I’ll Support Hillary, BUT… Making the case against Clinton (without helping Republicans)
February 8, 2016

 
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First, the obligatory disclaimer: Though I am a Bernie supporter, if Hillary is the nominee, I will vote for her (2017 update: I didn’t. Events changed and I ended up writing in Bernie.) Quite frankly, I resent even having to say that. My Democratic bona fides have never been in question, but for some reason, every criticism of Hillary Clinton has been deemed “sexist” and her critics “misogynists” (but for some reason, I can’t accuse them of being “anti-Semites” for attacking Bernie.) In 2004, I was an outspoken supporter of Howard Dean… an unabashed & unapologetic Liberal. I made the case for choosing Dean over his rivals, but when John Kerry became the Party’s nominee, I campaigned for him, even volunteering at the local DNC, making and distributing Kerry yard signs and manning the front desk at my local DNC campaign office. But before that, no one ever accused me of launching “personal attacks” against Kerry for questioning just how Liberal he truly was. In 2008, my preferred candidate was former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson because after eight years of George Bush’s war-mongering, I wanted a diplomat for president. I must admit I’ve never been a fan of Hillary Clinton because she has always been a “hawk” when it comes to using military force. Even now, as she tells audiences she would only use force “as a last resort, not first”, she is inconsistent (more on that below.) Yet, despite her vote for the Iraq War (a misnomer), when Richardson dropped out after the New Hampshire primary, I threw my support to Clinton, in part because of her history of supporting “Universal Health Care” (I also foolishly believed this nation was not ready to elect a “black” president, and also some concern his nomination would drive racist Republicans to the polls en masse to defeat him.) But as the race tightened and her “inevitable win” started to look less & less “inevitable”, her rhetoric became more and more aggressive as she saw the presidency slipping away. The capper was March 3, 2008 when she told reporters that “[Republican front-runner] John McCain” was “more prepared to be president” than Barack Obama. That day, I switched my support to Barack Obama and never looked back. I have not seen anything since that demonstrates she won’t throw fellow Democrats under the bus if she thinks it will help her politically. To the contrary, she has only reinforced that belief.

When it comes to foreign policy, Hillary has always been a hawk. During the 2008 campaign, she was already saber-rattling against “Iran’s nuclear program”, threatening military action if they didn’t abandon their pursuit, to distinguish herself from Senator Obama who advocated “negotiations” (aka: “diplomacy”):
 


 
Then upon winning the presidency, Obama made her his chief diplomat (a decision that still baffles me), directing her to open a channel to begin negotiations with Iran… the very thing she criticized him for and is now taking credit for as making Obama’s historic nuclear agreement possible. YET, while she was Secretary of State, she was STILL publicly denouncing Iran as “a state sponsor of terrorism” and pursuing nuclear weapons… which might be true, but isn’t something your chief diplomat should be saying publicly when they’re trying to bring them to the negotiating table. Arguably, her adversarial rhetoric endangered the very diplomatic victory she now seeks to take credit for, and had she stayed on as “Secretary of State”, I’m not so confident we would have achieved the first disarmament agreement between the U.S. & Iran in nearly 40 years. In 2010, she told an audience:
 

“The United States is committed to pursuing [a] diplomatic path. But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

 

Translation: “We’re using diplomacy now, but don’t push your luck.”

In 2014, barely a year & a half out of office, Hillary joined with Republicans… siding with John McCain (once again?) against her former boss… to publicly criticize President Obama for failing to “help [ie: arm] the Syrian rebels” to mitigate the growing crisis in Syria (note, a significant number of Syrian rebels turned out to be ISIS.) She is now running as the best person to continue President Obama’s policies.

During the CNN “Town Hall” two weeks ago, Clinton responded to criticism that she accepted $650,000 in speaking fees from Goldman-Sachs. Her defense was that “at the time [she] didn’t know if [she’d] be running for president”. So then, why was she siding with Republicans to publicly criticize her former boss in 2014? Who was she trying to appeal to? Republicans have admitted that their BenghaziTM “investigation” was all about derailing her inevitable run for president. Even they knew she was going to run. If you aren’t planning to run for president, why would you care what Republicans think? Was she trying to get on the good side of the BenghaziTM Committee? If so, how naive can you get? And who wants a president who will turn on their “friends” for personal gain?

She is still calling for a “No Fly Zone” over Syria, something both Sanders AND President Obama oppose. Not only is it provocative, but Russian fighter jets have performed some of those bombing runs. Do we start shooting down Russian MIG’s and start WWIII? Clinton says she would only go to war “as a last resort”, but foolish policies could push you into something whether you want it or not.

