Posts Tagged ‘HIllary Clinton’
November 6, 2016
Julian Assange, in addition to his great service in bringing secret facts to light, is an interesting thinker. The video shows fellow Australian John Pilger, a noted investigative journalist, interviewing Assange on the coming U.S. election and his current status.
Here are some highlights of the interview:
Julian Assange: If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police. The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable.
The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist it. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s investigation, so there’s anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak.
We’ve published about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails when she was Secretary of State. [snip]
Then there are the Podesta emails we’ve been publishing. [John] Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign manager, so there’s a thread that runs through all these emails; there are quite a lot of pay-for-play, as they call it, giving access in exchange for money to states, individuals and corporations.
∞∞∞
Julian Assange: There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation. Even the U.S. government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well it’s just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves.
But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS.
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Tags:HIllary Clinton, Hillary Clinton E-mails, Julian Assange, Wikileaks
Posted in Abuse of Power, Journalism | Leave a Comment »
October 27, 2016
During the whole of the Cold War, American and Soviet troops never faced each other on the battlefield. Both sides feared possible escalation into nuclear war.
If the United States proclaims a “no fly” zone in Syria or sends troops to create a “safe zone” for anti-Assad forces, there is a real danger of a shooting war between the United States and Russia.
The United States and Russia are the only two nations with enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other. Presumably leaders of neither nation want this, but who knows what a direct Russian-American conflict could escalate into? And for what?
LINKS
Making Sense of the Russian Task Force Off Syria by The Saker, a pro-Russian blogger.
Is the US Headed Towards War in Syria?, an interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the Real News Network.
Looking Ahead: Clinton’s Plans for Syria by Peter Van Buren for We Meant Well.
Fact Check: Trump Is Right That Clinton Might Cause WW3 by Carl Herman on Washington’s Blog.
Tags:Accidental Nuclear War, HIllary Clinton, Nuclear War, Syria, War With Russia
Posted in War and Peace | 4 Comments »
October 25, 2016
Choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is like choosing between Richard Nixon and George Wallace.
One heads a powerful machine dedicated to preserving the status quo. The other is rebel who appeals to hatred and prejudice.
I can understand why someone might support the Nixon-like candidate as a lesser evil. The expression for this is “critical support”, which is means you may support a candidate, but reserve the right to call the candidate to account.
The problem with this is when the support ceases to be critical, which is what I see happening. I know a number of liberal Democrats who are so afraid of Donald Trump that they think it out-of-bounds to point out that Clinton is a warmonger and literally a paid servant of Wall Street.
Support for a candidate should never be unconditional. If you demand nothing in return for your support of a candidate, nothing is what you’ll get.
The leaked Hillary Clinton e-mails, especially the ones with the excerpts from her Goldman Sachs speeches, show that she regards her rich donors as her peer group, but that she finds it necessary to appease her core voters, as with the Dodd-Frank banking reforms.
The fact that Clinton can be pressured is, as I see it, the only argument for anti-war, pro-labor, pro-consumer or environmentalist Democrats to support Clinton. And they are naive if they give their support without demanding commitments in return.
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Tags:Critical Support of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Election 2016, George Wallace, HIllary Clinton, Richard Nixon
Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »
October 18, 2016
Russian intelligence services are accused of waging cyber-warfare by releasing embarrassing Hillary Clinton e-mails through Wikileaks.
There is no direct evidence of where Wikileaks got the Clinton e-mails, but the Russians have the capability and the motive to hack her system.
Would this be an act of war? I for one would welcome war by means of weaponized truth.
If revealing accurate information about your geopolitical enemy is a form of warfare, I think escalation of this kind of warfare would be a good thing and not a bad thing.
I think the NSA and the CIA should retaliate by arranging the release of damaging secret information about Vladimir Putin—maybe through Wikileaks as a form of poetic justice.
In fact, there are those who think they already have done so, through the Panama Papers leak
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Tags:Cyber-Warfare, HIllary Clinton, Internet, Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin, Wikileaks
Posted in Technology, War and Peace | 1 Comment »
October 18, 2016
Hat tip for the video to peteybee.
Tariq Ali is a distinguished British left-wing writer, born in Pakistan, who has lived in London for the past 50 or so years. In this commentary, he sums up the issues in the U.S. election calmly, objectively and accurately.
He refutes progressives who say that anybody who fails to support Hillary Clinton is objectively a supporter of Donald Trump.
It is as if the two leading candidates were Richard Nixon and George Wallace, and leading liberal politicians and newspapers accused anybody who criticized Nixon of being pro-Wallace.
