Prominent Satanists want to be clear: Ted Cruz need not apply.
After former House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday called the current Republican presidential candidate “Lucifer in the flesh,” saying he found it difficult to work with him, staunch Satanists decried the comparison.
“Having a conservative Christian likened to Lucifer — one who opposes equal rights for same sex couples and promotes the ability to deny services to any with different values — we Satanists see as besmirching the positive, heroic aspects of that character as portrayed by Milton in his epic ‘Paradise Lost,'” Magus Peter Howard Gilmore, the high priest of The Church of Satan, said in a statement.
Lucien Greaves, a spokesman and co-founder for the Satanic Temple, told ABC News he thinks Cruz engages in “clearly deplorable behavior” and that Boehner’s comments were “thoughtless and ignorant.”
“Christians can’t just push Cruz off on Satanists,” Greaves said. “All he’s trying to say is that Ted Cruz is some type of embodiment of evil. I think that’s a rather destructive, backward mindset, because when you take clearly Christian individuals, clearly Christian activities, and things go sour, you pass them off as the influence of Satan.
“It really prevents you from thinking clearly,” he said.
Of course things could have been different if not for Democratic Party rules which rigged the system in Clinton’s favor. Bernie Sanders is the one candidate running who is well-liked, and would bring in independent and Republicans would happily vote for him as opposed to holding their nose to possibly vote for Clinton or Trump. In one of the latest examples of his support, Bernie Sanders was ranked the most popular Senator in America. Sanders has an 80 percent approval rating, while surprisingly Cruz is above water at 55 percent.
Susan Sarandon created a lot of controversy last month when she questioned whether Trump or Clinton would be worse. She did it again this week when interviewed by Stephen Colbert (video above). She criticized Clinton on her environmental record and on her hawkish foreign policy views: “I’m more afraid of, actually, Hillary Clinton’s war record and her hawkishness than I am of building a wall, but that doesn’t mean that I would vote for Trump.” She also questioned the possibility of Trump being elected: “Come on, who’s going to vote for Trump, seriously?”
With Donald Trump within three points of Clinton in one recent poll (compared to an eleven point lead for Bernie Sanders over Trump), there are apparently some people who would vote for Trump. Both Trump and Clinton are going after Sanders supporters.
As Sanders has said, his supporters will not automatically back Clinton if she wins the nomination, and many will not learn to like her. Clinton says she will go after Sanders supporters in a “very aggressive” manner. No matter how aggressively she goes after my support, nothing she can do can negate her utterly unacceptable record.
Trump will have even greater difficulty in his attempts to obtain the support of Sanders supporters. He could attract the support of some Sanders supporters on issues such as trade. While his foreign policy speech was seriously flawed, he is still to the left of Clinton on foreign policy (as is pretty much everyone). Trump is significantly to the left of Clinton on the drug war. As Sanders has warned, Trump will use the email and Foundation scandals which he has stayed away from, which could also wind up putting Trump to the left of Clinton on government transparency, where she is already extremely conservative, as well as on matters such as government corruption and reducing the influence of money in politics. It is also refreshing to see a Republican candidate who does not advocate the destruction of Medicare and Social Security.
Walker Bragman has raised the question of who is the greater evil at Salon and tried to make a liberal case for Trump. While I do not agree with all of his points, it is good that there are writers on the left who are not falling into the tribalistic support for Clinton and exaggeration of Trump’s faults (as big as they are) which has become common among many Democrats. Even if Trump is the greater evil, the real question is which candidate will do more harm in the White House.
It is very likely that Trump will do less harm out of a combination of having less interest in going to war than Clinton and not being able to get sixty votes for his agenda in the Senate. On the other hand, many Democrats who would oppose conservative policies from Trump would defend comparable compromises from Clinton.
