugoslavian government.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 1991: Yugoslavia’s westernmost provinces, Slovenia and Croatia, both predominantly Catholic, declare independence from Yugoslavia. Fighting breaks out between Serbia and Croatia, and spills over into Bosnia, the most ethnically diverse province of Yugoslavia, where Muslims constituted about 45% of the population, Serbs were just over 30%, and Croatians about 17%.-My Life by Clinton.

    • Bosnia was governed by a coalition headed by leading Muslim politician, Alija Izetbegovic, and included the militant Serbian nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic, a Sarajevo psychiatrist. At first Izetbegovic wanted Bosnia to be an autonomous multi-ethnic, multi-religious province of Yugoslavia. When Slovenia and Croatia were recognized by the international community as independent nations, Izetbegovic decided that the only way Bosnia could escape Serbian dominance was to seek independence, too. Karadzic and his allies, who were tied closely to Milosevic, had a very different agenda. They were supportive of Milosevic’s desire to turn as much of Yugoslavia as he could hold on to, including Bosnia, into a Greater Serbia.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 1991: Russia takes over the Soviet seat on the UNSC.-My Life by Clinton.

• Dec, 1991: Dissolution of the USSR into a collection of independent states. Organized-crime networks move into the vacuum.-My Life by Clinton.

• Aug, 1991: Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest at his summer retreat on the Black Sea by conspirators’ intent on staging a coup. Russian citizens protest in the streets of Moscow with Yeltsin climbing atop a tank and urging the Russian people to defend their hard-won democracy.-My Life by Clinton.

• Jun, 1991: Boris Yeltsin is elected president of Russia.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1991: Osama Bin Laden is expelled from Saudi Arabia.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1991: Haitian Military Coup; LtGen Raoul Cedras and his allies overthrow Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.-My Life by Clinton.

• Mar, 1991: Rodney King, a black man in LA County, is beaten by 4 White police officers.-My Life by Clinton.

• Nov, 1990: The USG under POTUS Bush enacts a $492B deficit-reduction package which, in addition to spending cuts, contains a 5-cent gas tax increase. Bush’ approval rating plummets (tampabaytimes).

• 17 Nov- 29 Dec, 1989: The Velvet (‘Gentle’) Revolution occurs as a nonviolent transition of power in Czechoslovakia in which popular demonstrations led to the conversion of a 1-party government of the Communist Party, which had been in place for 41y, to a parliamentary republic (Wiki).

• 1989: Serbian President Milosevic removes autonomy from Kosovo. Tensions rise and explode after the independence of Bosnia is secured in 1995.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1988: US Presidential Elections; Incumbent Rep. President George H. W. Bush defeats Dem. Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis.

  • “Read my lips—no new taxes.”-George H. W. Bush during his 1988 Campaign.

• 1988: Terrorists down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone on board.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1986: Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy Intl analyst is convicted of spying for Israel.-My Life by Clinton.

• Apr, 1983: The report “A Nation at Risk” is issued by the US National Commission on Excellence in Education, noting that on 19 different international tests, American students were never 1st  or 2nd and were last seven times; 23M American adults, 13% of all 17yo’s, and up to 40% of minority students were functionally illiterate; high school students’ average performance on standardized tests was lower than it had been 26 years earlier; scores on the SAT, had been declining since 1962; one-quarter of all college math courses were remedial; business and military leaders reported having to spend increasing amounts of money on remedial education; and finally, these declines in education were occurring at a time when the demand for highly skilled workers was increasing sharply.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1982: Israeli forces invade Lebanon; a large number of unarmed Palestinian refugees are killed by Lebanese militias allied with Israel.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1980: Cuban President Fidel Castro deports 120,000 political prisoners and other “undesirables,” many of them with criminal records or mental problems, to the US. They sail to FL and seek asylum.-My Life by Clinton.