My great fear is not that Trump will win the current election, but that he and his supporters will become the main alternatives to the status quo.
There is a real possibility Hillary Clinton will blunder into nuclear war with Russia. Even if that can be avoided, we can expect more military intervention and failure to cope with the next recession. Her policies will make the Trump movement stronger—unless progressives can offer a better way.
Tags:Donald Trump, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton, Tariq Ali
Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »
October 3, 2016
Back in 2006, Donald Trump said he was sort of looking forward to the coming housing crash, because he could cash in—presumably by buying up distressed properties.
However, Trump didn’t do anything to cause the housing crash. In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s benefactor and social friend, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, not only benefited from it, but helped to bring it about.
His firm bought up subprime mortgages. That meant lenders could make “liar’s loans” they knew would never be paid back, and eliminate their risk by selling them to Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs converted the mortgages into securities, like stocks or bonds, and sold them on the open market. They got rating agencies to label the securities as high quality investments, even though Goldman Sachs management knew they weren’t.
They made other investments based on the assumption that the market would crash and the securities would become worthless.
Other Wall Street companies did similar things, but Goldman Sachs was a leader. All this seems like financial fraud to any normal person, but the Obama administration decided not to prosecute.
All this happened when Lloyd Blankfein was CEO of Goldman Sachs. He became CEO in 2006 and before that was chief operating officer.
Goldman Sachs has given Hillary Clinton $675,000 for making three speeches, and husband Bill Clinton $1.55 million in speech fees.
The firm’s employees as a group are among the top five contributors to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
Goldman Sachs also hosted the Clinton Global Initiative; the video above shows a picture of Hillary Clinton and Lloyd Blankfein at a CGI meeting.
How likely is it that a Clinton administration would prosecute Goldman Sachs officials for financial fraud? How likely is it that a Clinton administration would bring financial malpractice under control? The likelihood is next to zero, in my opinion.
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Tags:Financial fraud, Goldman Sachs, HIllary Clinton, Housing Crash, Lloyd Blankfein, subprime mortgage crisis, Wall Street, Wall Street crash
Posted in Politics, The 1% and the 99% | Leave a Comment »
September 27, 2016
In last night’s debate, Hillary Clinton demonstrated that she is more fit to be President than Donald Trump in terms of temperament, experience and understanding of the issues.
She is able to rule her emotions. She has the background knowledge required of a world leader. She would not be a national embarrassment to the United States on the world stage.
But I don’t think these qualities will, in fact, make her a good President. They will make her a more effective evil.
Compared to Trump, she would face fewer obstacles in leading the United States into war, and she would be better able to defuse opposition to Wall Street and the monopolization of wealth by a tiny elite.
Trump, by reason of his inexperience, ignorance, lack of self-control and lack of allies in the Washington establishment, would be easier to stymie—which is not to say that a Trump administration would be harmless.
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Tags:Donald Trump, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton, More Effective Evil, Presidential Debates
Posted in Politics | Leave a Comment »
September 21, 2016
Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand White People by Jason Johnson for The Root.
Progressives Are Targets of Hillary’s ‘Basket of Deplorables’ Speech by John V. Wash for Counterpunch.
Donald Trump tries to reassure supporters they’re not really racist. Hillary Clinton tries to reassure supporters it’s okay to be elitist.
The Coming European Debt Wars by Michael Hudson for Defend Democracy Press.
The European Union is in crisis because it insists on repayment of debts that are too great to ever be repaid.
An Anniversary of Shame by Michael Hirsch for POLITICO.
Some in the CIA say the “war on terror” could have been won in six months if the U.S. government had not given “regime change” priority over capturing or killing Osama bin Laden.
Tags:Deplorables, Donald Trump, European Debt Crisis, HIllary Clinton, Osama bin Laden
Posted in Economy, Politics, Race and Racism, Terrorism, The Passing Scene, War and Peace | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2016
These linked articles provide worthwhile information and food for thought. I don’t necessarily agree with the writers in all respects.
If Libertarian Gary Johnson Was President, Here’s What Would Happen to the U.S. Economy by Emily Stewart for The Street.
If Donald Trump Was President, Here’s What Would Happen to the U.S. Economy by Emily Stewart for The Street.
If Hillary Clinton Is Elected President, Here’s What Will Happen to the U.S. Economy by Leon Lazaroff for The Street.
