Hillary Clinton says it’s your fault, you are what’s wrong

India Today Conclave 2018, Keynote Address, 10 March, Hillary Rodham Clinton


36:00. Aroon Purie: … So what’s gone wrong in America?

HRC: Look, I think that there are several big, uh, problems that beset us and to some extent you’re seeing them in Europe, um, one is the phenomenon of disappointment, of a sense of being left behind in a fast-changing economy. That is absolutely true, it’s been going on for years, but it has sped up. Some of it is the overhang from the disastrous financial crisis of oh-7 oh-8 oh-9, where millions of people lost their jobs, they lost their savings, they lost their homes, and nobody was ever punished for it is the way they look at it. Y’know, y’know, what happened to the bad guys? Nothing. And I’m stuck in a hole after having worked hard and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Some of it was a reaction to advancing opportunities and rights for, um, other groups, for example, African-Americans, um, for the LGBT community, uh, for women, and some people were fury that that meant it was a zero-sum game and there was no similar, uh, potential for them. I think there was also the reaction against immigrants, which you see again in Europe, which has a very difficult set of challenges because of a flooding of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. Our immigrants, primarily from, uh, Latin America led by Mexico, from India, China, other places, are hard working, productive, law abiding, but if you remember, Trump started his campaign attacking immigrants. Because he knew that in many parts of the country — and let me just hasten to add, in many parts of the country where there aren’t very many immigrants — he was able to scapegoat immigrants. If you have problems, if you’re not happy with your job, you don’t think you’ve gotten enough advancement, y’know you’re working for, y’know, a woman now, ya don’t like it — whatever the reason was, um, he stirred that up. And anti-immigrant feeling became so virulent, um, thanks to his, un, rhetoric that it was a big motivator in a lot of the, uh, votes in certain parts of the country.

If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle, where Trump won. I win the coasts, I win, y’know, Illinois, Minnesota, places like that, but what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. [applause] So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. Y’know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, y’know, getting jobs, you don’t wanna, y’know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than are — whatever your problem is, I’m gonna solve it. So it was a symptom, but it was also a cause, because having someone run for President who voices those ideas, who rejects so much of the American story and our values, was also the underlying cause as well.

40:00. AP: I was also surprised, uh, looking at the details of the American election, is how almost 52% of white women voted for him, despite the Billy Bush tape and so forth. How do you explain that?

HRC: Well, I should start by explaining that, um, Democrats, eh, going back to my husband and even before but just in recent times going back to Bill and, and and uh, our candidates and then President Obama, have been losing the white vote, including white women. Uh, we do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married white women. Um, and part of that is a, an identification with the Republican Party, uh, and a, un, a, a sort of ongoing pressure, uh, to, uh, vote the way that your husband, your boss, uh, your son, whoever, uh, believes you should, and what happened in my election is I was on the way to winning, um, white women until [cough] former Director of the FBI Jim Comey dropped that uh very ill-advised letter on October the 28th and my numbers just went down because all — and I heard a lot of anecdotal evidence about this, people have written about it — all of a sudden, y’know, white women who were going to vote for me, and frankly standing up to the men in their lives and the men in their workplaces, uh were being told she’s going to jail, y’know, you don’t want to vote for her, y’know, it’s gonna be terrible, you can’t vote for that. So it just, it stopped my momentum and it decreased my vote, uh, enough — because I was, I was ahead, I was winning and I thought I had fought my way back in the ten days from that letter until, uh, the election, I fell a little bit short, and so I think that it, it was part of a historical trend that I was bucking and then it collapsed on me.

‘Not Our President’

A friend wrote to another friend:

These protesters are beyond pathetic. I’d have some respect for them if they’d all been out there at some point during the last eight years of Obama’s tenure, while he steadily expanded Bush’s wars, pondered his Tuesday “kill list”, deliberately droned countless numbers of people to death (and still is), including Americans, one a 16 year old child, looked the other way while Israel stole land and butchered and imprisoned thousands of helpless Palestinians, many of them children, and then he just sent Israel another 38 billion of US taxpayer money as a reward. He rabidly pursued, persecuted and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined, sits by while Chelsea Manning tries to kill herself and is thrown into solitary confinement, forced Assange to be a prisoner in the Ecuadorean embassy, forced Snowden to take refuge in Russia – these three are all an example of true heroism, yet are treated as dangerous pariahs by Obama. He increased arms sales to the most volatile areas of the world, passed out major weaponry to terrorists, promoted bloody coups leading to horrific death and destruction not to mention the creation of ISIS and terrorist havens in Libya, and Syria, and then there’s the mess in Honduras and Ukraine and the wildly irresponsible threats to Russia.

He never prosecuted the bankers responsible for destroying countless lives and creating misery and mayhem here and over the entire world. His first official visitor to the White House eight years ago was none other than Goldman Sachs itself, Lloyd Blankfein, and we now know, thanks to Wikileaks, that his cabinet was chosen by the banking industry. Then there’s his promoting fracking, oil drilling in pristine areas, pipelines, nuclear, Monsanto, etc etc.

And while he busied himself with this crap, he totally ignored the plight of the people he was elected to serve, many in desperate straits – Americans lost jobs hand over fist, rural areas left to fester and rot, descending into hopelessness, decrepitude and massive drug addiction, while the sneering urban Democrats mocked and blamed them for their own misery. Then there are the forgotten cities, Detroit, Flint, etc ... the rust belt areas still out there dying, the country’s infrastructure falling to bits, the US looks increasingly third world outside of the posher areas. Obama sold us down the river to the health insurance scammers, forcing people to buy that crap or else, now it’s an unaffordable mess for most people, he never even tried for a public option let alone single payer. He formed the infamous Simpson-Bowles “catfood commission” to try to cut Social Security and raise the age of eligibility. Under Obama, there’s been no cost of living increase for those living on SS. He refused to support unions when he had the chance. He never addressed the outrageous costs of college. A record number of abortion clinics closed down while he was president and he never said anything about it, never made a speech when the courageous Dr Tiller was murdered. So much for having a “pro-choice” president. Then there’s his insane promotion of the TPP, which gives corporations total power – fascism in its purest form. if that passes, it will be a disaster for the entire planet. He chose a corporatist as a replacement for Scalia, one who supports Citizens United! While Obama and Michelle hosted endless glamorous soirees with vulgarian rich celebrities, people were going hungry, sleeping on the streets, losing everything they had. Jobs went to H1B1 workers imported from India, etc, and more factories shut down and moved out of the country, leaving millions without any other avenue to employment. Gun violence increased horrifically. He hasn’t stood with the Native American nations who are courageously facing down the militarized police to protect our water. Quite the legacy! He’s a smooth con artist and a coward. Hillary Clinton ran on this record, believes in all of it, and would have continued all of the above, but even more so. But that was good enough for her fan club.