• 19 Sep, 1980: The Damascus Missile Explosion; an air force mechanic working in a Titan II missile silo near Damascus, AR inadvertently drops a 3lb wrench which falls 70’ and severs a fuel tank, which ignites when mixed with air. The resulting explosion blows the 740-ton concrete top off the silo, killing the mechanic, injuring 20 other air force personnel, and catapulting the attached nuclear warhead into a nearby cow pasture.-My Life by Clinton.

• Aug, 1980: Baltic workers, led by future Polish President Lech Walesa, go on strike in support of the 21 demands of the MKS, which leads to the creation of Solidarity and the Gdansk Agreement, allowing citizens to make democratic changes to the Polish government (Wiki).

• Mar, 1979: The Camp David Accords are signed by POTUS Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli PM Begin, concluding peace between Israel and Egypt.-My Life by Clinton.

• 7 Sep, 1977: The Panama Canal Treaty and the Neutrality Treaty is signed by POTUS Carter and Panamanian Chief of Government Omar Torrijos, relinquishing control over the canal by 2000 and guaranteeing its neutrality.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1977: The USG enacts the Community Reinvestment Act requiring federally insured lenders to make an extra effort to give loans to low- and modest- income borrowers.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1974: The US Jackson-Vanik Amendment ties US trade to free immigration from Russia and ends the observance of Captive Nations Weeks, which highlighted Soviet domination of countries like Poland and Hungary.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1974: Yugoslavian President Tito grants autonomy to Kosovo, allowing it self-government and control over its schools.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1974: Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s home-run record.-My Life by Clinton.

• 8 Aug, 1974: Resignation of POTUS Nixon, his presidency doomed by the tapes he had kept of his conversations with aides.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1974: Cyprus Coup; Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios is deposed in a coup orchestrated by the Greek military. In response, the Turkish military deploys troops to the island to protect the Turkish Cypriots, dividing the country and creating a de facto Turkish enclave of independence in the north.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1972: The ‘Line of Control’ (LOC) is recognized as the observed boundary between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1969: The US force presence in Vietnam peaks at 540K.-My Life by Clinton.

• Aug, 1968: Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring reform movement begins.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Jun, 1968: Senator Bobby Kennedy is assassinated by a young Arab, Sirhan Sirhan, while walking through the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel. Sirhan was angry at Kennedy because of his support for Israel and rained a hail of bullets down on him and those surrounding him. Five others were wounded; they all recovered. Bobby Kennedy was operated on for a severe wound to the head. He died a day later, aged 42.-My Life by Clinton.

• 12 May- 24 Jun, 1968: The Poor People’s Campaign is led by MLK successor Reverend Ralph Abernathy as an effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the US. The campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor American of diverse backgrounds. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3000-person protest camp in the Washington Mall, where they remained for six weeks (Wiki).

• 10 May, 1968: US and N. Vietnam meet in Paris to begin peace talks to end the Vietnam War.-My Life by Clinton.

• 4 Apr, 1968: MLK is assassinated by James Earl Ray while on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Ray was a chronically disaffected, convicted armed robber who had escaped from prison about a year earlier.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Mar, 1968: POTUS LBJ announces he will not seek a second term in office; “With American sons in the fields far away, and our world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe I should devote another hour or another day of my time to any personal partisan causes. . . . Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Mar, 1968: POTUS Johnson decides to sharply restrict the bombing of N. Vietnam, in the hope of finding a resolution to the conflict.-My Life by Clinton.

• 20 Mar, 1968: POTUS Johnson ends all draft deferments for graduate students, except for those in medical school.-My Life by Clinton.

• 31 Jan- 23 Sep, 1968: The Tet offensive; North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launch a series of coordinated attacks on American positions all over S. Vietnam, including strongholds like Saigon, where even the American embassy comes under fire. The attacks were rebuffed and the N. Vietnamese and VC sustain heavy casualties.-My Life by Clinton.

  • 1 Feb, 1968: S. Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes handcuffed Vietcong prisoner Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon, Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive. The event is witnessed and recorded by NBC Cameraman Vo So’u and Eddie Adams, an AP photographer (Wiki).