Clinton has already indicated a willingness to compromise with Republicans on areas from Social Security to access to abortion. We have seen the damage from compromise with Republicans and triangulation by Bill Clinton. Similar compromises by Hillary Clinton with Republicans would be more likely to move the country to the right than policies from a Republican president who face opposition from Democrats. We would be more likely to see cuts in Social Security, and restrictions on access to abortion, if Clinton is elected compared to Trump or another Republicans. Plus we would be more likely to go to war under Clinton, more people will be incarcerated for drug crimes, and we will have a president more concerned with how she can profit monetarily from the presidency than working for the good of the country.
Today, Carly Fiorina was announced as Ted Cruz’s running mate. Fiorina said it’s always been her lifelong dream to lose twice in the same election. –Jimmy Fallon
Bonus Quote:
Earlier today, despite losing five primaries, Ted Cruz stunned everybody by announcing his vice presidential candidate is Carly Fiorina. This means Fiorina is now just a heartbeat away from never being president. –Conan O’Brien
Our two-party political system generally acts to limit consideration of political views to those in one corner of the authoritarian right political spectrum. In a typical election year we would not have discussion of subjects such as eliminating the influence of Wall Street, ending the drug war, and opposition to American interventionism. Bernie Sanders, despite trying to limit his campaign to economic issues, did broaden the range of discussion this year. In addition, the campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump exposed how undemocratic our system is.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that over half of voters consider the system to be rigged:
More than half of American voters believe that the system U.S. political parties use to pick their candidates for the White House is “rigged” and more than two-thirds want to see the process changed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The results echo complaints from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders that the system is stacked against them in favor of candidates with close ties to their parties – a critique that has triggered a nationwide debate over whether the process is fair.
The United States is one of just a handful of countries that gives regular voters any say in who should make it onto the presidential ballot. But the state-by-state system of primaries, caucuses and conventions is complex. The contests historically were always party events, and while the popular vote has grown in influence since the mid-20th century, the parties still have considerable sway.
Trump and Sanders have encountered different obstacles to beat the establishment of their party. Trump has led in the delegate race, but there has been talk of using convention rules to keep him from winning the nomination, especially if he fails to win on the first ballot.
Sanders has had to deal with party rules which have made it difficult for insurgent candidates to win since George McGovern won the nomination. Party leaders subsequently thought the party was best off with moderate candidates who do well in the south despite significant changes in the country since 1972. The use of super delegates, restrictions on independents voting in may states, and front loading of southern primaries make it harder for insurgent candidates to win. Plus the Democratic Party showed even more favoritism this year, including with the debate schedule, failing to release the popular vote in Iowa, as was done eight years ago, which Sanders very likely won, Harry Reid’s actions in Nevada, and changing rules on contributions from lobbyists to help Clinton.
Imagine how different things could have been if Sanders was declared the winner of the popular vote in Iowa, Harry Reid hadn’t intervened and Sanders won or came closer in Nevada, Sanders wasn’t faced with a string of early southern losses, and if the news media wasn’t showing Sanders to be far behind from the start by counting the super delegates into the totals. Plus we have seen how much better Sanders does in states where independents can vote.
If we lived in a European parliamentary system, where it was possible for new parties to get established, then it might make sense to limit who can vote in a party primary to allow a party to preserve its ideological identity. However, the structure of our system is quite different. It would be very difficult for other parties to seriously challenge the two major parties. This creates a greater need for voters to be able to influence the candidates chosen by each party. With such input being artificially limited by the Democratic Party, we are seeing the party nominate a candidate who is popular with a majority of hard core partisans, but who is vastly out of step with those who lean towards voting Democratic. At the same time Clinton is probably clinching the nomination, her popularity is falling, she is struggling against Donald Trump and other Republicans in head to head polls, and she has lost in multiple recent states where independents were allowed to vote.
On Monday night those of us going pro-Sanders Facebook pages found that some were not available, seeing the message above. Word quickly spread that people believed to be Clinton supporters were posting porn on the pages and then, in a coordinated attack, multiple people would file complaints with Facebook, leading to the sites pages being taken down.