What Jill Stein, the Green presidential candidate, wants to do to America by Max Ehrenfreund for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
What Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee for president, wants to do to America by Max Ehrenfreund for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
What Donald Trump wants to do to America by Max Ehrenfrend and Jim Tankersley for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
What Hillary Clinton would do to America by Max Ehrenfreund and Jim Tankersley for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
Is Jill Stein Worth Voting For? by Robert Nielsen for Whistling in the Wind.
Could Gary Johnson Be Relevant in 2016? by Robert Nielsen for Whistling in the Wind.
Tags:Donald Trump, Election 2016, Gary Johnson, HIllary Clinton, Jill Stein
Posted in Politics, Public Policy | Leave a Comment »
August 31, 2016
During the presidential primaries, Clinton supporters were prone to downplay the importance of economic inequality.
Black people, they said, were only concerned about racism and racial discrimination, not the gap between rich and poor.
But a Pew Research Center survey indicates that economic inequality is in fact the top issue among African American voters.
The survey indicates that 77% of American black voters view the gap between rich and poor as a very big problem, followed by crime (68%), with relations between racial and ethnic groups coming in third (61%).
Black Americans are much more concerned about crime than white Americans, which should not be surprising, because, as a group, they are much more likely to be victims of crime.
Interestingly, black Americans are less worried about immigration than white Americans, or even Hispanic Americans, are.
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Tags:Donald Trump, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton, Pew Research Center, Political Poll, Rich and Poor
Posted in Inequality, Politics | 2 Comments »
August 30, 2016
To do good is noble. To teach others to do good is nobler, and less work. ==Mark Twain
Most of the controversy over the Clinton Foundation is whether Hillary Clinton ever used her political position to so anybody a favor because that person made a donation to the foundation.
I think this would be hard to prove, unless I had the power to read Clinton’s mind and the minds of her donors.
I myself don’t think that Clinton or the foundation ever took a specific cash payment for a specific favor rendered. The gifts, like Clinton’s Wall Street speaking fees, are just a way in which the world’s rich and powerful solidify their relationships.
What Amy Sterling Casil and other investigators have shown is how little the world’s poor and needy have benefited from all this.
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Tags:Charity, Clinton Foundation, HIllary Clinton, Philanthropy
Posted in The Passing Scene | Leave a Comment »
August 24, 2016
Amy Sterling Casil wrote an excellent series of articles for Medium about what the Clinton Foundation, which takes in as much money as the March of Dimes, actually spends its money on.
There is a lot to dig through, but, in summary, she described the foundation’s business model as follows:
- Take in as much money as possible, by whatever means.
- Expend as little money as possible on anything other than what the Principals want to spend money on, typically self-promotion and world travel.
- Take credit for stuff somebody told you they do. Avoid expending funds on any outside activities.
Source: Amy Sterling Casil — Medium
Charity Navigator, an organization that rates the effectiveness of charities, does not rate the Clinton Foundation because of lack of information. Casil contrasted it to the Carter Foundation, which does good work and is scrupulously documented.
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Tags:Charity, Clinton Foundation, HIllary Clinton, Philanthropy
Posted in The Passing Scene | 1 Comment »
August 15, 2016
My parents were New Deal Democrats, and I was brought up to revere the memory of Franklin Roosevelt and to believe that the Democrats were the party of working people.
But a strange thing happened in American politics during the past 20 years. Blue-collar workers and high school graduates have become the base of the Republican Party, while college-educated professionals are now the base of the Democratic Party.
As recently as 1992, when Bill Clinton ran against George H.W. Bush, he had a huge lead among workers earning less than $50,000 a year, and high school graduates and dropouts. The elder Bush won by a similarly large margin among workers earning $100,000 a year or more, and narrowly carried college graduates.
In contrast, a CNN poll conducted right after the 2016 conventions gives Hillary Clinton a 23 percent lead among college graduates and an 18 percent lead among voters earning more than $50,000 a year. Donald Trump is competitive among voters earning less than $50,000 a year and has a 26 percent lead among whites with high school educations or less.
This isn’t because Republicans actually represent the interests of working people. Leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan—and including Donald Trump—still believe that the key to prosperity is deregulation and tax cuts for rich people, policies which have been tried and failed for the past 25 years.
But Trump, in his saner moments, at least talks about the concerns of working people. Hillary Clinton at the moment seems more interested in reaching out to conservatives and anti-Trump Republicans.
My guess is that she will win in November, probably in a landslide, based on an alliance of racial and ethnic minorities, women and college-educated white professionals, plus the disgust of middle-road voters with Trump’s antics.
But if she governs in the interests of Wall Street, as her political record and donor list indicate she will, Republicans could reinvent themselves as champions of the working class.
