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RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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 RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (in reply to Piwin)
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Clinton's email scandal?
Hardly worth the money spent to prosecute it. What she did do at Sec. of State is go around the world cleaning up the Bush administrations problems. She served her post as a true Sec. of State in the service of the president. Whether you agree or disagree with his policies she proved her worth as public servant by doing exactly as he ordered her to do. That speaks to her commitment to serve and do as she is asked.
The FBI investigations on the emails are not that big a deal to me, it's just more misogynist behavior on the part of ultra right factions that have always tried to crucify Hillary. The Bengazi hearings came with a lot of Republican bluster and forced acrimony that was little more than political posturing on the part of populist right wingers like Rand Paul. She stared them down and really out lasted the nonsense without breaking a sweat. It showed again that she can handle the heat of the misogynist tactics they always use to discredit her. And in the end she accepted full responsibility for deaths that happened on her watch. Half the congress are old white male women haters who act out when they can, they have made careers out of trying to hang the Clintons.
It has come to light that Colin Powell had handled emails in a similar way we he was Sec. of State, yet he stood before the world and claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a fact that was untrue. When is his hearing to be held by old white male Republicans eager to make him and his party look bad? I guess that was not as big a deal as Bengazi. Was it.
As far as living in the 1990's for those of you newcomers to the US, welcome in, we love newbies, but remember you may have missed a few things in the 70's and 80's that still count.
One of the misogynist cruxificions you missed was when Zoe Baird was strung up by her thumbs by a republican group who wanted to make sure she did not get appointed as Bill Clintons pick for attorney general. It was said that her opposors were striking back at the Dems for bringing down George HW Bush's recommendation that a guy named John Tower be named Sec or Defense.
Zoe Baird was rejected by republicans because she was late in filing taxes for her child's nannies, and this scandal was called NannyGate. Kind of funny, except that is scared the hell out of every politician in Wash, because they too were lax at paying taxes for the domestic help. And many politicians a governmental workers fired the hep they paid under the table ans said don't ever say you even knew me. This action cut across party lines.
As a result we got stuck with Janet Reno as the US Attorney General instead of the better choice of Zoe Baird.
These kinds of political vendettas are paid out and cashed in American politics and those of you who have been observers of our system for 5-10-15 years might give pause to consider that older Americans have been watching this unfold for decades, three, four, five, six decades. I've got 4 decades of following politics beginning with Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war, and childhood recollection of the Civil right movement. My understanding pales in comparison to those who have been watching for three decades longer than myself.
We are in the middle of a big political division on account of a swing in the way the population is growing. The US is changing rapidly and not everyone is able to stay with the challenges of rapid change. Hence a deepening divisions in politics. It is always my hope that a greater vision of moving to a central agreement where we can disagree yet still function is probably the ideal for a democracy. We have a more diverse country than almost any other country in the world an we can't make everyone happy: And we have no shortage of political paybacks and politics that get played out along strict party lines. If you want to find a problem it is really easy to find faults and lay political blame on one person, or two, we have them in spades.
We are not as dumb as you think, we are just big and slow moving to change socially. If you want to make rapid changes it won't stick, it will get challenged and some faction will bring it down on a technicality like nannies being paid under the table. We all lose when this petty politics gets played, it better to ignore it an move to workable positions and make compromise.
Compromise even if you don't get everything you want is better on the country than a series of back biting scandals prosecuted for political retribution. We've seen more than enough. We are not like other countries, we are from everywhere thrown together and we all want different things, our biggest strength and our most difficult problem.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Mar. 3 2016 3:18:05
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (in reply to Piwin)
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Nanny and cleaning ladies-gates are only indicators for how tightly sealed the circle of twilight economy is where hundreds of millions and billions of bucks are being spent to keep admins on track and operating against the people.
The world´s condition is radical, despising all that is integer, reasonable and fair.
Billions of people are being deprived of their rights, and kept in treadmills to either work several times as much as they would otherwise need to, or to drop off the ladder. Kept from decent living and humane development.
All that only for to feed a minority of affluent estate and privilege, and their pampered court.
Before such a reality, it is tyring to hear those who want to conserve the misery with pointers to either WWII or WWI.
Their voices for an example also defended the Jelzin era by advocating "stability", when vast of public estate was embezzled by mafia and their patrons.
There is no use with a stability of social havoc and destruction of the planet. Lesser even with one that is accelerating on a daily basis.