So during Obama’s time, here were no major protests, and no anti-war movement during the last eight years, it disappeared as soon as Bush left office. Invasions of other countries for corporate profits is just fine when a Democrat president is doing it, apparently. Imperialism and fascism is no longer a problem.

Now these dolts who think they’re the center of the universe are out protesting Trump, who hasn’t even done anything yet. They are enraged because Clinton, a criminal and a warmonger far worse than Obama, didn’t win. Clinton is just a dull neocon hack out of her depth, who has been relentlessly over-promoted and given everything on a silver platter due to her being married to Bill Clinton – and yet every task she has been given has been almost unbelievably bungled, resulting in the deaths and displacement of millions of people. Everything Clinton stood for was poison, yet these people are upset that they aren’t going to get Henry Kissinger/Margaret Thatcher/Attila the Hun in an ugly pantsuit? They should be relieved. There were no big protests when Bernie was cheated out of the primaries by the DNC and Hillary Clinton, interestingly. These people represent neoliberalism on steroids, fascism is fine with them as long as they remain the fortunate ones. The Democrat party stands for raw corporate power, nothing more, just as does the Republican party – though the Repubs are more democratic than the democrats.

Bernie would be the president-elect now if not for Clinton’s cheating him out of what was rightfully his. That’s what enraging. It’s just kind of tragic that he capitulated to her and lost his credibility in promoting the vile Clinton, instead of taking the opportunity to help Jill Stein and using all of that anti-establishment energy out there to promote a real third party. So despite all of the establishment’s heavy lifting for Clinton, the MSM debasing itself for her, her Hollywood celebrities, billions spent, cheating and lying, none of it worked. That’s cause for celebration, one would think – the “little” people, whether Trump or third party voters, fought back and won. They made people take notice of them.

Who knows what Trump will do; it could be okay or awful – let’s hope for the best, anyway. The time for protests may well be coming, but doing it now just seems like a spoiled-brat, sore loser temper tantrum. It’s just a dream come true that with Clinton out, we’ve (hopefully) seen the last of that greedy, destructive family and World War 3 was averted.

Delicious to see her smug fans so shocked and in meltdown – how dare anyone defy them?! Amazing the MSM and her supporters are so in a bubble they never saw this coming – Trump always had a good chance of winning, but they never believed it, because they live in an echo chamber, sneering at their less fortunate fellow Americans, who they somehow imagined couldn’t find their way to the polling stations. A much-deserved comeuppance for these people who smeared Bernie supporters, third-party supporters, and now Trump supporters as being somehow less than human. It’s understandable that people are worried about Trump; but the reaction by Clinton cultists is way over the top. They have learned nothing ...

Excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street firms and other corporatist insiders

The 80-page attachment in the Podesta emails of Clinton's Wall St speech excerpts is at https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/927/180 [Note: The page numbers in the Table of Contents of the attachment (a Word file) are not all accurate.] Update: Three complete transcripts are now available as Word file attachments at https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/11011

‘Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years’ p16

‘capture of oil and gas … from hydraulic fracturing … has created this enormous opportunity for us’ p20

‘with the new discoveries, with the new techniques for extracting oil and gas, the US & Canada are going to be powerhouses …’ p21

‘I am an all-in kind of person, all-of-the-above kind of person when it comes to America's energy and environmental future’ p24

‘I'm all for privacy, believe me.’ p26

‘the collection of the metadata is something that has proven to be very useful’ p28

‘You know, on healthcare we are the prisoner of our past. The way we got to develop any kind of medical insurance program was during World War II when companies facing shortages of workers began to offer healthcare benefits as an inducement for employment. So from the early 1940s healthcare was seen as a privilege connected to employment. And after the war when soldiers came back and went back into the market there was a lot of competition, because the economy was so heated up. So that model continued. And then of course our large labor unions bargained for healthcare with the employers that their members worked for. So from the early 1940s until the early 1960s we did not have any Medicare, or our program for the poor called Medicaid until President Johnson was able to get both passed in 1965. So the employer model continued as the primary means by which working people got health insurance. People over 65 were eligible for Medicare. Medicaid, which was a partnership, a funding partnership between the federal government and state governments, provided some, but by no means all poor people with access to healthcare. So what we've been struggling with certainly Harry Truman, then Johnson was successful on Medicare and Medicaid, but didn't touch the employer based system, then actually Richard Nixon made a proposal that didn't go anywhere, but was quite far reaching. Then with my husband's administration we worked very hard to come up with a system, but we were very much constricted by the political realities that if you had your insurance from your employer you were reluctant to try anything else. And so we were trying to build a universal system around the employer-based system. And indeed now with President Obama's legislative success in getting the Affordable Care Act passed that is what we've done. We still have primarily an employer-based system, but we now have people able to get subsidized insurance. So we have health insurance companies playing a major role in the provision of healthcare, both to the employed whose employers provide health insurance, and to those who are working but on their own are not able to afford it and their employers either don't provide it, or don't provide it at an affordable price. We are still struggling. We've made a lot of progress. Ten million Americans now have insurance who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act, and that is a great step forward. (Applause.) And what we're going to have to continue to do is monitor what the costs are and watch closely to see whether employers drop more people from insurance so that they go into what we call the health exchange system. So we're really just at the beginning. But we do have Medicare for people over 65. And you couldn't, I don't think, take it away if you tried, because people are very satisfied with it, but we also have a lot of political and financial resistance to expanding that system to more people. So we're in a learning period as we move forward with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And I'm hoping that whatever the shortfalls or the glitches have been, which in a big piece of legislation you're going to have, those will be remedied and we can really take a hard look at what's succeeding, fix what isn't, and keep moving forward to get to affordable universal healthcare coverage like you have here in Canada.’ [Clinton Speech For tinePublic – Saskatoon, CA, 1/21/15]
[cf Clinton campaign rally at Grand View University – Des Moines, IA, 1/29/16: angrily characterizing Bernie Sanders’ plan to pursue single-payer health insurance as ‘some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.’]

