Why Hillary?

(from never yet melted)



I get why someone would not vote for Donald Trump.  Heck, I've written about it myself here, here, here, and here, among other places.  It's why my bumper sticker for this election remains:


But why would anyone vote for Hillary Clinton?  Seriously.

Not that the third-party choices are much better.  The Libertarian candidate for President is a pothead (I'm not kidding, he really is a stoner), who doesn't think religious liberty is included within the concept of . . . liberty.  The Libertarian candidate for Vice-President says he wants more Supreme Court Justices like Stephen Breyer and senators like Susan Collins (R-ME).  Now, whatever else you may think of Breyer and Collins, they usually line up on the side of more, not less, government control, so the Libertarian ticket sure doesn't seem libertarian this year.  And then you have the Green Party, with its Putin supporting Presidential candidate, and completely loony party platform, which includes a call for the destruction of Israel.

But back to Hillary.

Is it her qualifications or experience?

Her first big public policy job was serving as Healthcare & Insurance Reform czar under her husband.  She managed to perform so ineptly that a Democratic-controlled Congress refused to bring her proposal up for a vote, was a major factor in the 1994 loss of Congress to the Republicans (the last time the GOP had controlled the House was in 1954), and ended up with her husband relegating her to making tea and cookies in the White House, and being sent off on ceremonial foreign trips, which, to be fair, gave her the material to write her best-selling book, It Takes A Village To Raise Your Kid, But Keep Your G--d--- Hands Off Mine.

And then she went on to become the junior senator from New York, where she was responsible for such groundbreaking legislation as . . . . ????  Oh, and on the most important issues during her tenure, she supported the invasion of Iraq and opposed the Surge (the latter of which President Obama cited in 2011 as creating a stable and secure Iraq, thus enabling him to withdraw the remaining American military force).

Was it when she was Secretary of State?  Let's leave aside the general foreign policy chaos of the Obama Administration and just focus on her two key initiatives.  The first was the "reset" with Russia, designed to restore good relations after the supposed mess George Bush made of them (and about which Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney).  How's that gone?
(Hillary with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov & the reset button she presented to him)
(from drichswier.com)

The second was the overthrow of Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya, for which Hillary was the primary advocate within the administration.  The result?  Ghaddafi, who had been cowed by Bush's 2003 Iraq invasion, surrendering his nuclear program and no longer supporting terrorism, was deposed and killed and Libya reverted to a state of anarchy, becoming a hotbed for terrorism, as well as leading to the creation of an ISIS mini-state within the country.  Gosh, it's almost like we overthrew Ghaddafi without a plan about what to do next.

David Burge summed it up best:

Hillary has foreign policy experience like Typhoid Mary had nursing experience. 

Is it because she would be the first woman President?

She seems like an odd flagbearer for the cause under the circumstances.

Hillary Clinton would never have had the opportunity to run for President if it she had not ridden the coattails of her more personally, and politically, popular husband.  Or, as a commenter on the Althouse Blog recently put it, regarding Bill Clinton's convention speech:

Bill Clinton had a very difficult job last night: He was tasked with making it seem like Hillary would have been the nominee even if she wasn't Mrs Bill Clinton, the wife of the former Governor of Arkansas and the former President of the US.

And she is in the position of having to thank Bill for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, which  removed the stain of her healthcare failure, catapulted her back into the public eye, and allowed her to regain popularity by playing Tammy Wynette, standing by her man.

In the course of that defence, she exposed the rotting underpinnings of feminism, as many defended Bill since they liked his position on abortion, culminating in Gloria Steinem's announcement of the newly discovered "one-grope" rule.  In that respect, it was similar to the moment in 2008 when Barack Obama, realizing that his wealthy donors would enable him to swamp John McCain in fundraising, reneged (unlike McCain) on his pledge to rely on public financing for his campaign, thereby confirming that "campaign finance reform" was a tactical political issue for Democrats, not something based on principle. That was the moment it became clear that campaign finance reform is not really a serious issue of principle for Democratic politicians. 