The sites did return later on Monday. Since then, many have changed from public to private groups, and some have restricted posting to prevent unknown members from repeating this tactic.
The attacks are believed to be from Clinton supporters considering that posts from Clinton supporters were found bragging about the attack. In addition, similar tactics had already been used on Facebook on a smaller scale. Clinton supporters would harass Sanders supporters in attempts to receive hostile responses, and then report responses from Sanders supporters in attempts to have their Facebook accounts restricted or terminated. This also follows reports of the the pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, which has been coordinating with the campaign, paying people to “push back” against progressives opposing Clinton on social media.
Supporters were concerned about potential Clinton PAC involvement because, according to the Daily Beast, a pro-Clinton Super PAC is spending $1 million to counter people on sites like Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. The group is Correct the Record’s “Barrier Breakers.” According to the PAC’s press release, the digital task force will share positive content and “push back” against online progressive communities to counter “false narratives” and negative attacks. The Super PAC openly coordinates with Clinton’s campaign, Daily Beast reported.
However, there’s no proof of any connection between that PAC and this attack, and definitely no proof of any connection between the PACs and the pornography posts, which were likely from unrelated trolls and spammers.
They also included screen grabs which do suggest that Clinton supporter were behind this action.
The story was picked up by the mainstream media. The Hill reports:
Multiple Facebook pages supporting Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders were abruptly removed from the social media network late last night following a cyberattack.
The pro-Sanders pages — which include Bernie or Bust, Bernie Believers and Bernie Sanders is my HERO — were collectively followed by over a quarter-million supporters of the Vermont senator, and many had been operating continuously since Sanders launched his campaign last year.
The attack began around 9 p.m. EDT and lasted until just after midnight, when most of the pages recovered their accounts…
According to eyewitness reports, the pages were flooded with pornographic images in what appeared to be coordinated fashion and then flagged for obscene content, prompting Facebook to remove them.
“We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today,” said Sanders supporter Erica Libenow, according to Heavy.com. “I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”
A Facebook spokesman confirmed to The Hill that a number of pro-Sanders groups as well as other pages “were inaccessible for a brief period” due to the company’s automated policies being “applied incorrectly.”
“We corrected the problem within hours and are working to improve our tools,” the spokesman said.
At least one Facebook user linked to the pro-Hillary Clinton group Bros 4 Hillary was reported to have participated in the attacks.
The Bros 4 Hillary team disavowed the user in a statement posted Tuesday morning, which condemned any “harmful or offensive rhetoric or harassing behavior targeting supporters of any other candidate in the race.”
Several websites and online forums and website attempted to draw a connection between the attacks and Clinton ally David Brock’s social media initiative, Barrier Breakers 2016, after noting that the former Bros 4 Hillary member had recently “liked” the initiative on Facebook.
In a statement to The Hill, Correct the Record denied any involvement in the attacks.
“Correct the Record’s Barrier Breakers 2016 had nothing to do with this,” said Elizabeth Shappell, the group’s communications director. “Currently, Barrier Breakers is exclusively engaged in positive messaging supporting Hillary Clinton.”
Former right-wing hit-man turned Clinton hit-man David Brock is one of the slimiest people in politics, but the desire to prevent opposing viewpoints from being discussed has been a hallmark of many Clinton supporters during this campaign. I doubt that the campaign itself was directly involved, and there is no way to know whether David Brock and his group were involved, or if this was organized by other Clinton supporters. Regardless of who was involved, the prospect of seeing so many Democrats turning into thought police to defend Clinton’s conservative views is one reason why many on the left think that electing Clinton would be even more dangerous to liberal and progressive principles than a Republican president.
There is more at AOL News and New York Magazine. The later shows a tie to the Bros4Hillary group, but also presents an alternative conspiracy theory blaming Donald Trump. While not impossible that the Trump campaign did this to further divide Democrats, I have seen a lot of cases of Clinton supporters trying to suppress discourse from Clinton’s opponents, while I have not encountered any similar on-line premise from Trump supporters. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have expressed a similar disregard for freedom of speech in the recent past.