‘we’re still living in too uncertain a world to make radical changes right now’ p40
[translation: this is precisely when radical change is possible and why we must be vigilant to prevent it]

‘So if you look at a recent study that just actually was posted today, if you're in the middle class in Canada, you're better off in general than if you're in the middle class in the United States today. And if you're poorer in the United States, you are worse off than the poor in Canada and Europe. […] So yeah, we've done some very necessary and good things but we've also, in my view, not adequately addressed the challenges that have come in the last 20, 25 years. They've slowly crept up on us like all of us are the frogs in the giant pot and the heat's been slowly turned up and we haven't jumped out, and if we even started to thinking about it, we weren't sure what we'd find if we did. So we're all wondering around saying, what's going on, why is it happening? And it has certainly economic effects because as people's standard of living stalls, if they believe that their children are not going to be better off -- and remember, ever since we have done polling in this country, back to the Great Depression, no matter how poor the vast majority of Americans were, they believed it would be better in the future and they believed it would be better for their children. That no longer is the case. People are quite concerned that their livelihoods, their lives are not going to get any better, and they're even now worried that neither will their children. So this deserves the kind of thoughtful discussion, not the us versus them, finger pointing, blame placing, because that's not going to get us anywhere, but if we do not address and figure out how we're going to revitalize the middle class and begin the process of once again encouraging more people to rise up, then what I fear is that our politics and our social fabric are going to be dramatically altered.’ [Clinton Speech For JP Morgan, 4/22/14]

‘… there are rich people everywhere. And there are poor people everywhere’ p44

Clinton's remarks on Iran are creepy & unhinged. p44-46

‘the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity’ p47

legalization of pot?
CLINTON: Short [ie, I don’t support] in all senses of the word
p48

Clinton praises Wal-Mart as model for politics p52

‘we are in a worse position than we were in the 90s’ p53

BLANKFEIN: … the financial services industry has been the one unifying theme that binds everybody [R/D] together in common. p54
[cf Huey Long (1932): ‘They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.’

Clinton endorsed recommendations of Obama's Simpson-Bowles “cat-food commission”, which included cuts to Social Security. p63-65

‘So we now have what everybody warned we would have, and I am very concerned about the spillover effects. And there is still an argument that goes on inside the administration and inside our friends at NATO and the Europeans. How do intervene—my view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene. We used to be much better at this than we are now. Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: Look what we’re doing and I want credit for it, and all the rest of it’ [Speech to Goldman Sachs, 2013 IBD Ceo Annual Conference, 6/4/13]

‘To have a no fly zone … you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians’ p67

‘And with political people, again, I would say the same thing, you know, there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important. And I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all.’ [Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium, 10/24/13]

‘Sam Walton was a cheerleader for Walmart but also a great patriot, because he knew that he was able to build this company in this country, and it might not, if ever, have been possible anywhere else.’ [Hillary Clinton remarks at Sanford Bernstein, 5/29/13]

William Blum on the US election

From The Anti-Empire Report #145:

On more than one occasion during the recent US primary campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders was asked if he would run on a third-party ticket if he failed to win the Democratic nomination. His reply was a form of the following: “If it happens that I do not win that process, would I run outside of the system? No, I made the promise that I would not, and I’ll keep that promise. And let me add to that: And the reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States of America.”

So instead he’s going to be responsible for electing some right-wing Democrat to be president of the United States of America. It’s certainly debatable who’s more right wing, Clinton or Trump. Clinton surely earns that honor on foreign policy. Think of Syria, Iraq, Honduras, Yugoslavia, Libya … et al.

The revelation that the Democratic Party was secretly favoring Clinton over Sanders is reason enough for Sanders to have broken his promise and accepted the offer of the Green Party to be their candidate.

Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words.

State Representative Mike Mrowicki writes in The (Brattleboro, Vt.) Commons …

In this coming election, Donald Trump is only the tip of the iceberg.

The bigger problem we face in this election are all the Donald Trumps, who collectively tanked the economy in 2007 by behaviors that (as the presidential candidate Trump said) represented a good way to make money. In his words, it was “good business.”

It sure says something when trashing the world economy is thought of selfishly as “good business.”

[But who is the candidate of Wall Street, as reflected in her close – and personally very lucrative – relationship with Goldman Sachs and others?]

Similarly, it is all the Donald Trumps who use war and the military-industrial complex as the biggest drain on our economy and sense of safety.

[But who is the candidate of Endless War, as reflected by her overwhelming support by imperialist neocons? Which candidate is demonizing Russia in a throwback to McCarthyist jingoism?]

It is all the Donald Trumps of this country (and world) who are the real welfare cheats. If you look at tax breaks or tax expenditures for the wealthy, what just one of them withholds from tax and hides offshore would probably cover any aid to needy families for this whole state.

[But what candidate’s campaign does not depend on the riches available from those (legal) arrangements? And which candidate runs a “charity” (with its tax benefits) as a bribe-laundering service?]

It is all the Donald Trumps of the world who maintain the current medical system that profits on those who can afford it least and, in essence, creates rationing of health care and a two-tiered system of care: one for the wealthy and the other for those who can’t quite afford insurance, co-pays, deductibles, or medicines.

[But which candidate consistently mocks the idea of single-payer (while Trump has expressed support)?]

And it is all the Donald Trumps of the world who reinforce the current status quo of economic, social, and environmental injustice. In that way, they maintain their oligarchic, neo-Calvinist stranglehold on the inequities that allow them to hold the power of the pocketbook and keep the system as is.

[But which candidate is running precisely on continuing that status quo, on expanding those injustices, who defends NAFTA and praises the TPP and similar trade treaties, who promotes fracking, who (after promoting welfare and crime and bankruptcy “reforms” that particularly harmed minorities and women) exploits identity politics to divide people from each other, whose supporters attack and demean everyone who doesn't fall into step behind her?]

When now-Sen. Bernie Sanders started his Vermont campaign for justice back in the 1980s, he spoke of the same inequities and injustices that he carried forth into his presidential campaign this year.

His influence on changing and growing the Democratic platform has moved the mainstream to recognize those injustices. He is keeping the effort moving toward real progress on these issues that all the Donald Trumps are fighting against.

[Along with his supporters, Sanders was smeared and mocked and derided by the Clinton campaign. Whereas Trump is squarely against NAFTA-like trade deals that harm the middle class, and is squarely against imperialist military escapades that squander our common wealth to benefit only the military industry (and their investors [see Wall Street]). There was more in common between Trump and Sanders than between Sanders and Clinton, but Sanders, too, derided Trump and betrayed a shameful snobbery.]

I will be voting for those issues of social, economic, and environmental justice as I cast a vote for Hillary Clinton and down-ticket Democrats. ...

[With every election cycle since Bill Clinton’s first year as President, the Democrats provide more reason not to vote for them. Any of them. Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words. And the actions of Democrats betray them. (See Obama and whistleblowers, drones, pipelines, arctic drilling.)]

[How would Mike Mrowicki respond to this Justin Raimondo piece at antiwar.com, “Trump’s Three Points for Peace”?]

[The iceberg of deplorable government includes Democrats as well as Republicans.]

