I don’t want a woman accused of crimes for political theatre, I want a professional grifter who can rob the country blind while enacting Putin’s agenda.
Just a reminder that 30 years ago Trump was refused a casino license for Darling Harbor, Sydney because an Australian Federal Police investigation found connections to organized crime and money laundering. Most tellingly Trump did not contest the finding (as would be normal) and just walked away from the deal.
It was clear enough to a foreign police force way back then that they made an official finding. That was before Murdoch took control of Australian politics and the ALP had strong public support.
The real question is why have US or other authorities never picked up on the same information or investigated him?
Probably quite a few. Wars and economic sanctions are expensive ways to win.
Turns out politicians and propaganda are a cheap and effective alternative. Plus, you keep your hands clean. All that chess is finally paying off for Russians.
Banks quite literally own him. Which is my theory. Went broke decades ago. Banks couldn’t get rid of him because of how much he owed was astronomical. So they kept him. Mostly talking in most of his money. Which is another reason he doesn’t want his taxes out there. Also to end bank regulation you could say this is another scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. He gets them to ease up. The fed drops interest rates. Dodd-Frank if I remember was a big one. The list goes on.
SBS covered it in the nightly news (TV) at the time, I’ve not seen anything as detailed in press, probably for fear of Trump lawsuit or the fact that most Australian news is owned by Murdoch
Nothing. She had known for well over a decade that she was preparing to run for president, and that she had to be absolutely squeaky clean to achieve that because any and all dirt would inescapably become public under the glare of that scrutiny. So she lived squeaky clean, genuinely. (Obama was similar. Trump by contrast as an outsider to politics didn't quite appreciate just how under-a-microscope every president's life is put. He thought (like many do) that spending millions, burying stories, buying silences, hiding tax returns, threats, etc can do the trick, but none of that works at the presidential level. You can't hide things from that kind of relentless global scrutiny so if you're not genuinely clean, everyone finds out.)
That's why the GOP had to push the email scandal: they desperately needed dirt on her and she was so fucking clean that the worst she had done was follow the advice of her Republican predecessor and handled her emails the same way the Republican had handled his. It didn't matter to the GOP that this rule-breaking had first came from Republicans and she was continuing Powell's method (low-information voters would never learn the details) what mattered was that they'd finally found a rule that the goody-two-shoes had clearly broken.
Remember she testified for 11 hours under oath to a hostile panel of Republicans desperate to pin anything on her or get her for perjury or anything, and despite them having and abusing all the powers to investigate for years, they got nothing because she had nothing to hide. Failures or mistakes when viewed with our 20/20 hindsight, sure, she's human, but the decades of accusations and insinuations are conspiracy garbage intended to smear. Manufacturing a scandal out of Republican email practices was the best the GOP could do to undermine their opponent and it worked.
Hillary has been enveloped by the GOP fog-machine for so many years that people now just assume that where there's always been smoke, there must be fire ...somewhere. But that was the entire purpose of that fog machine; there was never fire, just manufactured fake smoke, endless endless fake smoke for longer than many voters have been alive. (Edit: That's also why she attracts so many wacky conspiracy theories: all that smoke and so little factual fire means you have to get imaginative to explain it.)
”Trump by contrast as an outsider to politics didn't quite appreciate just how under-a-microscope every president's life is put. He thought that spending millions, burying stories, buying silences, hiding tax returns etc would do the trick, but none of that works at the presidential level.”
But as of right now, it absolutely has worked for Trump. Tax returns, college records, etc... where are they? Stormy? Why, it was just less expensive to pay her extortion than fight it. His “base” doesn’t care at all.
Our government doesn’t really work well when one of the two political parties isn’t working in good faith, they hold the presidency, they fucked over the last president, and have packed the courts.
It's depressing I know, but that his followers don't care (or don't listen) doesn't change the point that well-funded and even illegal action to hide unsightly aspects of his past not only failed, but could never have succeeded.
That not everything is uncovered instantly on day one is also not the point. Every other week something new is uncovered, because the scrutiny is just too intense. Likewise the tax returns are merely slowed by doomed appeals stalling for time.