For the last few months it appeared that it might not matter how unpopular Hillary Clinton is in terms of a general election victory as at least she could beat Donald Trump. There are three major flaws in this viewpoint. The first is that even if Clinton could win the general election, having her as president is quite undesirable. The second is that it is far from certain that Trump will win the nomination considering how hard the Republicans are trying to prevent a first ballot victory, freeing delegates to support another candidate. Clinton has not been polling well against potential candidates other than Trump. Thirdly, Clinton’s lead over Trump is evaporating.
The GW Battleground poll shows Clinton only beating Trump by three points (within the margin of error), while Sanders beats him by 11. The poll also shows that 46 percent say they would consider voting for Clinton while 53 percent say they would not consider voting for her in the general election. In comparison, 51 percent say they would consider voting for Sanders and 47 percent say they would not. Trump’s numbers are also under water here, but the head-to-head battle shows that many who would not consider voting for him would do so if Clinton was his opponent
It is notable that Clinton’s support is already falling while in a primary battle in which Sanders is not even mentioning many of the scandals involving Clinton, which would probably hurt her further in the general election. Plus, with Clinton tying herself so closely to Obama during the primary battle, any bad news on the economy or internationally this fall could seriously hurt her.
Of course before looking ahead too much to the general election, we still need to concentrate on the primary battle. Public Policy Polling shows Sanders narrowing the gap with Clinton in tomorrow’s primaries, but he needs strong victories to reduce Clinton’s delegate lead.
The next companion has been introduced in the video above to replace Jenna Coleman on Doctor Who. Pearl Mackie will play a character named Bill, who clearly has not encountered the Daleks in the past. The Guardian has a little more information on her:
Capaldi said it was “a genuine delight” to welcome Mackie to Doctor Who. “A fine, fine actress with a wonderful zest and charm, she’s a refreshing addition to the Tardis and will bring a universe of exciting new possibilities to the Doctor’s adventures.”
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Steven Moffat, outgoing lead writer and executive producer, said: “A new face in the Tardis, a new voyage about to begin: welcome aboard, the amazing Pearl Mackie! This is where the story really starts.”
Mackie trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, graduating in 2010. Since drama school, she has worked across theatre, film, radio and television. Her acting credits include Svengali, a British film released in 2013, and she is currently appearing in the stage production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Gielgud Theatre in London.
Among other actors who had been thought to be in the running for the role were Coronation Street’s Michelle Keegan, Rakhee Thakrar, who impressed many with her performance as Shabnam Masood in EastEnders, and Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones and guest-starred in the last season of the sci-fi show.
Supergirl ended the season well. While the two part season finale had its plot holes, they did end many of the plot thread of the season, while leaving one major one for next season (the search for Jeremiah Danvers) and ended the episode with a cliff hanger. Prior to the last second cliff hanger, there was a feel-good moment for the cast. Plus there is the question (as of now undecided by the writers) as to exactly Kara’s new job will be.
Entertainment Weekly interviewed Andrew Kreisberg about the finale. Here are a couple of excerpts:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start off with the reveal that someone else has landed on Earth. What can you tease of who this is? Are they friend or foe?
ANDREW KREISBERG: Obviously it’s our big cliffhanger of the season, so I’m not fully inclined to let everyone know who shot J.R. It’s an important character, and they’ll play an important role in season 2.
Is this a character we may have seen in the comics before?
Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but it’ll be cool. The fans are going to be excited. It’s going to definitely shake things up for season 2.
Especially with something like Project Cadmus in the ether, the first person I think of is Superboy.
[Crickets.]
Moving on, Kara was willing to risk her life for the world. How does that change her in season 2?