Especially 3 ecological minutes before 12:00, where there are no centuries left to anticipate any gradually realizing pipe dream of oligarchs voluntarily retracting on behalf of sanity and fairness.
Whatever it takes; if there is to be any future for men and biosphere, changes have to be now. Now, and not even just a four years later.
That two-party theatre show in the US can never do, as should be clear for anyone who has just a remote glimpse on what democracy is supposed to be.
Democracy means that people should have manifold choices to decide on, and that they must be provided with sober education and information beforehand.
Something to date firmly undermined and thwartet by policies that are of pocketing aims for utterly undemocratic and unscrupulous privileged, while people are being made to watch a hologram of allegedly concerned and engaged public representatives.
All the data one may ever collect will never fit together if one can´t overcome oneself to face and understand an ugly truth of given trivial exploitation.
The saga of petrification in view of the Medusa´s Head is not really true.
One may only age for some 10 years or so in no time and possibly find oneself rolling a bit before sleep.
Admittedly, no comfortable state, but what can be done.
Ruphus
PS:
That being said, from what I can see, Sanders should be best premade choice in the USA. Even though he seems to be missing out on some corner stones, the man appears to have some ideal in his portfolio.
He ought to best candidate after president Truman.
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Date Mar. 3 2016 10:55:16
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
One of the misogynist cruxificions you missed was when Zoe Baird was strung up by her thumbs by a republican group who wanted to make sure she did not get appointed as Bill Clintons pick for attorney general. It was said that her opposors were striking back at the Dems for bringing down George HW Bush's recommendation that a guy named John Tower be named Sec or Defense. Zoe Baird was rejected by republicans because she was late in filing taxes for her child's nannies, and this scandal was called NannyGate. Kind of funny, except that is scared the hell out of every politician in Wash, because they too were lax at paying taxes for the domestic help. And many politicians a governmental workers fired the hep they paid under the table ans said don't ever say you even knew me. This action cut across party lines.
Actually, Stephen, Zoe Baird's situation vis-à-vis her nanny was a bit more complicated than the statement above would suggest. She had not paid taxes or Social Security on behalf of her nanny because her nanny was an illegal immigrant. The insurmountable problem Zoe Baird faced was that as Attorney General, she would have been in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) which fell under the Justice Department and which, among its many responsibilities, was charged with rooting out illegal aliens and the employers who hired them. Had Zoe Baird been confirmed as Attorney General, she would have been in the position of rooting out illegal aliens and fining their employers for breaking U.S. law in the same way she had done. It just wasn't tenable, regardless of what Republicans may have made of it. She could not legitimately enforce laws that she herself had been guilty of violating.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 3 2016 15:59:10
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (in reply to estebanana)
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This is neither to support nor to attack Clinton. I post it to give a little perspective on hypocrisy in U.S. politics. Both parties are equaly guilty of it.
Seven years after retiring from a 43 year career in the defense business, I still carefully safeguard a file of receipts for every classified document I ever held. Life is too short to be harassed over a tangled and sometimes contradictory set of policies and regulations.
I had frequented the Pentagon for a few years before the first time I was there after normal working hours. The highest ranking non-political staffer of Research and Engineering and I had a briefing to prepare for a Deputy Secretary early the next morning, assigned at short notice. This was before PowerPoint was ubiqitous. You sketched out your charts on a yellow legal pad. If you took them to the basement before midnight you could get three competitive bids from commercial art firms and have your slides at 6 AM to proofread. As we trudged through vacant offices I was shocked to see the red bordered cover sheets of documents marked TOP SECRET lying about on dozens of vacant desks, in egregious violation of the most basic regulations.
The Pentagon is a secure facility. It is difficult to get in the front door unless your security clearance has been verified by the bureaucracy. If you're walking around on the loose inside, the tacit assumption is that you have a clearance. Inside many areas of the building, the assumption is that you have a high level of clearance.
Over the succeeding years I got used to the cavalier attitude to secrecy at the Sub-Cabinet and General Staff level. The great majority of info handled at that level is classified in some way. It is often over classified, since no penalty attaches to it, but you can get in trouble for failing to stamp something that should have been. Adhering strictly to regulations meant for industry would introduce considerable friction into daily life. But if you insist, as I always did, people will put up with it. The danger of non-compliance is that in a political dispute, frequent at these levels, you will lay yourself open to a flanking attack. It happens.