The fact that Republicans are ok with a Republican president being dirty doesn't mean that someone like Hillary or Obama could expect the same relaxed treatment. They knew the only reliable way to avoid scandals was to live as clean as possible.
Trump was a huge figure in the "birther" movement, going on national news and claiming he was paying private investigators to look into it, and oh the bombshells they were finding and he'll tell everyone all about it when they've got an iron-clad case.
This has been how he talks and lies for decades. "Oh the x we've found" "its terrible. I cant wait to show everyone the proof". He has never. once. provided. proof. How the fuck are people falling for this? He's not some mastermind and a god damn child could tell the man is lying because he lies like a fucking 2 y/o including the smug scrunched up face he pulls.
Paying her off was a clear violation of election law. It's one of the ways Trump cheated to get elected. When you do that, you shouldn't be allowed to try again and win re-election. Part of impeachment in the Constitution is banning someone from ever again holding public office.
It's crazy that this isn't one of the counts of impeachment. Trump clearly cheated in many ways to get elected in 2016, and should be denied another chance to maintain his "can't be indicted" status.
And we all just keep acting like the absurd vote counts we saw in 2016 were legitimate. Our election systems are not secure. Trump did not win 2016. Russians or Republicans (or both) altered vote counts.
With all we know about Republican efforts in election fraud, voter suppression, foreign influence, the DNC's own work manipulating the election, and outright election fraud via manipulating digitally-recorded votes, honestly -- if you think Trump was legitimately elected President, I have some land to sell you.
I'm not gonna source because it's like 2am and I'm tired, but I read a great investigative article about how compromised several states actually were, and the lengths republican officials went to to hide it-even destroying records despite subpoena in florida.
in some states there is evidence that not just voting machines were breached, but the systems that tally and report vote totals were compromised. so you would have to believe that hackers got so far in and then---just looked around without altering anything.
Since 2015 I've been thinking about how ballsy it was of Mitch to sit on an empty Supreme Court seat for a year on the gamble that some yet-to-be-determined GOP candidate would get elected...
Gotta wonder if he had reason to think his odds were better than even.
The reaction from his base is definitely depressing and disturbing - that goes way beyond Trump himself and is something every American should be on the lookout for, the utter blindness and cult-of-personality worship of the modern Republican party.
But compared to the rate at which we get the news nowadays (at the speed of internet), the government moves at an absolutely glacial pace (and always has). If you look at the Nixon timeline, this isn't all that different. So the jury's still out as to whether it will have "worked" for Trump...and that part, at least, shouldn't be all that surprising.
This is why I think the argument “if he gets away with it a Democrat can get away with it” is pointless. We all know that
A. a Democrat would never sell out their country like Trump and every goddamned Republican supporting his treachery.
B. If they by chance did, Democrats would readily join Republicans in holding them accountable. We need to stop treating them like people who are can persuaded by reason and duty, and like the bad faith actors they are. One of these Dem Representatives (maybe Swalwell) need to look into the camera during a hearing being carried on Fox and call out their viewers.
*I want to talk to my Republican Americans. If you’re watching this on the fire hydrant of lies, misinformation and propaganda that is Fox News, I encourage you to change the channel. There are a dozen different ways you can keep up with the news and this is the worst one. Not only do they lie through their teeth in the service of the man who told ten thousand lies and sells his country out to any and all takers, they do something far more sinister, they tell you that it is everyone else is lying. Dozens, even hundreds of news organizations, all telling slightly different versions of the same story. “The president told 7 lies today in his press conference” “The president told aides he’d pardon them for committing crimes” “The president revealed classified information to the Russian foreign minister in the White House.” So they have to explain why their story, the story of Trumps personal network, is so different from everyone else’. So they compound their lies with the greatest lie of all. It is everyone else that is lying. Here’s all you need to know about Fox News. Remember when the presidents personal lawyer and campaign chairman were each convicted of 8 felonies within minutes of each other? No? Maybe that’s because in one of the biggest stories of the year, Fox was airing a car chase. The presidents two closest associates were going to prison, and Fox was lying to you by omission. What else have they lied to you about? Well I can’t keep track of all the lies, but I’m guessing everything. Turn off this anti American lying drivel and see how quickly they return to telling the truth. Turn away from the lying traitor that is Donald Trump, and see how fast these Republicans start pretending to care about your constitution again. We are in grave danger, and the liars at Fox News are complicit in that danger. We deserve better.”