This whole season has been about her embracing being Supergirl. In a way, this was her graduation episode. She hadn’t fully figured out how to integrate being Supergirl into her life. This whole season has been a learning experience for her. At the end of this episode, she’s fully Supergirl. Next season, you’re going to see a Supergirl who is more mature, and a bit more of a cohesive character. She’s taken the identity of Kara and the identity of Supergirl and merged them in a better way. You’re just going to see a more confident, stronger Supergirl than we’ve ever seen before.
Is it safe to say the world is now on her side?
Oh yeah. You don’t save the world without dispelling all doubters…
Even though Fort Rozz is gone, are the prisoners who were once inside it still an ever-present threat?
I think so.
What can you say of the fates of Non and Brainiac?
If you’re a fan of the comic books, you know that Kara’s heat vision took away Non’s — lobotomized Non. How and when we see him again, he’ll probably be very different. I think Indigo is probably the hardest person in the world to kill given that she’s a living computer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she pops up again.
What would you say was your point of pride for the first season?
I’m so proud of the show. As much expectation there was for the show, there was also a lot of like, “Yeah, prove it!” [Laughs.] I think the show really works. Melissa is a star. Like any first season show, there were missteps and not every episode was as strong as the others, but I can point to a whole bunch of episodes, like “Red Faced,” like “Human for a Day,” like the crossover, like “Falling” as being some of my favorite episodes that I’ve gotten to do over the course of all the series that Greg [Berlanti] and I work on together. I’m just super proud of the show. We’ve proven that there’s an audience for a female superhero. Hopefully there will be many more years to come.
Syfy has ordered a pilot for a Superman prequel Krypton, set on the planet two generations before its destruction. The idea reminds me of Gotham, and even more of Caprica. Hopefully it is more successful than the later.
The trailer is out for The Girl On The Train. The mystery novel, often compared to Gone Girl, should make a good movie, and does have a strong cast.
The cast and crew of Person of Interest haven’t given up on saving the show, which CBS is ending after the upcoming season which will air this spring. From TV Guide:
A potential reboot doesn’t mean, however, that the June 21 series finale will lack closure. “We had to hurry up and end it. They had 13 episodes to turn a very large, slow-moving boat,” Emerson says. “But I think the idea that we had to do it in 13 was actually a plus rather than a minus. I think it allowed the writers’ room to set aside their need to create palatable side stories or a murder-of-the-week or whatever, and really just get focused on wrapping up the loose ends of this thing.”
Adds executive producer Jonathan Nolan: “I would have loved to have kept making this thing for a long, long time, but you don’t want the show to become creatively moribund. We saw the writing on the wall before this season started, but we had the incredible luxury of having 13 episodes to really finish our story. And so, as much as I would have loved to have kept working on the show … I’m very proud of what we’ve made here for the final season, and I’m very glad that we had a chance to finish telling our story, an opportunity that’s denied to so many great network TV shows. So I’m very satisfied with the way we’ve told our story, and I certainly hope our fans are.”
After evolving from a CBS procedural to a true genre show, I certainly can see reason to keep it going if any other networks are interested.
Mr. Robot will be returning on July 13. Presumably we will be seeing the aftermath of the first season finale, unless Elliot just imagined it all.
Some additional brief thoughts on the past week which will be kept brief due to limited time this week:
Better Call Saul had a great second season, but certainly left a lot hanging in its season finale.
Cape May was an unusual episode of The Blacklist. I’m still not certain if Lizzie is really dead, but it is looking less likely that Reddington faked her death. If she is alive, Reddington does not appear to be aware of it.
The Night Manager’s premier was excellent. As soon as time permits I will probably be downloading the remainder of the season rather than waiting for it to finish its run here.
Speaking of shows from the UK, Amazon recently released the second season of Catastrophe, which is well worth watching. The show is much like You’re The Worst in tone with a somewhat older couple. Like You’re The Worst, Catastrophe got a little more serious in its second season, but it did so without any drop in quality or humor.