A comment about a comment about Trump supporters

A friend writes:

This vile comment from Nancy in Corinth, Kentucky: a real mental giant and portrait of human compassion: managing in every single sentence to lie, distort, sneer, caricature and demean; she is the very face of the Clintonian Democrats. This irresponsible nonstop hate-fest from the Democrats is a real phenomenon which may be studied in years to come; they are infected by an ugly mass hysteria, a cult, so many comments deeply unhinged and it's the same thing day after day – they have become creepily threatening and have been so since Bernie came on the scene to challenge their gruesome idol. Charles Blow has written his daily "be afraid!" column on how evil Trump is, as if we didn't already get his boring one-note message about 500 columns ago. He goes on about how Trump is a bully, yet it's the Dems who are the raging bullies. It's like the Salem witch trials. The Dems are fatally infected with an illusion of their own superiority ("how DARE they accuse us of elitism; we can't help it if we're just better than they are!"), spitting on anyone who refuses to go along with their stunted neoliberal/neocon visions, and openly reviling those they consider beneath them, namely, white poor rural southern people and, weirdly, those without a college degree, since their so-worshiped college degrees did not impart the ability to think critically; to discern truth from propaganda.

Just as Reagan made unfettered Darwinian greed acceptable, the spineless Dems have made self-serving peace with that, and now tout their own raging classism, racism, McCarthyism, and war-loving jingoism as de rigueur. Will they, when Clinton is "elected" and predictably makes a massive, terrifying mess of everything, look back at their bloody feeding frenzy in shame, or have they always longed to tear off the mask and just come out of the closet as the fascists they really are? Outrageously elitist comments are coming along fast and furious on the pages of The Times, and have been for months on end. These prissy, pushy Dems are unwittingly offering their own smug throats to be slit, with their relentless taunting, stereotyping, and shaming of millions of their fellow Americans. You can only push people so far, and these types like ole Nancy in Kentucky are so delusional, and brainwashed, they can't see what's coming down the road. If Clinton is pushed onto the throne, the peasants they so look down upon aren't just going to disappear; they are going to be very, very angry.

A selection of the DNC e-mails

RE: Donor Vet [former murderer of horses for insurance donating big to attend POTUS event]
email ID: 578

Fwd: State Dinner Countdown [donor whines to get state dinner invitation]
email ID: 2946

RE: Credit for HVF [demand for credit securing $200K to attend private dinner]
email ID: 17287

Re: $50,000 - Lawrence Benenson [desperation for money, contempt for donors]
email ID: 14700

Flag: AP: Eyeing Senate, Clinton directing money to 2016 battlegrounds [concern about story re Clinton campaign funds]
email ID: 7784

RE: Gloria Allred blast language for lawyers approval [thinking of ways to violate Hatch Act]
email ID: 20148

Re: FW: DNC LGBT Event [making fun of black woman’s name]
email ID: 17942

“I love you too. no homo.”
email ID: 425

Re: No shit [raising rumor that Sanders is atheist]
email ID: 11508

Flag: Bernie FR email on Politico / JFA story [DNC/Clinton vs Sanders campaign]
email ID: 6230

Video Request: msnbc right now [concern re MSNBC commentary on DNC-Clinton collusion]
email ID: 6107

“Fucking Joe claiming the system is rigged, party against him, we need to complain to their producer.”
email ID: 8806

Re: Chuck, this must stop [coordinating with Chuck Todd to counter Mika Brzezinski’s call for DNC chair to resign]
email ID: 8379

RE: Getting on same page [releasing story to cooperative reporter]
email ID: 12450

RE: Interview request [controlling Spanish-language news with “Preferred Bilinguals”]
email ID: 7102

“Off the Record Meeting with Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC”
email ID: 13762

Fwd: per agreement ... any thoughts appreciated [Politico writer Ken Vogel runs story by DNC before own editors]
email ID: 10808

Re: BuzzFeed and DNC connection [coordinating convention coverage]
email ID: 10933

Re: WaPo Party [secret (illegal) DNC party hosted by Washington Post]
email ID: 2699

Re: Washington Examiner delegate inquiry [DNC rejects request from “right wing rag”]
email ID: 5304

RE: FNS 4-24-16 [Clinton’s problems due to Sanders liberals, SOS email server, Clinton Foundation]
email ID: 8351

RE: need comms approval - craigslist job post [fake sexist ad for Trump business].
email ID: 12803

RE: For Your Review: Weekly Update [“LOT'S of Trump. For this week I think its ok, I don't want to touch what's happening on our side because its engendering negative feedback from Members …”]
email ID: 7586

RE: Action on DNC tomorrow (Immigration Raids) [conflicted messaging re White House actions]
email ID: 9736

Megyn Kelly is a bimbo [very conflicted DNC consultant]
email ID: 6087

Surrogate TPs from HFA [Clinton campaign providing DNC talking points]
email ID: 5254

Re: Alaska "Counter" Event [DNC spies in Sanders campaign]
email ID: 4776
email ID: 7793

RE: Bernie narrative [effort to blame Bernie for DNC conspiracy against him]
email ID: 14295

Letter from Bakari Sellers to Democratic National Committee, June 21, 2016

Excerpts (emphases added). Complete PDF available at: http://d1u7i8c4jvis7m.cloudfront.net/Bakari-Sellers-Letter-to-DNC-on-Israel-Platform-Statement.pdf

Every four years we come together as a collective and give our most thoughtful consideration to the ideals and values that define what it means to be a Democrat. In 2016, we do so at an especially critical time in our nation. Never before have the differences between the major parties been perceived to be so stark; so clearly a choice between hope and fear. ...

United States foreign policy in the Middle East is a critical issue our Party must address. Instability is mounting in that already volatile region. Repressive ideologies are on the rise. If the tide is to be reversed cooperation with our allies is imperative. We have no better ally than the state of Israel. ...

When it comes to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, our platforms and our candidates have always been clear. The 2012 platform rightly supported “peace between Israelis and Palestinians ... producing two states for two peoples,” while reiterating that there could be “no lasting peace unless Israel’s security concerns are met.” ... As the Secretary has said, “... America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts and as president, ... I would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution. including by the U.N. Security Council.” And, as the Party supports a negotiated peace settlement. it has long included, as it did in the 2012 Platform, a long established policy and reality, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.”

On Iran, ... we must do all we can to ensure Iran lives up to its obligations while confronting Iran’s malign activities in the region. As Secretary Clinton recently stated, “Tehran’s fingerprints are on every conflict across the Middle East from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen ...” She has been clear, that the U.S. “must also continue to enforce existing sanctions and impose additional sanctions as needed on Iran ... for their sponsorship of terrorism, illegal arms transfers, human rights violations and other illicit behaviors ...”

[A]nti-Semitism has been on the rise and it has taken a new form — the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. ...

It is for all the aforementioned reasons, best stated by Secretary Clinton herself, that I join the attached signatories [60 as yet unrevealed African-American politicians], all lifelong Democrats, in asking that unwavering support of the state of Israel be clearly articulated in the 2016 Democratic Party platform.