Clinton's infractions--I asume they exist, almost everyone at her level is guilty--are not evidence of an unusual degree of non-compliance. But setting up her own email server was poor judgment. It lays her open to an additional level of political attack. I would wager that most of the Senators baying on her trail are guilty of at least as many security offenses. There's just not enough political profit to be made in going after them--yet.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 3 2016 16:07:16
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Piwin
Posts: 3561
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
The point is that the things you post about Hillary may or may not be true, but like most of the misogynist attacks on her from both the right and left they are not fact checked or reasonably informed.
Personally I have two concerns with Hillary. The first is quite simply that I don't think it's healthy to have political dynasties such as the Bush or Clinton families. But that's not against her per se, at least it doesn't imply anything as to her qualifications, it's just that the US has already been governed for almost eight years by a Clinton (and if Jeb hadn't dropped out, I would've pointed out that the US has already has 16 years under a Bush President).
The second is her longlasting relationship to Kissinger. I know public opinion is divided on him. I happen to come from a country where the last time Kissinger was here, he fled the country because he had been asked to attend a court hearing as a witness in a case around the dissapearance of several individuals at the time of the coup against Allende in Chili. Fleeing of course doesn't indicate that he's guilty of anything, but the evidence that has been gathered suggest he likely played an important role in various questionable policies back in the 60s, 70s. To be honest, he's the only US politicians where I think a case for war crimes could be made. I'm not saying he'd be found guilty, just that there is sufficient evidence to support that legal claim. I'm sure he has political expertise but I do worry of an Administration where he would have any sway.
quote:
I don't appreciate knocks to our system from people who really don't understand it from an Americans view point. Or from the point of view of a current US resident. We are not stupid people as you insinuate, we are a nation with a vast and diverse population that has radically different ideals about how they wish to be governed. It is not an easy situation. It is easy to sit in judgement of us ,but you would be lucky to live there
I can relate to that feeling. However, it makes sense that US domestic politics are scrutinized by the rest of the world. The US has a huge impact on many other countries and I think this goes a long way in explain why non-US citizens are quick to form an opinion about US politics. Not many people would care about the elections in Island. This kind of scrutiny from abroad comes with the territory of being one of the superpowers of the world. I'd also suggest that these remarks, even if they are sometimes simplistic, are interesting as they allow us to put things back into perspective. For instance, the issue of gun control is a fascinating one when discussed domestically within the US, but it is telling that the vast majority of other Western democracies find it asenine. Similarly, Northern European countries look at France and our collective bargaining strategies and just can't figure it out (we're the "strike first, ask questions later" type). These are cultural or historical aspects that of course make perfect sense domestically, but getting an outsider's opinion can provide a fresh perspective on things. Of course, the value of the outsider's perspective has to be assessed and in many cases it can be simply dismissed.
For instance, though I'm not an outsider per se, I have lived most of my life outside of the US, I'm not sure the diversity you point to ("vast and diverse population that has radically different ideas about how they wish to be governed") is all that exceptional. There are of course US idiosyncracies, such as how much power to give to the federal government, the states, etc. etc. (or if any power should be given to them at all), but on the whole what strikes an outsider is how much the American people share a common narrative. I honestly think there is less agreement on a common narrative in France than in the US. And this probably explains why immigration is failing in France and in the US it has worked to an extent that you meet people who have become, after only a few generations, so absorbed into American culture that their reference to their foreign origins seems more anecdotal than anything else. It's not a criticism, but I sometimes laugh when a US Citizen tells you that they're German or Italian or African or whatever. The assimilation process is so fast that they really have little left of their foreign heritage. Of course this varies from generation to generation and from one individual to the next, and this is a gross generalization on my part, but I've never encountered this phenomenon anywhere else in the world. For all intents and purposes, I'm an outsider to the US. But I do think my opinion on this, although it doesn't fit with the "diversity" narrative that seems to be widely held in the US, has some merit. If only for US-citizens to know that to some foreigners they don't appear nearly as diverse as they think they are domestically. (though it would have to be a very long discussion, because I do believe that the US was the first country to take in so much diversity and it's a unique social experiment in that sense; I'm only suggesting that a huge proportion of this diversity fades away rather quickly the longer people live there, much more so than in France I think).
Anyways, just saying that sometimes an outside perspective, even if critical, can give some interesting new ways of approaching a domestic issue.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 3 2016 16:19:11
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