The nomination battle isn’t over yet, regardless of the odds, but Democratic strategists are already thinking about picking up something of great value from the Sanders campaign–the email list. Politico reports:
The post-campaign fate of Sanders’ list — his 2016 crown jewel, and the backbone of the Vermont senator’s online fundraising juggernaut — is the topic of frequent conversation among operatives working with the Democratic Party committees, down-ballot candidates and a variety of liberal interest groups. Some have already begun strategizing about how to access the list through informal conversations with people close to the Sanders campaign.
For those fighting for the issues Sanders has made the centerpiece of his campaign — like campaign finance reform, the environment and economic justice — his list of several million fervent activists willing to volunteer and donate money, often repeatedly, is regarded as something of an electoral gold mine…
Sanders’ staffers won’t comment on the exact size of the list, but his campaign has said it has 2.2 million donors, and the New York-based firm eDataSource estimates there are 5.2 million email addresses on it. The very fact that Sanders’ online fundraising prowesshas become a focal point means that the question of what to do with the list is all the more complex.
“There’s this view among the Washington consultant class that these members are an ATM and you throw some words at them and they’ll give you money no matter what,” said Neil Sroka, a former Obama 2008 campaign aide now working as communications director of Democracy For America, which has endorsed Sanders. “Everyone in the Democratic Party is going to want Bernie Sanders’ seal of approval and a chance to share their message with the people on his email list.”
The Democrats’ eagerness to get their hands on Sanders’ list took off after he sent emails for congressional hopefuls Lucy Flores of Nevada, Zephyr Teachout of New York, and Pramila Jayapal of Washington. While it’s still unclear exactly how much of a Bernie bump they all got, Las Vegas ABC affiliate KTNV reported earlier this week that Flores had already raised $428,000 in mostly small-dollar contributions. Sensitive to any implication that Sanders may lose the nomination to Clinton, the campaign has yet to offer any hints of its plans for the list.
I’m sure that the Democratic Party would like to have this list, but they should not be so certain that those on the list will be willing to continue to contribute money should Clinton win the nomination. There are many Sanders supporters who are coming out of this campaign questioning whether the Democratic Party supports their views. As Sanders recently warned, Clinton and the Democratic Party cannot just assume that his supporters will automatically support them.
I suspect that Sanders will wind up backing the party in the end, but that is far from certain. What we do know is that, regardless of whether any of the Republican candidates or Hillary Clinton wins the election, we will have a president with views and agenda far different from that of Sanders supporters.
Should a Republican get elected, we will probably see Sanders and Clinton supporters united in opposing their agenda. If Clinton is elected, her agenda might not be all that different from that of the Republicans on many issues, and she is to the right of them in areas such as interventionism. The difference is that if Clinton is president, rather than having the Democrats united in opposing her more conservative views, many Democrats will be defending her, as they have done during the campaign.
If Clinton is elected, a top priority will be in establishing an opposition to her from the left, to oppose the corrupting role of money in politics, to oppose her neoconservative foreign policy, and to oppose restrictions on civil liberties which she has been far too comfortable with. I do hope that, rather than falling in the hands of the Democratic establishment, Sanders’ email list is used to help organize such an opposition.
Bernie Sanders continues to attack Hillary Clinton while campaigning in Pennsylvania. I’m glad that he is not listening to party leaders who think he should back off. This is not a case of one Democrat with similar views running against another Democrat with similar views. There is a large ideological difference between the candidates, and the fight should continue regardless of how difficult it might be for Sanders to win the nomination.
Former Obama speech writer Jon Favraeu has been writing articles lately about how he learned to like Hillary, and why we should too. Today he wrote, “Primaries are often a clash of personalities and magnified policy differences.” No this is not about personalities (other than Clinton’s dishonesty) and the policy differences are rather major. I have opposed Clinton this year for the same reasons I opposed her in 2008. More significantly, I oppose her for the reasons I opposed the reelection of George Bush in 2004. Her militaristic foreign policy views, conservative views on civil liberties, and opposition to government transparency are little different from the views of the Bush administration, and are unacceptable, regardless of party.