Again, thank you for your service and leadership. It is an inspiration to us all.

Sincerely,

Bakari Sellers

How to steal an election, Democratic Party edition

“Election Fraud Watch 2016” has been documenting the reports of “irregularities” throughout the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses.

This information is not about the schedule and various rules established by the Democratic National Committee seemingly meant to reduce the chances of an outsider gaining ground. It is about how even with those inherent advantages, Hillary Clinton had to cheat to fend off the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders.

February’s posts are dominated by Nevada, where Harry Reid instructed casino union bosses the night before the caucus to make sure their members were given time to vote for Hillary. And Nevada arises again during its state convention in May, where Bernie now had more delegates, so the Party decertified more than enough of them to give Hillary the edge and then, just to make sure, made their count while people were still in line to get in and ignored motions for a recount, increasingly shredding Robert’s rules of order throughout the day until the chair, Roberta Lange, closed the convention on her own, fled, and called on law enforcement to clear the hall.

March’s posts are dominated by Arizona.

April brings in reports about Massachusetts (where former President Bill Clinton literally blocked people from voting at two precincts in Boston), Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois.

May’s reports include Maryland and Kentucky and more about Illinois and Nevada.

And June’s posts add reports about Puerto Rico and California.

Common “problems”: severe reduction of polling places, missing and incorrect voter registrations, and incorrect recording of votes. In California, 30% of the votes (>2.5 million) have yet to be counted at all.

There are several articles about the pattern of discrepancy between the usually fairly accurate exit polls and the official results in several states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

The writer also links to many other general reports, including:

• “Voters report suspicious irregularities in three different primary states” (April 26, by Nathan Wellman)

• “Election fraud mega edition” (May 7, by Nina Illingworth)

• “Hillary wins the lottery” (May 12, by Richard Charnin)

Clinton: more and more unfavorable

From a memo to superdelegates, Hillary Clinton campaign, May 27, 2008:

Because our country’s electorate is relatively divided along party lines, presidential candidates who are competitive and have been in the public arena for a period of time typically have higher unfavorable ratings.

For example, Hillary and Senator Obama have comparable unfavorable ratings – in the most recent Newsweek poll of national registered voters, 43% are unfavorable to Hillary and 40% are unfavorable to Senator Obama. Senator McCain has similar unfavorable ratings – 40% are unfavorable to him in that same poll.

As might be expected, Senator Obama’s unfavorable numbers have steadily risen over the last two years – in a May 2006 Newsweek poll, 10% said they were unfavorable towards him. By July 2007, that number had risen to 19%; 8 months later it was at 28%, and in the two most recent Newsweek polls, conducted in April and May of this year, his unfavorable rating is at 40% – 4 times higher than it was two years ago. Hillary’s unfavorable rating has remained relatively steady (according to the same Newsweek polls, in May 2006, her unfavorable rating was 45% – it is now 43%). Similarly, Senator McCain’s unfavorable ratings have likewise remained relatively unchanged (according to the same Newsweek polls, in March 2008 his unfavorable rating was 35%; 41% in April 2008, and 40% in May 2008; Newsweek did not record unfavorable ratings before March 2008 for Senator McCain).

More importantly, candidates’ unfavorable ratings do not indicate they are too polarizing to win the Presidency; to the contrary, these ratings reflect the divisions in our country between our parties as candidates become known and associated with the Democratic or Republican Party.

That was a nice try to put the entire blame on partisanship, but there is a clear trend in 2016 that argues against Clinton:

It looks even worse over the long term, since Clinton left the Department of State after 2012:

In stark contrast, as Bernie Sanders became more widely known, his favorable rating steadily increased:

Even Donald Trump is trending better than Clinton:

Why Bernie Sanders is the best bet for winning the Presidency

Here’s why Bernie Sanders is the best bet for the Democrats winning the Presidency in November (besides the high — and always growing — negative ratings of Hillary Clinton (in contrast to Sanders’s always growing favorable ratings), the numerous and consistent polls showing Sanders doing much better than she against Trump, particularly in crucial swing states, and Clinton’s extensive baggage of ethical lapses, harmful decisions, and even criminal behavior that become increasingly exposed).

Remember that the Presidency is determined by winner-takes-all electors from each state and the District of Columbia. (Only Maine and Nebraska choose electors more proportionally.) (Also remember, regarding the results reported below, that the DNC and the Clinton machine cheated – superdelegate bullying, lying, voter suppression, limiting voting sites, disrupting voting, not counting votes, the drastic differences between exit polls and reported results, especially in districts with electronic voting machings – which got increasingly worse as Sanders’ effort to overwhelm the odds with honesty and turnout continued to succeed.)

In the 10 “blue” states that have voted so far, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 60–40. All 5 states in tomorrow’s primary are “blue”. [Update: With Clinton winning 4 of those 5 states, Sanders’ average is now 55%–45%.] The remaining “blue” states are Oregon (May 17 [update: still 55%–45%]) and California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia, also “blue”, votes on June 14 (update, July 7: 52%–48%).

In the 2 “light blue” states (where the Republican presidential candidate won 1 of the last 4 elections) that have voted so far, Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 56–44. Adding them to the above, Sanders has won 59%–42% (pardon the rounding errors) of the votes [update: 55%–45%]. The only “light blue” state yet to vote is New Mexico (June 7 [update: 52%–48%]).

In the 6 “purple” states (which went for the Republican and Democrat twice each) that have voted so far, Clinton has won the votes by an average of 57–41. Adding them to the above, Sanders has still won an average of 53%–46% of each state’s votes [update: 50%–50%].

Only 1 of the 2 “light red” states (where the Republican candidate won 3 of the last 4 elections) has voted so far, North Carolina, where Clinton won the votes 55%–41%. Adding it to the above, Sanders has still won the votes in each state by an average of 51–48. The “light red” state yet to vote is Indiana (May 3). [Update: With Sanders winning Indiana 53%–48%, he has still won the votes in all of the above states by an average of 51–48 (update: 49%–50%).]

In the “red” states, Clinton has won the votes in each so far by an average of only 52–46 [update, May 11: 51–46]. Taking out the Dixie (former Confederacy) states, Sanders has won an average of 62%–36% of each “red” state’s votes [update, May 11: 61%–36%; June 7: 58%–38%], suggesting the possibility of a nascent “prairie populism” that could give Democrats a chance to win some of those states. All of the Dixie states have voted, and the “red” ones — the only block where Clinton has been consistently strong, and the source of her delegate lead — are very unlikely to go “blue”. The remaining “red” states are West Virginia (May 10 [update: Sanders won 51%–35% (local candidate Paul Farrell got 9%)]), Kentucky (May 17 [update: 46%–47%), and Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota (June 7 [update: 51%–45%, 64%–26%, and 49%–51%, respectively).