• 1966: Publication of “The Arrogance of Power” by Fulbright, arguing that great nations get into trouble and can go into long-term decline when they are “arrogant” in the use of their power, trying to do things they shouldn’t do in places they shouldn’t be. He was suspicious of any foreign policy rooted in missionary zeal, which he felt would cause us to drift into commitments “which though generous and benevolent in content, are so far reaching as to exceed even America’s great capacities.” He also thought that when we brought our power to bear in the service of an abstract concept, like anti-communism, without understanding local history, culture, and politics, we could do more harm than good.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1965: The USG under POTUS LBJ passes the Voting Rights Act.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1964: The USG under POTUS LBJ passes the Civil Rights Act.-My Life by Clinton.

• 7 Aug, 1964: The USG under POTUS LBJ passes the Tonkin Gulf resolution after two US destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy, are allegedly attacked by N. Vietnamese vessels on August 2 and 4, 1964; the US retaliates with attacks on N. Vietnamese naval bases and an oil storage depot. The resolution authorizes the President to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the US and to prevent further aggression,” and “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force,” to assist any nation covered by the SEATO Treaty “in defense of its freedom.”-My Life by Clinton.

• 1960: Cyprus receives its independence from the UK.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1960: The USG under POTUS IKE establishes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.-My Life by Clinton.

• Sep, 1957: The Little Rock Central High Crisis; 9 Black kids, supported by Daisy Bates, the editor of the AR State Press, Little Rock’s black newspaper, integrates Little Rock Central High School.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1956: The Southern Manifesto in the USA calls for resistance to court-ordered school integration.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1948: US Politician Hubert Humphrey’s gives a barn-burning civil rights speech at the Democratic Convention; in response, Strom Thurmond bolts the party to run for president as a Dixiecrat, leading to the decline of the conservative Democrats.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1947: Greece acquires Imia (Kardak-Turks), two tiny islets in the Aegean from Italy. Though there are no people living there, the Turks deny the validity of the Greek claim.-My Life by Clinton.

• 6 Jun, 1944: Operation Overlord (D-Day); ~9,400 American soldiers, including 33 pairs of brothers, a father and his son, die storming the beaches of Normandy.-My Life by Clinton.

• 29-30 Sep, 1941: Massacre at Babi Yar; ~33,771 Ukrainian Jews are massacred at the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. Over the course of WWII, >100K Jews, Ukrainian’s, Soviet POWs, and gypsies are killed at Babi Yar.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1934: The USG takes the American dollar off the gold standard and creates an exchange stabilization fund to minimize currency fluctuations.-My Life by Clinton.

• 28 Jun, 1919: The Treaty of Versailles is signed officially ending WWI; it imposes harsh financial and political burdens on Germany, and redraws the map of Europe and the Middle East after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The humiliation of Germany by the victorious European powers, and the postwar isolationism and protectionism of the USA, reflected in the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations and the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, led to an ultra-nationalist backlash in Germany, the rise of Hitler, and then World War II.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1906: The USG enacts the Antiquities Act, allowing the President to protect federal lands of  extraordinary cultural, historic, and scientific value.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1903: Cecil Rhodes establishes the Rhodes Scholarship is established as part of his Will, providing 2y of study for 32 Americans at Oxford.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1841: POTUS William Henry Harrison gives the longest inaugural address in history, speaking without a coat on a cold day for >1h and catching a bad case of pneumonia, which cost him his life 33d later.-My Life by Clinton.  

• 1833: The US signs a treaty of amity and commerce with the king of Siam.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1832: The USG under POTUS Andrew Jackson enacts legislation protecting four sections of land around Hot Springs, AR as a federal reservation, the first such bill Congress ever enacts.-My Life by Clinton.

• 1789: Georgetown University is founded by Archbishop John Carroll and based on a Jesuit educational philosophy, the Ratio Studiorum, developed in the late 16c.-My Life by Clinton.

• 5 Nov, 1605: Guy Fawkes attempts to burn down British Parliament.-My Life by Clinton.

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