Rather than leading us to learn to like Hillary, we learned, as Conor Lynch discussed, how the Democratic Party does not represent our values. He pointed out areas where Obama has continued the policies of the Bush administration, and Hillary Clinton is significantly to the right of him. He concluded:
How much will partisan Democrats be willing to forgive a Hillary Clinton administration? Many neoconservatives have already admitted that they prefer Clinton over Trump. At this rate, Clinton could fulfill most of Trump’s reactionary platform and still find widespread support among the Democratic faithful.
Earlier this week, the Clinton campaign accused Sanders “of trying to convince the next generation of progressives that the Democratic party is corrupt.” But do progressives really need to be persuaded that the Democratic Party is part of a corrupt political system, or that it is more reactionary than progressive on many issues? This is self-evident, and the Democratic party has done an excellent job over the past few decades making that case itself. The question is: how long will Democratic voters remain blindly loyal to their party?
Hillary Clinton probably could move the country much further to the right than Donald Trump or any Republican can. The same partisan Democrats who would loudly protest conservative actions from Republicans will defend the same actions if promoted by Hillary Clinton. We already saw how much Bill Clinton moved the country to the right when he was president.
Sanders recently warned that his supporters will not necessarily support Clinton. The Washington Post reports today that Sanders said he “would wait to see what Hillary Clinton includes in her platform before deciding how actively to campaign for her in the fall, if she is the party’s nominee.”
“I want to see the Democratic party have the courage to stand up to big money interests in a way that they have not in the past, take on the drug companies, take on Wall Street, take on the fossil-fuel industry, and I want to see them come up with ideas that really do excite working families and young people in this country,” Sanders said.
The problem is that, regardless of what the platform says, Clinton will probably do what she chooses if elected. When hearings were underway to confirm her as Secretary of State there were concerns about conflicts of interest. In response to such concerns, Clinton agreed to divulge the names of all contributors to the Foundation while she was in office. Clinton failed to provide this information, while making unethically making decisions regarding parties which were contributing to the Foundation, or paying Bill unprecedented amounts of money to give speeches. She has continued this pattern of unethical behavior after leaving office. In order to promote increased transparency after the Bush years, Obama instituted stricter rules to limit the use of private email, which Clinton then violated.
If Hillary Clinton failed to abide by rather limited agreements to act in an ethical fashion before she was confirmed as Secretary of State, why should anyone believe she will pay attention to any progressive planks she allows in the Democratic platform in order to obtain the support of Bernie Sanders? She has demonstrated too many times that she cannot be trusted–and certainly should not be trusted with the powers of the presidency.
The New York Times Magazine features an article on How Hillary Clinton became a warmonger, although they are a little gentler with her, just calling her a hawk. The article began by pointing out how Clinton supported more aggressive military intervention than Obama when she was Secretary of State. She often sided with Robert Gates where others in the Obama administration were less militaristic, surprising Gates as to how conservative she was on foreign policy:
The two quickly discovered that they shared a Midwestern upbringing, a taste for a stiff drink after a long day of work and a deep-seated skepticism about the intentions of America’s foes. Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence analyst who conducted Obama’s initial review on the Afghanistan war, says: “I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was, here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration, and they discover that they have a secretary of state who’s a little bit right of them on these issues — a little more eager than they are, to a certain extent.
While Clinton has probably flip-flopped on more issues out of political expediency than any politician other than Mitt Romney, that is not the case with her foreign policy views: “Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone.” The article ran through Clinton’s biography as related to military matters, including one embarrassing episode:
In March 1996, the first lady visited American troops stationed in Bosnia. The trip became notorious years later when she claimed, during the 2008 campaign, to have dodged sniper fire after her C-17 military plane landed at an American base in Tuzla. (Chris Hill, a diplomat who was onboard that day and later served as ambassador to Iraq under Clinton, didn’t remember snipers at all, and indeed recalled children handing her bouquets of spring flowers.)