But then, all this should not have been a surprise, since Hillary's built a consistent record, going back to her days in Arkansas, of enabling harsh and intimidating attacks on any woman who leveled accusations of sexual misbehavior against her husband, or even, for that matter, claims to have had consensual sex with Bill (also known as "bimbo eruptions", a term coined by her hatchet-woman, Betsey Wright).  For a more recent example of Hillary's compromised position on feminism, read Hillary Scrubs Sexual Assault Pledge After Allegations Against Bill Resurface.

Is it because of her positions on the issues?

If you believe in the Progressive, upside-down Constitution, in which all rights belong to the Government, except those it decides to delegate back to the people, you may be a lost cause.  But most people don't, so here goes.

Her position and Donald Trump's on what to do about ISIS are the basically the same.  Yeah, I was surprised too, but once I looked more carefully through the mishmash of Trump's bad grammar, half-sentences and bombastic speech patterns, it's the same.  No troops, bomb 'em a lot, have better intelligence, work with allies, though Donald shouts more when he says it.

As for the rest of her foreign policy, I can't find anything beyond bland platitudes.  Can you?

She wants the First Amendment changed so she can restrain your right to free speech and prevent political opponents from making films critical of her.  While most Progressives have tried to skate around the fact that the Citizens United case was about the government's attempt to suppress the rights of Americans to voluntarily come together and make a movie criticizing Hillary Clinton, Hillary has been open in her outrage that this was allowed to occur.   

On immigration, she's for open borders, and placing more downward pressure on lower wage American workers, including recent immigrants, a position particularly harmful for lower income African-Americans.  Why would someone want to create downward pressure on wages at the same time as they complain about inequality? Actually, it's not really a mystery.  From the political angle, Democrats are gambling they can bring in enough immigrants, naturalize them fast enough, make them dependent on the government and gain their votes to ensure a permanent Democratic majority, all before other lower income Americans realized they've been played.  And, by the way, if you parse through Donald Trump's word salad, you will realize he consistently promises the largest amnesty in American history.

And when it comes to illegal immigrants, if you are yearning for a return to the 1830s philosophy of John C Calhoun, you can join Hillary in supporting the nullification of federal law by sanctuary cities, where violent illegal immigrants are shielded from deportation. If you do, make sure to petition Yale University to allow Calhoun's name to remain on a building there. 

On economic policy, she favors pursuing ever more strongly the policies that gave us the city of Detroit or, for that matter, my state of Connecticut, with its massive unfunded liabilities to state employees, ever higher tax rates, and fleeing businesses and taxpayers. If you read the Democratic Party platform (I actually did), there is not one word about economic growth, it's all about redistribution.  They'll manage it as well as they are managing Obamacare.  Trust 'em.
(Detroit: Coming Everywhere! from bnet)

She's pledged to expand further the use of Executive Power.  Some of you children may not remember the old days, way back in 2007, when Progressives said Bush's use of Executive Power was taking us down the road to fascism.  I guess this time it's for a good cause; I believe it because President Obama said so.

Do you like choice?  Sorry, but if you're a lower income family seeking a better education for your children and would like to have alternatives to what's being served to you by the 1% of the educational establishment, Hillary says, "no soup for you" - you're stuck with whatever her donors from Big Education decide to give you.

Her vision is of an America divided by race, ethnicity and gender (or gender choice, if you prefer), in which all are expected to vote in accordance with their designated categories, rather than as thinking individuals, with jobs and education divided up accordingly.  For more on her flawed vision read What Would Otter Do?

Ask yourself, if the big cities we've been told are hot beds of racism have been run by Democrats for decades (the last Republican mayor in Chicago was 1932, Milwaukee 1908, Philadelphia 1952, Newark 1907, St Louis 1949, Detroit 1961, and the list goes on), and college campuses, controlled by Progressives for decades, festering pits of racism and sexual assault, doesn't it strike you there is something fundamentally wrong with Hillary's approach?


To solve all this, Hillary's promising a lot of free stuff.  Actually, it's not free, since you are going to pay for it (for more about why, read the section below on wealth and inequality).

When Hillary starts talking about pie in the sky and free stuff, just remember that seven years ago, Barack Obama promoted Obamacare with a litany of lies (or "incorrect promises" as the New York Times referred to them, when even that stalwart defender of the President was forced to admit they weren't true):

If you like your doctors you can keep them!
If you like your health care plan you can keep it!
Your family will save $2500 a year!