Her first instincts always seem to tend towards “threats of force” first. Even her explanation two weeks ago as to why she voted in 2002 to give President Bush unilateral authority to declare war against Iraq… “to give him leverage in order to finish the inspections”… raises concern. Check that photo at the start of this column. It’s a copy of the ad MoveOn.org ran the month before the invasion of Iraq. It points out inspections WERE working and warned what might happen if we invade Iraq (with eerie accuracy.) It’s not like no one knew what might happen when she cast that vote. Hillary thinks her mistake was “trusting Bush” (already disqualifying in my book), NOT “threatening to go to war” when it clearly wasn’t necessary. I was one of the millions in early 2003 protesting the idea of invading Iraq.

Example: During that Town Hall two weeks ago [ibid “explanation” above], a young father expressed his concern of Clinton having “a history of interventionist foreign policy”. She assured him that she would only use force as a “last resort, not first”, but she keeps advocating actions that could inadvertently draw us into a war whether she wants it or not. IN THE SAME BREATH, after attempting to quell this mans fears of being too “interventionist”, she told him:
 

“I will not send American combat troops to Iraq or Syria. That is off the table. That would be a terrible mistake. We will continue to use Special Forces, and we have to because of the kinds of threats we face.”

 

Now, if sending “Special Forces” into another country isn’t “interventionist”, I don’t know what is. Remember the law of unintended consequences. What if those “Special Forces” are killed or captured? Once again, we find ourselves drawn into an unwanted military conflict despite claims of wanting to avoid military conflict. In 2004, John Kerry… the man who would later replace Clinton as Secretary of State… argued that “terrorism should be treated as a law-enforcement issue, not a military one”, a position that I still agree with to this day and think we would be MUCH further along if only we had taken his advice. THAT is the voice of a diplomat that seeks to avoid war.

Consider this: By the end of the next president’s first term, children who weren’t even BORN on 9/11 could be fighting in Afghanistan against other children who hadn’t even been born yet on 9/11. If your goal in choosing a president is to see the U.S. finally extricated from the Middle East, Hillary is not your candidate.

I add this without comment: Hillary Clinton Calls Henry Kissinger a Friend, Praises His Commitment to Democracy.
 

But “foreign policy” isn’t the only area in which I have grave concerns about Secretary Clinton. “Economic policy” is also a major issue with which we disagree.

Sanders has made “Campaign finance reform” a big part of his campaign (no SuperPAC). As mentioned above, Hillary has accepted over $650,000 just from Goldman-Sachs (and perhaps as much as $25 Million in 2014 alone) then “dared” anyone to find “evidence” she changed her position on an issue because or it.

Whether someone changes a particular stated position on an issue just because they were paid to speak is not the point. That rarely happens. Clinton has not been in office since early 2013, and hasn’t voted on any legislation since 2008, so daring people to find evidence of her changing her vote based on who gave her money is a safe challenge. No, the concern is not that she “flipped” a stated position after being paid to speak, it’s that money will influence her position on FUTURE legislation. When a company pays you that much money to speak privately, it’s for one of two reasons:

  1. Either they consider you an expert that will teach them how to make more money.
  2.  
    – OR –
     

  3. They are hoping to buy *influence*.

Now you tell me, do you think a major Wall Street investment firm was looking for “investment strategies” from a former “Secretary of State”? Or do you think they were hoping to “influence” the presumptive Democratic nominee and likely “next president of the United States”? (more on who is contributing to the Clinton Campaign below.)

McDonald-Douglas doesn’t advertise during the Sunday News Shows because they’re hoping to sell me a Stealth Bomber, they do it because they know their money makes the network less likely to criticize them.

Something else that bugs the hell out of me:
 

Hillary's 2016 Logo

 

There is NO doubt in my mind that Hillary’s “Red Arrow” logo was an intentional subliminal reminder to GOP voters of her Conservative tendencies. I mean, how does one NOT see that when asked to approve the logo? Does anyone believe for one second the designers of that logo… an expert team of graphic designers that spend millions researching how the public responds to the images they see… didn’t know EXACTLY what they were doing when they came up with that design? I noticed the moment I first saw it. And once the Hillary Campaign started taking criticism for the design, first they denied its obvious implication, and then suddenly started offering attendees at her rallies an alternative poster using a blue arrow (but still pointing right):
 

Both Red and Blue arrows

 

And this is the Hillary campaign last Saturday in New Hampshire:
 

Only blue arrows now
Only blue arrows in NH

 

Tell me again that the arrow’s color & direction is just a coincidence.
 