The article makes it clear that in any discussion of foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is the most hawkish person in the room, and will be to the right of the GOP candidate should she win the Democratic nomination:
Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone — grounded in cold realism about human nature and what one aide calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.” It set her apart from her rival-turned-boss, Barack Obama, who avoided military entanglements and tried to reconcile Americans to a world in which the United States was no longer the undisputed hegemon. And it will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election. For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.
While there are other issues where Clinton is preferable to Trump and Cruz, the president has far more direct control over whether we go to war than matters such as reproductive rights. Clinton’s foreign policy views, along with her corrupting ties to big money in politics, could be the deciding factor which keeps many Sanders supporters from turning out to vote for Clinton in the general election if she is the nominee.
Kevin Drum, who I have often found to ignore other major faults in Clinton, was disturbed by her foreign policy views:
And Landler doesn’t even mention Libya, perhaps because theTimesalready investigated her role at lengtha couple of months ago.It’s hardly necessary, though. Taken as a whole, this is a portrait of a would-be president who (a) fundamentally believes in displays of force, (b) is eager to give the military everything they ask for, and (c) doesn’t believe that military intervention is a last resort, no matter what she might say in public.
If anything worries me about Hillary Clinton, this is it. It’s not so much that she’s more hawkish than me, it’s the fact that events of the past 15 years don’t seem to have affected her views at all. How is that possible? And yet, our failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere apparently haven’t given her the slightest pause about the effectiveness of military force in the Middle East. Quite the opposite: the sense I get from Landler’s piece is that she continues to think all of these engagements would have turned out better if only we’d usedmoremilitary power. I find it hard to understand how an intelligent, well-briefed person could continue to believe this, and that in turn makes me wonder just exactly what motivates Hillary’s worldview.
On the right, Daniel Larison, whose foreign policy views are far preferable to what is commonly accepted by conservatives, adds:
In virtually every foreign policy debate, Clinton can be counted on to endorse the more aggressive option available, and she is the least likely to favor making significant changes to the way the U.S. acts overseas. Her judgment has been reliably bad because she buys into conventional, wrong assumptions about the U.S. role in the world and the ability of the U.S. to “shape” events in other countries, and when Obama has come around to her view he has made some of the worst mistakes of his presidency. One would be hard-pressed to find a single instance from her time as Secretary of State when Clinton was on the winning side of a major internal policy debate that didn’t produce poor or disastrous results. If Obama had always sided against Clinton’s preferred course of action, he would have had fewer foreign policy failures and embarrassments.
The article also goes into some depth about her relationship with Gen. Jack Keane. Among other things, it was a briefing from Keane on establishing a “no-fly zone” in Syria that won Clinton over to that reckless position. This is one of Clinton’s main weaknesses: she typically assumes that military options are more efficacious and capable of “solving” problems in foreign conflicts than they are, and it doesn’t seem to take much persuading to get her to endorse an aggressive policy. Clinton normally errs on the side of using force or threatening to use it, and because of that she repeatedly takes the wrong side in debates over whether the U.S. should intervene in another country.
Both assessments above are accurate. Another recent article provides an even scarier insight into how Hillary Clinton thinks about foreign policy. Although it was not Obama’s intention, his discussion of Clinton in an interview in The Atlantic definitely shows that Clinton is unfit to be president and certainly does not consider war to be a last resort. While many thought it was a good thing when Obama was able to negotiate a way to avoid military intervention in Syria, Clinton was one of those who disagreed:
For some foreign-policy experts, even within his own administration, Obama’s about-face on enforcing the red line was a dispiriting moment in which he displayed irresolution and naïveté, and did lasting damage to America’s standing in the world. “Once the commander in chief draws that red line,” Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and then as secretary of defense in Obama’s first term, told me recently, “then I think the credibility of the commander in chief and this nation is at stake if he doesn’t enforce it.” Right after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”
No Hillary, if you have a way to accomplish your goals without going to war, you should not go to war. And if you cannot accomplish your goals without going to war, it might be time to reexamine your goals.
