By Chelsea Schmid
Staff Writer who is Special to LIVE!
February 21, 2008
Podcast
Bill Clinton comes to San Angelo. Feb. 21, 2008 by Chelsea Schmid- The intro contains a short interview with ABC News (New York) producer Sarah Amos who has been traveling with Bill Clinton since the Nevada primaries. Former President Bill Clinton stumped through San Angelo for his wife, Hillary on Feb 21. This is a Podcast of the full speech given by Clinton that day at the San Angelo City Auditorium.
- Interviewer: Joe Hyde
- Year: 2008
- Length: 47:14 minutes (55.36 MB)
- Format: mp3 stereo 160 Kbps 44.1 kHz (cbr)
Clinton’s speech covered just about every element of Hillary’s agenda including universal health care, universal college access, and energy concerns, to name a few.
Giving an example on the necessity for the quick and safe withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, Clinton said:
“If your next door neighbor’s house burned down and he had nowhere else to go, you’d take him in wouldn’t you? . . . And if they had nowhere to go, you’d let them stay a month—some of you would let them stay six months if they had nowhere to go—but if your neighbor is still on the couch after five years, it’s not about the fire anymore. That’s Iraq; it’s not about the fire anymore.”
The war is high on many citizens’ list of concerns for this election. Hand-in-hand with that is the concern over the U.S. being able to sustain itself with its own energy resources. Clinton cited the wind farms of Texas as an example of Hillary’s plan for self-sufficiency:
“Texas is the number one state in America producing not only the only oil and gas that you have, but in producing wind energy,” Clinton said. “There is a study that the energy department did that says that the wind blows hard enough in West Texas and North Texas, all the way up to Canada, with North Dakota, to electrify all of America if we redid—and that’s when the politicians aren’t talking—if we redid all of the transmission lines.”
While these issues seem to be the frontrunners on every political agenda, it was the argument for education that elicited the biggest response from the crowd, a theme Clinton says he’s seen in every state he’s visited along the campaign trail.
“Hillary favors universal pre-kindergarten, so that all of our kids—regardless of income or first language—get off to an equal start in school," Clinton said. "She thinks we should radically change this No Child Left Behind act; it does not work. That is the only guaranteed applause line in every state in America. You could drop me out of a helicopter in the middle of Idaho, 200 miles form the nearest democrat, and the elk would applaud that line.”
Continuing to explain what should be done instead of the unpopular act, Clinton gave the following example:
“Hillary says we should scrap [the No Child Left Behind Act] and put this in its place. Instead of No Child Left Behind’s test, she says we should do what the army does. Suppose you’re the commander of three brigades in the army. Suppose your first two brigades . . . have the best scores you could possibly imagine, but in your third brigade, no one could hit the broadside of a barn with a rifle from 100 feet. Now ask yourself—you’re in charge—how would you fix the third brigade? Would you give them five tests? Would you take their money away? No. You’d figure out what was right in the first two brigades and you’d work and work and work until those things were done in the third brigade and all of a sudden, all three of them would be equally excellent. That’s what we should do in our schools.”
Clinton went on to say that Hillary proposes doing an analysis of grade, middle, and high schools who are already performing at international standards, find out what they are doing right, and implement those practices in schools across the nation.
Clinton’s speech included a wide range of things salient to the current political agenda. Listen to the accompanying podcast to hear the speech in its entirety, and visit hillaryclinton.com to keep up-to-date on this democratic candidate’s campaign.
The beginning of the podcast features a short interview with Sarah Amos, a producer for ABC News in New York, who has been following Bill Clinton on the campaign trail since the Nevada primaries.
The Democratic party primary is Mar. 4. Early voting is already underway.
Here is a gallery of pictures taken while Clinton was in San Angelo.
Hillary is definitely tougher than obama im sorry just watch those debates! she is more articulate about issues we should be caring about like health care and education Hispanics desperately need more of!! we need to be more involved and pay attention to the substance these politicians present not just if they are popular or hyped up like Obama
The Bush Administration has borrowed 3 TRILLION dollars from banks sponsored by the government of the People's republic of China. This is REAL debt, not something we're going to be able to get gloss by printing out more dollar bills, because the Chinese have made it plain they do not want any more US dollars, everything must be euros now.
This debt was incurred for one reason and one reason only - TO CONTINUE THE WAR IN IRAQ.
So the Bush structuring of the economy here has been designed to keep the oil and munitions companies exchanging wealth here and overseas; shop off American investments overseas, including American manufacturing, of course; crush wages to reduce worker expectations; distract attention from the loss of necessary services, e.g, maintenance of our infrastructure; and try to set up any successor to fail by having to raise taxes.
However, a sharp successor, knowing all this, will be able to tackle it and get it done.
Hillary Clinton cannot do that. She still does not understand the damage to the economy the war has wrought; her economic policies are just revisions of Bill's.
I believe Obama can do it. I believe he understands the real costs of this war, he will end it. I believe he grasps the essentials of the global economy, and he intends to redesign our strategies in dealing with it so that it benefits rather than hurts the American people.
People of Ohio and Texas - Vote OBAMA - yes, we can!
Nice article. Bill seems to know a lot of Hilary's campaign - possibly even more than she does. Too bad there is no way for him to run as VP on her ticket. I don't think even Obama can beat Bill.
I didn't quite catch the meaning of the Iraq-war-as-lazy-couch-potato metaphor though. Haven't we been in Afganistan for even longer?
I loved the video. Hillary rocks! She surpasses every other candidate in intelligence. Obama is not even near her level. His attempts to emulate MLK and JFK are just laughable. People are even worried about him while he is in TX because of what happened to MLK and JFK - come on - he has not even done anything. There is nothing revolutionary or even remotely progressive in his campaign.
I'm glad to see such a good response! I'm not going to say what side of the fence I stand on, but I figure rather than transcribing the dense political speech I'd just say what was funny. Seemed more interesting than the straight reportation you get from other outlets. My fair approach (and Joe suggested it) was just to put the whole speech on here and let you decide for yourself. I'm not a pundit. I love the elk line though :) Chelsea
this is excellent coverage of the event--to the point and without going completely "ga-ga" over Clinton. Me thinks the SAST is full of a bunch of Clinton shills, if you read their "fair and balanced" coverage of it. My goodness, the SAST thinks Clinton was the Second Coming.
This blew me away: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/tonight
It blew you away? Why?
This is a very good summary of the more funny parts of the Clinton speech. I wouldn't vote for Hillary, but I have to admit that Clinton knows how to turn on the charm. One point that he made sound like a "no brainer" is that if the feds should throw more money at failing schools to bring them up to some utopian standard other schools (that are benchmarked) are. This is Communism, pure and simple. No two schools are the same, or have the same communities. Every one of them is different. Throwing a "one size fits all" federal program is a giant carrot sent to the ineffective teachers' unions like the TEA. What will work are vouchers and free enterprise. Close some of these ineffective schools and see if free enterprise can apply its invisible hand to fix the problem. We have been throwing federal tax dollars at public schools, each year it seems more and more, and we still have the same crappy schools.
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