Hillary has a history of voting with Conservatives. She opposed Same-Sex marriage, even taking to the Senate floor to declare she believed “marriage was between a man & a woman.” During last Friday’s New Hampshire debate, she (albeit reluctantly) restated her continued support for the Death Penalty (which affects minority voters disproportionately.) She voted for the Patriot Act in 2001, and again for the “revised” Patriot Act 2 in 2006. It was her husband who undid “Glass-Steagall”… enacted by FDR to prohibit banks from gambling with depositor’s money… in a futile bid to appease Republicans when they were trying to impeach him, so as you might expect, she is unwilling to admit that was a mistake or call for its reinstatement. However, during Friday’s debate, she did call for a “twenty-first century” version of the act. She originally supported the Keystone XL pipeline but now claims to oppose it. And perhaps most famously, she called the TPP (“Trans-Pacific Partnership”)… supported by every GOP candidate and most Republicans in Congress… “the Gold-Standard” of trade agreements before deciding she was against it just last year.

She says she wants “Universal Health care”, but then spent the two weeks leading up to the Iowa Caucus to attack Bernie Sanders for advocating a “Single Payer Universal Health Care system”, even going as far as to say Single-Payer will “never ever” happen, continuing to suggest a President Sanders would dismantle The Affordable Care Act before replacing it with an entirely new system built from scratch. She has been attacking Sanders on his support of some seemingly “pro-gun” legislation, singling out a vote to “allow firearms on Amtrak” trains. But she is knowingly committing the sin of omission by leaving out the fact that the law only permits firearms to be transported as “checked luggage” in the baggage compartment or trains, not carried around by passengers (Sanders comes from a rural state and hunters needed to be able to ship their weapons with them while traveling.) And during the New Hampshire debate, she made the disingenuous (and wholly Conservative) accusation that Bernie’s health care plan “would cost over a trillion dollars” (it wouldn’t.) As I pointed out above regarding her 2014 attack on Obama, Hillary has never been afraid to adopt Republican talking points to attack fellow Democrats for personal gain.

While touting her desire for “Clean Energy” to fight Global Warming, the Clinton campaign has yet to reveal her position on Fracking (even attending a fundraiser two weeks before Iowa in the headquarters of a major investor in Fracking) and her SuperPAC’s website brags about “Clinton’s aggressive pro-fracking record” [ibid]. When told her campaign received $150,000 from the oil & gas industry, she plead ignorance.

Most polls seem to indicate Clinton has the “African-American vote locked up”, in great part due to her husband being bestowed the label of “our first black president” for addressing minority issues. But Hillary may not be so worthy of their unquestioned support. During the 2008 race, she was the only candidate who refused to “retroactively reduce/repeal extended penalties of those convicted of using ‘crack’ cocaine vs ‘powdered’.” and she is presently only willing to consider “more research” on the legalization of medical marijuana despite a “sentencing disparity” that disproportional affects African-Americans. She opposes raising the Minimum Wage to $15/hour (only willing to go to $12) which affects more minorities than whites. And one might also wonder why the Private Prison industry is raising cash for the Clinton campaign (private prisons push for more & more “minimum sentencing” laws to fill up the prisons… and their coffers)… the scourge of African American voters.

In 2008, as the race tightened between her and then-Senator Obama, her attacks became more personal. I noted in the intro how she suggested John McCain was more ready to be president than Barack Obama… not once but twice, first stating McCain had more experience, and then dismissing Obama’s qualifications as nothing more than a speech he gave in 2002.” This is the same person now bemoaning criticism from Senator Sanders as “personal attacks”, and how “disappointed” she is that he has resorted to them. But as we are presently seeing, it appears she is quick to resort to misleading attacks and disparaging the character of her opponent as she sees the possibility of the presidency slipping away. I have no qualms against a “fighter”, but please don’t take pages from the Conservative playbook to do it (see: “Amtrak” above.)

Hillary IS a “Progressive”, though not exactly a strong “Liberal”. Her civil rights bona fides go back to 1972, when she investigated school discrimination in Dothan, Ala., for the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1980, she condemned prisoner abuses in Arkansas prior to her husband becoming governor. She had a “75% lifetime rating” with the ACLU prior to the 2008 election (though it took a bit of a nose-dive to just 67% in 2007 as she campaigned against Barack Obama for president (I’ll let you decide if that means anything.) Both she & Sanders have a 100% rating with NARAL Pro-Choice America and (while Senator) she had an 89% rating with the “Human Rights Campaign” (who endorsed her over Sanders with a 100% lifetime rating.) “Crowdpac”, the voter education website, rated Hillary at “6.5L” (or 65% Liberal) behind O’Malley (6.7L) and Sanders “7.6L” (for reference, Trump has a “0.4L” rating and Ted Cruz rates “9.5C”… 95% Conservative rating.)