At the Democratic Party Convention (July 25–28), 2,384 delegates are required for nomination as the party’s candidate. With 715 “super” delegates available, who are not bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses, a minimum of 1,669 “pledged” delegates (those assigned by the results of the primaries and caucuses) is needed to be a viable candidate for the nomination. Sanders crossed that threshold on June 7.

Unfortunately, not just for the Party but more importantly for the country as a whole, the Democratic establishment (ie, those superdelegates), long in the thrall of the Reaganite DLC, would probably rather lose than turn the Party over to a progressive populist who might actually steer the country into a better direction than they have done.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016#Schedule_and_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/media/File:Red_state,_blue_state.svg

Hillary Clinton’s donors

Besides the $125 million taken in by both Clintons for speeches since leaving the White House, including $2.9 milliion by Hillary for 12 speeches at financial firms since leaving the Department of State, and besides the many multi-million-dollar donors to the the Clinton Foundation whose business was affected by Hillary Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State (which apparent bribery is currently being investigated by the State Department, while her running the department out of her basement is being investigated by the FBI and Congress), the simple (ignoring the PACs and SuperPACs) funding of Hillary’s current campaign for the Democratic nomination for President is revealing.

According to Open Secrets, at the time of this writing, the proportions of donations to all of the presidential primary candidates from individuals working for various industries that have gone to Clinton are:

• 54% of all donations from casinos/gambling, 19 times as much as Sanders
• 35% of all donations from commercial banks, 25 times as much as Sanders
• 46% of all donations from computer/internet, 4 times as much as Sanders
• 60% of all donations from education, 5 times as much as Sanders
• 34% of all donations from health professionals, 7 times as much as Sanders
• 45% of all donations from health services/HMOs, 9 times as much as Sanders
• 28% of all donations from hedge funds and private equity, 141 times as much as Sanders
• 43% of all donations from hospitals/nursing homes, 7 times as much as Sanders
• 22% of all donations from insurance, 13 times as much as Sanders
• 62% of all donations from lawyers/law firms, 33 times as much as Sanders
• 45% of all donations from of donations from lobbyists, 173 times as much as Sanders
• 11% of all donations from oil and gas (one of the only categories where Clinton is not the top recipient), 16 times as much as Sanders
• 35% of all donations from pharmaceuticals/health products, 8 times as much as Sanders
• 31% of all donations from real estate, 20 times as much as Sanders
• 33% of all donations from securities and investment, 53 times as much as Sanders
• 38% of all donations from telephone utilities, 11 times as much as Sanders
• 9% of all donations from tobacco (the other category where Clinton is not the top recipient), none to Sanders
• 71% of all donations from TV/movies/music, 9 times as much as Sanders

Also according to Open Secrets, 71% of individuals’ donations to the Bernie Sanders campaign are less than $200, whereas for the Hillary Clinton campaign only 17% of individuals’ donations are less than $200.

Hillary Clinton at Brookings Institution ‘Saban Forum’, Dec. 6

New York Times: 'Hillary Clinton Urges Silicon Valley to “Disrupt” ISIS'

'Mrs. Clinton’s comments echo recent White House calls for what would amount to a cease-fire with technology firms after the revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, that the government had gotten inside the firm’s communications technology.'

—This is a lot more problematic than the "familiar complaints" [regarding] 'freedom of speech'" that Clinton evoked. It is enlisting private industry as agents of the government, likely acting extrajudicially, i.e., it's the government's word only and wrongful victims have no recourse, let alone protection in the first place.

'Mrs. Clinton used the forum to continue staking out a harder line on Iran than President Obama has in public. She repeatedly threatened to take what she called “harsh” steps at the first sign that Iran seeks to violate commitments it made in the July nuclear agreement ….' [emphasis added]

'She had strong words as well for America’s Arab allies, calling on them to crack down on the financing of ISIS and other extremist groups, and to think about military contributions far beyond what they are now committed to.'

—Saudi Arabia? Turkey?

'On Saturday [Dec.5], Secretary of State John Kerry, Mrs. Clinton’s successor, appeared in front of the same group and warned against allowing the Palestinian Authority to collapse. He argued that that would place Israel in the position of having to occupy and administer the West Bank, which Mr. Kerry just visited. He said that was not viable and would kill any hope of a two-state solution.'

—Uh, Mr. Kerry, Israel already occupies and administers the West Bank. That's the problem. Has been for decades.

'Mrs. Clinton did not discuss the Palestinian Authority’s future in her speech. But with some of the most right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in mind, she said, “A one-state solution is no solution — it is a prescription for endless conflict.”'

—Whereas the mirage of two states has proved to be a prescription for, whoops, endless conflict.

=============

Reuters: 'Clinton aims to take US relationship with Israel "next level"'

'"I would extend an invitation to the Israeli prime minister to come to the United States," Clinton said at a Washington forum hosted by the Brookings Institution when asked about her first day in the White House, "to work towards very much strengthening and intensifying our relationship on military matters."'

=============

Jerusalem Post: '"Black flag of ISIS" may be alternative to Palestinian Authority, Clinton says'

'The black flag of Islamic State may fly over the Palestinian territories should the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, fail to maintain order, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday.

'Speaking to the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum, an annual Washington gathering on relations between the US and Israel, Clinton, the front-runner for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, recommitted to the pursuit of a twostate solution: “A one-state solution is no solution,” she told the forum, but called on Palestinian leadership and the Arab League to recognize that, under such a scheme, Israel would be a Jewish state, alongside a sovereign Palestinian state.

'In a speech framed by her personal commitment to Israel, Clinton said three major threats face the state that require robust American defense and diplomatic support: Metastasizing extremism throughout the Muslim world; an aggressive government in Iran; and an effort to delegitimize Israel in international bodies.' …

'Iran’s “fingerprints,” she added, are on every conflict in the Middle East – a challenge for the US and Israel alike.'

—Not like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia!

'She also had harsh words for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, which she said was not only counter-productive, but linked to anti-Semitism.'

—"Counterproductive" only from the viewpoint of an Israel interested in perpetuating the denial of justice to the Palestinians, meaning BDS is turning out to be quite effective. And antisemitism? There is nothing antisemitic about BDS, any more than divestment from South Africa in the 1970-80s was anti-Boer. Similarly, BDS aims to end the denial by the Israeli government of national rights to the Palestinians. It is, however, a threat to U.S.-Israel policy, because it might actually force an end to their deadly charade.

'She offered criticism of Israeli leadership, as well, asking many conservative Israeli politicians present, who is “standing in the wings” should Abbas leave office.