Don't fall for it again.  Once can happen to anyone.  Twice, and you're a fool.  Don't let them make you a fool.

Is it because of her record of trust and transparency? 

Who does Hillary fear most; the American public or our foreign enemies?

When she became Secretary of State, Hillary had a choice; should she keep her email correspondence in compliance with law and regulation, and be willing to risk that, at some future date, some of it might become available to her fellow Americans, or should she try to avoid disclosure to the American public and accept a greater risk that foreign enemies of America could access the information?  She chose to avoid disclosure to the American public, and today, most intelligence analysts believe Vladimir Putin has all the emails, including the ones she destroyed in defiance of the rules (some of which, it turned out, contained relevant material, despite her claims).  And let's not forget that, as the FBI and Inspector General showed us, everything she told us about this matter since it became public was a deliberate lie. If you believed her, don't you feel used?

Compounding her previous lies, Hillary insisted the FBI found she was being truthful about her earlier statement, a claim the Washington Post awarded "Four Pinocchio's", its top rating for untruthfulness, writing:

"Clinton is cherry-picking statements by Comey to preserve her narrative about the unusual setup of a private email server. This allows her to skate past the more disturbing findings of the FBI investigation,"   

The risks posed by the compromised security of Clinton's emails aren't just theoretical.  One of the names discussed in Hillary's emails was of an Iranian scientist who had provided information on that country's nuclear program to American intelligence, and was executed upon his return to Iran.  On the other hand, we all have to be ready to make sacrifices, and Hillary has always been willing to sacrifice others.

There is no doubt she violated government procedures.  I think it also clear it was an indictable offense as I wrote here.  But that is was deliberately done to get around the Freedom of Informationn Act, there is no doubt.  Read the factual conclusions reached by FBI Director Comey, and the report of the State Department's Inspector General, the latter summed up by the Washington Post as "concluding that she failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private email server and that department staff would not have given its blessing because of the 'security risks in doing so'".

Exit question:

Q. What does her decision on how to handle her emails say about how she views her fellow Americans?
A. She holds us in contempt.

The bigger issue is that Hillary's actions as Secretary of State are consistent with her personal history. Her health reform task force was run in secrecy.  She used a veil of secrecy, deception and defamation to cover up that the firing of the White House travel office staff was undertake at her direction and for political reasons.  The Rose Law firm billing records mysteriously disappeared for two years. The last time she held a full press conference was in December 2015, which is simply unbelievable in the middle of a Presidential campaign.  And, of course, for reasons that remain unclear she spun a web of lies about the motivation for the assault on the American mission in Benghazi, lies not just told to the public, but in her conversations with the family members of the four men who died, who she then went on to publicly disparage and dismiss when they contradicted her account.

And let me ask you; it's been reported from several sources that more than one US Attorney's office has opened an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.  Given the pace at which investigations occur, it is unlikely that any investigations would be completed by January 20, 2017.  If Hillary Clinton is elected, she will appoint the Attorney General for whom US Attorneys work.  Do you think Hillary will do the right thing, and have a nonpartisan Special Counsel appointed, vested with the full powers of the Attorney General, to oversee the investigations (as George W Bush did in the Valerie Plame case)?  Yeah, I thought so.  Me too.

Do you really want to know what is going on in your government?  Democrats already have an advantage.  Most of the bureaucracy is staffed by Democrats, making leaks less likely.  The Obama administration has scared those who might leak by launching more prosecutions for leaks than the combined total of every administration in prior American history.  Indeed, most of the government's Inspector Generals wrote a letter to Congress in 2014, objecting to the Administration's obstructionist tactics that blocked investigation of wrong-doing in government agencies that might embarrass the President.  I'm still waiting for the 27-part series in the New York Times about this unprecedented protest.

If Hillary Clinton is elected you will have the least transparent administration in history.  On this point, if no other, Trump has a distinct advantage, for voters.  He will be so hated by the permanent government, they will go running to the press on every occasion he does something they have the slightest problem with.

Is it because of her position on wealth and inequality?