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Tags:Bill Clinton, Democratic Party, Democrats and Republicans, Donald Trump, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton, Political realignment, Republican Party, Republicans and Democrats, Working class, Working people
Posted in Politics | Leave a Comment »
August 15, 2016
Many Americans are suffering because of the loss of good jobs during the last 20 years.
This is largely due to bi-partisan government policies that began in the late 1990s. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and later trade agreements, in the name of free trade, limited the power of national governments to regulate banks in the public interest.
Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 allowed banks to engage in risky investments, but retained the U.S. government’s guarantee of individual deposits. This was part of an overall economic policy, which continued under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, of deregulating financial institutions, bailing them out when they failed, refusing to enforce the anti-trust laws and refusing to prosecute financial fraud.
Concentration of wealth destroys the mass consumer market, which was the source of American prosperity during most of the 20th century. It means that what economic activity there is goes to serve the needs and wishes of the upper 10 percent or upper 1 percent of the population, which can be done without high wages or full employment.
These were the conditions that led to the 2008 financial crash and probably will lead to a worse financial crash to come.
Eventually someone — either a great statesman or a great demagogue — will emerge to change all this. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump is that leader.
Hillary Clinton, whose personal income and campaign contributions depend on these powerful institutions, cannot be expected to fix the problem. Neither can Donald Trump. While Trump has criticized corporate trade agreements, the rest of his economic program is lower taxes on the rich, deregulation of business and economic austerity, which will make conditions even worse.
LINK
The Day After Election Day by Rob Urie for Counterpunch.
Tags:Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Glass Steagall Repeal, HIllary Clinton, NAFTA
Posted in Economy, Public Policy, The 1% and the 99% | Leave a Comment »
August 9, 2016
Jill Stein is a fraud. Check out her list of campaign contributors per the FEC. The top five donations are from corporate interests — AON, Xoom Global Money Transfer, IBM, Thoughtworks, and UPS. Would Bernie take money from any of these?
Source: Daily Kos
Jill Stein
This sounds bad, doesn’t it? Corporations are barred from making contributions directly, but the Vote Smart web site editors track the affiliations of individual contributors—which can be top level executives or rank-and-file workers.
The answer to the question is that Bernie Sanders would have taken $27 donations from employees of any of these organizations.
Here are the facts.
Vote Smart reported that Jill Stein has raised $859,155 so far in this election. The top affiliations of contributors were:
- $2,700 from AON, an insurance company.
- $2,600 from Xoom Global Money Transfer
- $2,000 from IBM Corp.
- $2,000 from Thoughtworks
- $1,550 from UPS.
Does that seem like big money? Compare this with Hillary Clinton, who has raised $264 million—more than 300 times as much. The top affiliations of her contributors were:
- $641,593 from the University of California
- $432,615 from Emily’s List, which supports feminist and women candidates.
- $426,910 from Alphabet Inc. (Google)
- $414,532 from Morgan & Morgan, a law firm specializing in personal injury cases.
- $330,433 from Morgan Stanley.
Vote Smart reported that Donald Trump has raised $89 million. The top affiliations of his contributors are:
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Tags:Campaign Contributions, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Gary Johnson, Green Party, HIllary Clinton, Jill Stein
Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »
August 8, 2016
It’s a good thing we have photographic evidence of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump being in the same room at the same time.
Otherwise you could really convince me that after a blowout electoral loss on Nov. 8, “Trump” will walk onstage and pull off a rubber Scooby-Doo-type mask to reveal that it was really Bill Clinton all along, acting like the dumbest candidate in the world, just to guarantee that Hillary Clinton got into the White House.
The real Donald Trump is somewhere tied up in a Brooklyn, N.Y., basement, guarded 24-7 by Clinton surrogates, wondering why he’s allowed food and drink but no access to Twitter.
That’s more believable than the idea that out of all of their options, Republicans nominated a Gold Star-family-attacking, non-party-endorsing, baby-kicker-outer to face off against an ethically challenged policy wonk who barely connects to her own party’s base.
Source: Jason Johnson | The Root
In the early days of Donald Trump’s candidacy, I never thought he would get the Republican nomination. I thought he would soon do or say something so offensive and outrageous that his followers would turn against him.
I’m still waiting for that to happen.
The daily news cycle seems to go like this.
- Donald Trump says some shocking and offensive thing.
- Washington press corps and respectable politicians denounce Trump for shocking and offensive thing.
- Donald Trump refuses to back down from shocking and offensive thing.
- Next day: Donald Trump says or does another shocking and offensive thing.