'“Let’s be honest here,” she said. “The alternative is the black flag of ISIS [Islamic State].”

'Earlier in her prepared remarks, she noted the growth of an Islamic State cell in the Sinai Peninsula, and the potential for support of the group in the Gaza Strip.'

—So far, however, it is notable that the enemies of Islamic State are also the enemies of Israel. Clinton's words are misdirection and fearmongering.

Letter from Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings, Oct. 8, 2015

Excerpts. Complete PDF available at: http://d1u7i8c4jvis7m.cloudfront.net/Gowdy-Cummings-1510-7.pdf

… When we began this investigation, Sidney Blumenthal was not on our potential interview list. Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of private email, housed on her own private server, was not a topic of our inquiry. Yet when we learned nearly half of Secretary Clinton’s entire email correspondence regarding Benghazi and Libya before the attacks was with Sidney Blumenthal, that became a fact we could not ignore. When we learned Secretary Clinton exclusively used private email to correspond for her official duties and that the State Department did not even have access to these records until this Committee asked for them, that became a fact we could not ignore. …

Blumenthal was neither a State Department employee nor an employee of the federal government nor an expert on Libya, by his own admission. The fact that former Secretary Clinton relied so heavily on an individual for the Libyan intervention, her quintessential foreign policy initiative, whom the White House explicitly prohibited from working at the State Department is mind boggling. … Blumenthal was not merely acting as a steward of information to Secretary Clinton but was acting as her de facto political advisor. …

In a six day span in February 2011, Blumenthal sent Clinton detailed reports titled “Latest Libya intel,” “Libya intel,” “No fly zone over Libya,” “Intel on Gaddafi’s reinforcements,” “Libya WMD,” “Qaddafi’s Scuds and strategy for holding on,” “Option on WMD,” “Phone #s that may work,” and “Q location, new defections, beginnings of interim govt.” These daily emails, filled with unvetted intelligence, continued for nearly six weeks. Secretary Clinton often responded to Blumenthal, and almost always forwarded them to her top policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, in some cases cautioning him not to “share until we can talk.” Much of the information in Blumenthal’s emails came from Tyler Drumheller, a controversial former CIA operative, and Cody Shearer, another old Clinton friend. Interestingly, Secretary Clinton even took the further step to hide from Sullivan the fact that some of this information came from Shearer. It is unclear why she did this, and it is not at all clear what intelligence tradecraft was undertaken to ensure the reliability of this information, or whether the State Department’s very own intelligence bureau, funded by taxpayers for that very purpose, was even aware of these matters.

Dozens of emails between Clinton and Blumenthal show an individual who tried to heavily influence the Secretary of State to intervene in Libya. Blumenthal pushed hard for a no-fly zone in Libya before the idea was being discussed internally by senior U.S. government officials. Clinton told Blumenthal that she was pushing the option with the “[U.N.] Security Council,” and to “[s]tay tuned!” Shortly thereafter, the U.S. pushed a no-fly zone through the U.N. Security Council.

The emails also show Blumenthal firmly as a political body who pulled no punches towards the White House or others in government with whom he disagreed. In one email he discussed “National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s babbling rhetoric about ‘narratives’ on a phone briefing of reporters” that “inspired derision among serious foreign policy analysts here and abroad.” In another email he described “[Obama] and his political cronies in the WH and in Chicago are, to say the least, unenthusiastic about regime change in Libya or anywhere else in the ME. Why is that? Hmmm. Obama’s lukewarm and self contradicting statements have produced what is at least for the moment, operational paralysis.”

Once Blumenthal got his way and a no-fly zone was established, he pushed for a more aggressive posture by the U.S. in the conflict, including arming the rebels. To support his rationale to Secretary Clinton, he used sagging polling numbers. …

Beyond the pure politics that were occurring at this time, perhaps more disturbing is that at the same time Blumenthal was pushing Secretary Clinton to war in Libya, he was privately pushing a business interest of his own in Libya that stood to profit from contracts with the new Libyan government — a government that would exist only after a successful U.S. intervention in Libya that deposed Qaddafi. This business venture was one he shared with Tyler Drumheller and Cody Shearer, the authors of the information sent to Secretary Clinton. It is therefore unsurprising that somebody who knew so little about Libya would suddenly become so interested in Libya and push an old friend in a powerful place to action — for personal profit. …

“You should be aware that there is a good chance at the contact meeting in Turkey the TNC [National Transitional Council of Libya] ambassador to the UAE, a man you have not yet met, whose name is Dr. Neydah, may tell you the TNC has reached an agreement with a US company. The company is a new one, Osprey, headed by former General David Grange, former head of Delta Force. Osprey will provide field medical help, military training, organize supplies, and logistics to the TNC. They are trainers and organizers, not fighters. Grange can train their forces and he has drawn up a plan for taking Tripoli similar to the plan he helped develop that was used by the first wave of Special Forces in the capture of Baghdad. This is a private contract. It does not involve NATO. It puts Americans in a central role without being direct battle combatants. The TNC wants to demonstrate that they are pro-US. They see this as a significant way to do that. They are enthusiastic about this arrangement. … As I understand it, they are still working out funding, which is related to the overall TNC funding problems. Grange is very low key, wishes to avoid publicity and work quietly, unlike other publicity hungry finns. Grange is under the radar. Tyler, Cody and I acted as honest brokers, putting this arrangement together through a series of connections, linking the Libyans to Osprey and keeping it moving. The strategic imperative: Expecting Gaddafi to fall on his own or through a deus ex machina devolves the entire equation to wishful thinking. The TNC has been unable to train and organize its forces. The NATO air campaign cannot take ground. The TNC, whose leaders have been given to flights of fancy that Qaddafi will fall tomorrow or the day after, have come to the conclusion that they must organize their forces and that they must score a military victory of their own over Qaddafi that is not dependent solely on NATO in order to give them legitimacy. …

In addition to Sidney Blumenthal’s business interests, Secretary Clinton also apparently received classified information from Blumenthal — information she should have known was classified at the time she received it. In one email, Blumenthal writes “Tyler spoke to a colleague currently at CIA, who told him the agency had been dependent for intelligence from [redacted due to sources and methods].” This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives. Armed with that information, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email to a colleague — debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private email address. …

Hillary Clinton and masculine anxiety

Good essay by Stephen Ducat at Huffington Post (click on title of this post):

In applying the GOP approach to feminizing male opponents, and directing class resentment away from the real elites, Hillary Clinton has gone beyond her more familiar adoption of the ruthless, sociopathic say-anything, dirty tricks politics of her erstwhile Rovian right wing enemies. She is reinforcing the conservative attempt to equate manhood with belligerence and predation. In addition, she is trotting out the well worn but still effective propaganda technique employed by this country's actual ruling oligarchy of wealth -- reducing class to personal style, taste, or the specific products people consume (brie versus Velveeta). Those who actually own or wield control over our shared resources are rendered invisible in this rhetorical sleight of hand.