Exhibit 1:  George Soros, the great speculator, convicted of trading on insider information, the leading funder of Progressive and Leftist causes, who gave Congressional testimony supporting Dodd-Frank because of the need for greater transparency in the financial sector and who, when it passed, promptly took his hedge fund private to avoid public disclosure.  His lack of transparency shouldn't come as a surprise, as he runs the ironically named Open Society Foundation, dedicated to promoting his nihilistic philosophy, and possibly the least transparent "public interest" foundation in the Western World.

Exhibit 2: Warren Buffet, a vocal Hillary supporter, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a company designed as a tax dodge, who loves to proclaim that his tax rate is lower than his secretary's and an example of why taxes need to be raised on the rich.  In reality, unlike those who work for a salary or hourly wage, Warren can control how he receives his income.  He could solve his lament very simply by taking more of his income as salary and less as long-term capital gains.  He doesn't. 

After making their proclamations about higher taxes and inequality, Soros and Buffet go home and have a good laugh about how they fooled the rubes.

Exhibit 3: Remember the Great Recession of 2008-9 and the bad guys on Wall Street?  Dick Fuld, CEO at Lehman Brothers, was a yuuge contributor to the Democratic Party.  Jaime Dimon at JP Morgan is a Democrat and his wife a major fundraiser for Hillary.  Citigroup operates as a virtual subsidiary of the Democratic Party, the place where Democrats are hired for some nebulous position with a big salary and bonus, allowing them to replenish their wealth, before plunging back into "public service" - see, for instance, Jack Lew (current Treasury Secretary) and Peter Orszag (former OMB Director).  Even Lloyd Blankfein, over at Goldman Sachs (you know, the company that likes to frequently pay Hillary $225,000 a pop for her, no doubt, insightful speeches), is a Democrat.

And what about the hedge funds?  Hedge funds get favored treatment under the tax code.  In 2007, Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Dodd (D-Countrywide Financial), stopped an effort by their fellow Democrats to change this by pointing out the hedge funds were big contributors to the party.  And how does that look in 2016?  As of now, hedge funds have contributed more than $45 million to Hillary and less than $20,000 to Trump.  Maybe that's because Trump is calling for them to be taxed at higher rates.

And what about the Clinton Foundation, a scam designed to rake in millions and provide the Clintons with a wonderful lifestyle (taking in about $500 million since 2010, and spending less than 15% on grants), all because donors can leverage Bill and Hillary's influence, and it's a game others know they need to play because, after all, "she might be President one day, and we can't tick her off"?  As somebody recently said on Twitter:

"the difference between Hillary and normal people is that when she gets an email from a rich Nigerian proposing a deal, it’s actually from a rich Nigerian, proposing a deal"

Ask yourself:

Why did Hillary hold a $100,000 a couple fundraising dinner, raising $3 million, on Martha's Vineyard last night?

Why are the states with the greatest income inequality (New York and Connecticut), long-time Democratic strongholds?

Why are 13 of the 15 wealthiest Congressional districts in America represented by Democrats?

Why are the three U.S. counties with the highest median income adjacent to the District of Columbia, and why are seven of the top twelve counties located in the Washington DC metropolitan area?

Why does California, another Progressive stronghold (with a dominance so complete, they were able to change primary election laws so there is no Republican candidate on the ballot for US Senate this November), have the highest poverty rate of any state?  I remember when California was called the Golden State; I guess it still is for the Hollywood crowd and the libertine (not libertarian) oligarchs of tech.  Under the Obama Administration, it's become hard to tell if Google is a government subsidiary, or if the government is a subsidiary of Google (see, for instance here, or the Administration rewriting the net neutrality rule to meet Google's competitive demands).

Why are the 1%, those who hold wealth and/or power, on Wall St, in the entertainment industry, technology, education, the news media, and the big foundations like Rockefeller and Ford, supporting Hillary?  Because they know they'll be just fine.  This is about people with protected wealth and entrenched power, planning to take money from you to give to other folks in order to buy their votes.

Bottom line, if you are not super wealthy and not poor, you are being played for a chump by Hillary.  After the election, she'll be coming for your money, because with all those promises she's making about free stuff - someone is going to have to pay. It won't be Buffet or Soros.

Is it because she's likeable?

Some think she's likeable enough.