What Trump manages to do with all this is to keep public attention focused on himself. He says so many shocking and offensive things that it is hard for the ordinary busy person, who has a job and family responsibilities, to keep them straight. What remains is an impression of Trump as a strong person who doesn’t back down.
Hard-core of Trump supporters believe anything and everything he says, including that President Obama is a secret Kenyan-born Muslim socialist and that Muslim sharia law is a real and present danger to the USA. There is no way to convince them of anything different because they are not interested in separating truth from falsehood, and have no criteria for doing so.
Their support is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls anti-fragile. No matter what Trump’s opponents do or don’t do, their faith in him grows stronger.
Another group supports Trump not on his merits, but because they think anything is better than the status quo. The more he outrages established politicians and journalists, the better they like it. The size of this group is a measure of the failure of American government during the past 15 or so years.
By the standards of the past, Trump would have been a fringe candidate, as would Bernie Sanders. Their strong showings are due less to their own qualities than to the discontent of the American public. I don’t think Trump supporters’ will cease to be angry at the status quo because Trump makes disrespectful remarks about a Muslim Gold Star mother.
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Tags:Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton
Posted in Politics, The Lighter Side | 1 Comment »
August 6, 2016
The GOP defections to Team Hillary were already well underway by the time of last week’s Democratic National Convention, which featured endorsement speeches from billionaire ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg and other Republicans.
Since then Hewlett-Packard executive and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has come out for Clinton. So has Republican-leaning hedge fund billionaire Seth Karman and Republican Congressman Richard Hanna. A CNN poll showed that nearly one in four self-identified conservative voters said they would support Clinton over Trump.
From a tactical point of view, it makes sense for Clinton to welcome their support. But it poses a dangerous temptation for her – especially when, as is the case with Bloomberg, Whitman, and Klarman, it presumably comes with buckets full of campaign cash. She may see this support as a mandate to form something like a unity government with Republicans, a call to tack right toward the failed “centrism” and “bipartisanship” of the past several decades.
That would be a tragic error, but it would it follow a well-worn groove in recent American politics.
“Bipartisanship,” in this context, is the notion that government works best when corporate-backed politicians from both parties get together behind closed doors and decide what’s best for the country. The “bipartisan” ideology gave rise to Washington’s long obsession with deficit reduction at the expense of more pressing concerns. It nearly led to a cut in Social Security benefits, which would have been disastrous for millions of seniors, disabled people, and children. It is responsible for the government spending cuts that, as economist Robert Scott explains, have been largely responsible for the weakness and slow pace of our current recovery.
Source: Richard Eskow | Campaign for America’s Future
As my e-mail pen pal Bill Harvey pointed out, appeasing Republicans is not a “temptation” for Hillary Clinton. It is her default position. It is what she will do unless pressured to do otherwise.
The difference between an establishment Democrat such as Clinton and an establishment Republican such as Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan is that the Democrat depends on the votes of working people and therefore can be pressured to vote in their interests, provided this doesn’t threaten their wealthy donors, whereas the Republican will not vote in their interests in any case.
The pressure on Clinton would have to be unrelenting and uncompromising, and even then there is no certainty it would work.
LINK
As Republicans Defect, Will Clinton Be Tempted to Tack Right? by Richard Eskow for Campaign for American’s Future.
Tags:Bipartisanship, Election 2016, HIllary Clinton
Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »
August 5, 2016
As my friend John (Jack) Belli points out, five major parties are running candidates in this year’s election.
The five parties are the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties. They are “major” parties because their presidential candidates are on the ballots in at least 20 states and could in principle win a majority of the electoral votes.
In this post, I merely provide Wikipedia links to the five major parties and their candidates, as basic and more-or-less neutral sources of information. The links show that the three small parties are not only different from the two large parties, but very different from each other. In subsequent posts, I’ll compare and contrast their platforms on important issues.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
For President: Hillary Clinton.
For Vice-President: Tim Kaine.
REPUPLICAN PARTY
For President: Donald Trump.
For Vice-President: Mike Pence.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY
For President: Gary Johnson.
For Vice-President: William Weld.
GREEN PARTY
For President: Jill Stein.
For Vice-President: Ajamu Baraka.
CONSTITUTION PARTY
For President: Darrell Castle.
For Vice-President: Scott N. Bradley.
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Tags:Ajamu Baraka, Constitution Party, Darrell Castle, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Gary Johnson, Green Party, HIllary Clinton, Jill Stein, Libertarian Party, Mike Pence, Republican Party, Scott M. Bradley, Third Parties, Tim Kaine, William Weld
Posted in Politics | Leave a Comment »
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