Early last year, when people like me were urging Senator Sanders to enter the race, the thinking was “even if it is futile… with a Clinton victory already appearing inevitable… the idea of her running unopposed with no one there to push her to the Left was a distressing thought.” If nothing else, a competitive campaign would be good Debate-Prep for the General election. The last thing anyone wants is for their candidate to go in cold, having not participated in a “real” debate in nearly eight years. Simply forcing Hillary… with her Conservative tendencies… to track Left has already been a huge victory for the Sanders campaign.

Now, if it turns out Hillary wins the DNC nomination, as I stated in the intro, I will vote for her. I’m hoping my saying that doesn’t work against Sanders with people thinking the safe vote is Hillary since Bernie supporters have promised they’ll vote for her anyway. Bernie was right at the pre-New Hamphire debate last Friday that “both of us are 100x better on our worst day than anyone on the other side”, and the next president may end up nominating as many as THREE Supreme Court Justices (at least two of whom would be from the Liberal wing of the court.) I have FAR more faith in a President Hillary nominating a Progressive justice than a lunatic like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. Even the seemingly benign Marco Rubio has repeated his support for a “fetal personhood Amendment that would outlaw many forms of birth control and turn every miscarriage into a murder investigation.

Before Clinton supporters start attacking me, I’ve backed up every accusation with links & sources. I invite you to draw your own conclusions.
 


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February 8, 2016 · Admin Mugsy · 6 Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, fake scandals, myth busting, National Security, War

6 Responses

  1. Admin Mugsy - February 8, 2016

    Clinton doesn’t support the legalization of MJ (called for “more research” in NH debate), takes money from the Private Prison industry, and still supports the Death Penalty… all things that disproportionately affect minorities. They do themselves no favors by supporting Hillary.

  2. LGNTexas - February 8, 2016

    I didn’t support Hillary in 2008 but she is the only choice for me this year. With all of her flaws she is still better than anyone from the Republican side. Most of all, I am most concerned about Federal Court appointments, as a 7-2 court could conceivably reverse every progressive court decision going back to FDR. Hillary will appoint at least middle of the road judges. I have several rabid Bernie supporters taking over my Facebook and their rhetoric is more caustic than I’ve seen from many Republicans…”with friends like these”! With Bernie I can see his Republican opponents using 75 year old, Jewish Socialist (maybe even Communist) in all CAPS.

  3. Admin Mugsy - February 8, 2016

    Don’t allow your opponents to pick your candidate for you.

  4. Admin Mugsy - February 11, 2016

    Former head of the NAACP Ben Jealous explains his endorsement of Sanders over Hillary:

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/jealous-draws-distinctions-in-democratic-race-620769347989

  5. Admin Mugsy - February 11, 2016

    While Hillary was using questionable rhetoric to compare “drug dealers” to animals while defending her husband’s 1994 crime bill that imposed stiffer penalties on the poor than the wealthy, Sanders was speaking out against it on the floor of the House.

  6. Admin Mugsy - February 22, 2016

    The list of reasons not to support her keeps growing:

    Calling black gang members “Super predators that must be reigned in and brought to heel.”
    https://youtu.be/8k4nmRZx9nc?t=41s

    Prior to Nevada caucus, the SEIU passes out flyers (falsely) claiming Clinton is for a $15 Minimum Wage:
    http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-service-employees-international-union-219541?cmpid=sf#ixzz40k7872L0

    Clinton staffers caught impersonating union nurses to dissuade Bernie supporters:
    http://usuncut.com/politics/clintons-campaign-just-got-busted-impersonating-union-nurses-in-nevada/

    When asked if she promises to “never lie to the American people”, Hillary gives a long & convoluted answer while refusing to say Yes:
    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/colbert-mocks-hillarys-denial-that-she-lies-how-can-you-be-this-bad/

    During Nevada caucus, Hillary voters caught voting without registering:
    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2016/02/21/heres-why-the-nevada-caucus-results-should-be-overturned-video/

    It is getting harder & harder to say I’ll still vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee. She isn’t making it easy.

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