Barack Obama stands in stark contrast to the attitude of the Clinton campaign. His guiding political ethos has always been one of bridging but not overlooking divisions, while privileging dialogue, debate, and negotiation over conquest. This is not only a new politics. It is a new masculinity, one that is inclusive of those panhuman qualities previously disowned and projected onto women. It remains to be seen if Hillary Clinton, with her Hobbesian hard-on, will succeed in turning the Denver convention into a war of all against all. If so, the life span of the Democratic Party may be nasty, brutish, and short.

human rights

Hillary Clinton, George Wallace

Hillary Clinton, in an interview yesterday with USA Today, referred to her appeal among "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans". She cited this as proof of her "much broader base to build a winning coalition on". Yet she has lost, after a long consistent record of losing in this presidential primary.

She sounds like George Wallace, who broke with the Democratic party to make an independent run for President in 1968 to exploit anti-desegregation sentiment. There's always someone who will take advantage of the worst parts of our character instead of acting to strengthen the better parts.

The phrase "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" clarifies her meaning at each comma-demarcated step, to assert that white Americans are the only hard-working Americans, indeed the only Americans who do any real work.

During the knickers-twisting over Jeremiah Wright, Pat Buchanan, who regularly says much more "anti-American" things than Wright did, was similarly seething mostly because Wright did not show sufficient appreciation to everything "we" (Americans, i.e., whites) have given "them" (blacks, i.e., Americans only by the magnanimous indulgence of whites).

And so here is Hillary Clinton, "appealing" to the same bigotry, to "white" America as the "real" America, working from the notion that it's "whites" who do all the real work so everyone else can enjoy their freedom and prosperity, which they only abuse by actually thinking that they, too, are Americans and have some right to speak out and even to lead.

American Independent Party: here she comes!

First Draft of Maya Angelou's Open Letter Supporting Hillary Clinton

Dear Friend:

I am writing to tell you about my friend, Hillary Clinton, and why I am standing with her in her campaign for the presidency in 2012 after she ruins Senator Obama and the Democratic party this year. I know the kind of president Hillary Clinton will be because I know dozens of the personalities she has assumed over the years.

I am inspired by her insincerity and her dishonesty. She is a reliable and trustworthy opportunist. She is someone I not only fear but one for whom I have profound worry regarding stability.

Hillary does not waver in standing up for her prerogative. She has always been a passionate protector of her husband's sexual appetites. As a child, she was taught that all Iraq's children are politically expedient, and as a mother, she understood that her child wasn't safe unless all Iranians were obliterated. As I wrote about Hillary recently in a praise song: "She is the slayer of every hope and every man who longs for fair play, botcher of health care, champion of NAFTA and Wal-Mart."

It may be easy to view Hillary Clinton through the narrow lens of those who would ask her to explain her lies. Hillary sees us as we are, black and brown and white and yellow and pink and relishes our differences knowing that fundamentally we are all exploitable. She is able to look through complexion and see hollow wedge issues.

She has endured great scrutiny, and still is barely scrutinized. Hillary Clinton will not give up on you, unless you are a caucus-goer or black. She is a long-distance runner even though she previously agreed that the race should be a sprint. I am honored to say I am with her until her loss is so obvious that it would be an act of transcendent madness for even Carville to claim otherwise.

I am supporting Hillary Clinton because I know that she will make the most positive difference in the lives of corporate donors and she will help our country continue to be what it currently is. Whether you are her supporter, leaning towards her, undecided, or supporting someone else, I believe Hillary Clinton will never forget anyone who didn't fall in line - and she will make you pay. It is no small thing that along the way we will repeat history together.

Vote for Hillary Clinton and show your support at www.hillaryclinton.com. I know she will make use of her power.

[Satire from 236.com; but not far from reality: see Angelou's video endorsement from last year and her more recent "poem" and comments ("You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may tread me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll rise."). While we're on the subject, don't miss the old "Stale" parody, "I, Poem".]

The Family: Hillary Clinton's fascist spiritual guide

Barbara Ehrenreich writes:

There's a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the "Fellowship," aka The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells" -- their term -- and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, writer Jeff Sharlet joined the Family's home for young men, foreswearing sex, drugs, and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners -- alone.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes -- knitting together international networks of rightwing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolph Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of the Family's American branch is a collection of powerful rightwing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, and Rick Santorum. They get to use the Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, the Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by the Family's young women's group. And, at the Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already-powerful.

Clinton fell in with the Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, the Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Furthermore, the Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics. ...

Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero

Frank Schaeffer writes:

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.

Every Sunday, thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison, Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies. ...

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance." ...

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s) roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post, "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy."

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

Clinton brings it on

Back in January, Gloria Steinem argued that supporting Hillary Clinton is the radical progressive choice and that if Barack Obama was a woman he wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Thursday, Geraldine Ferraro added that if Barack Obama wasn't black (his father was from Kenya) he wouldn't have gotten anywhere, either.

So, Obama is the frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination simply because he's black and not a woman (that must be why John Edwards, the born-again populist, bombed: not black). Whereas Clinton's bid (justified mostly on the basis of enormous name recognition, having been married to a recent President -- not such a great symbol of feminist achievement) fell apart as soon as it faced a challenge because she's a white woman.

And that's why Ferraro and Steinem support Clinton and want you to as well: because she's a woman. It's sexist to oppose Hillary but not sexist to support her only on that basis. And it's progressive, not racist, to oppose Obama because he's a black man.

They seem to be trying to reclaim the Nixonian coalition of wine-track bigots and beer-track bigots for the Democrats.

The 3 a.m. phone call ad made that clear, invoking fears of the predatory black man threatening suburban tranquility. It is compounded by Clinton's refusal to denounce (and reject) claims that Obama is Muslim.

If Clinton was any other 2nd-term senator, she wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Her success relies more on fame than anything else (I mean, Laura Bush has the same pre-Senate "experience" that Clinton claims), and when a viable alternative to her soap opera candidacy overtook it she has resorted to racist fear mongering to try to stay in the running.

To recap: In South Carolina, she tried to belittle Obama's success as merely due to high African-American (sexist, racist) turnout. But after Obama starting to prove his electability with whites, both men and women, she tried to claim that it was because she was a woman. Now it's also because he's black. So now, her effort is to make his African heritage (and his Arab name) a liability rather than an asset (ignoring the obvious fact that he's simply the better candidate for the majority of all voters). These are not the actions of a progressive, or even of a liberal. In Hell, Richard Nixon is cackling.