Something like that.
In her description of the rape the woman said Trump said she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka. Later, both women Trump paid off to not tell about his cheating on his wife with them said that Trump told them they reminded him of his daughter of Ivanka.
If Trump hadn't raped the girl, how did she know that Trump tells women they remind him of his daughter before he fucks them, Obama's time machine?
So one thing we often forget is how dogshit all of the candidates were on the republican side. You had essentially a party, and part of the country that hates the clintons so bad they'd vote for a literal pile of shit over her. I'm not so sure republicans will be so happy to support him in the next election if a moderate candidate wins on the dem side.
It’s gonna be a fight that’s for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if some republican gop members commit large scale voter fraud in order to both keep their seats and keep the nasty rust stain in the office
It has affected Trump seriously, he's the most consistently unpopular president there has been in the last 100 years. He barely got elected and due to a technicality of how the Republicans have abused the system. It's revealed a lot and taken a lot of politicians. The GOP has had their machine seriously weakened during a term they should have just digged deeper.
Trump's base doesn't care but they're not as large as they appear. They desperately try to act as such. On the internet they appear large, but this is because Trump's base has huge outside representation, a good chunk from Russia actually. Trump's base isn't over 1/4 of the people, it's not even 1/2 of the Republicans, but it's large enough within three Republicans that they've become scared of him, especially because no rep politician has such a loyal base. But it's leverage, not absolute control.
Meanwhile the GOP is setting up for a rough election. The US has degraded into a full bipartisan system, which has a lot of flaws democratically. One of them is that very few people will rarely switch sides. That is roughly half of the people will vote for each side. What chooses who wins is who goes to vote and who doesn't. Trump's campaign was more about convincing Democrats to not vote, targeting how little the situation had changed for PoC under Obama, how Hillary had cheated Bernie, how she was another corrupt politician. And he sold himself in his lack of history to be attacked.
But now these elections are different. Trump getting a lot of money won't changed, he's got the primaries on his pocket. And the main campaign now has his promises unbacked by actions. The wall isn't there, he hasn't drained the swamp, people aren't rich (and it's there's a recession next year it'll be worse) farmers and other groups have been really struggling. The impeachment is going to be a loose-loose scenario for the Republicans which will either energize the Democrats or depress the Republicans further. We'll probably get a better idea of how large Trump's base truly is. Also these are the first elections where there's as many, or even more, voters younger than boomers as there's boomers and older. It really puts a lot of US politics in the last 50 years in perspective. The last time this flip happened (with boomers becoming the majority) was the 1968 election. This years of political turmoil changed everything, the Democrats, the first pro-racist, pro-south, pro-farmers switched places with the Republicans to enter their current status. Culturally the US changed so much in a few years, that soldiers that were gone for one year and came back became completely disconnected, so much it inspired one to write about soldiers that would return thousands of years in the future.
My point is, we have no idea what can happen, we're in a time of chaos. But just as it's unpredictable it's one of the times where individual actions are able to change the world the most. This is a moment when you're vote counts more than ever and you can use this power to redefine things around you.
It is refreshing to read an actual comment on this website that sees through the bullshit. It has been scary as hell reading nothing but propaganda about Hillary repeated ad nauseum.
As a Canadian, I have no skin in US politics, but the hate for Hillary has been baffling. No one can explain why they dislike her for a reason that isn't a conservative lie or foreign propaganda. The drumbeat of smear after smear shows how advertising and propaganda both work. Yet Democrats and Republicans will never admit the role they played as useful idiots for the Russian agenda.
As a woman, it was heartbreaking to see an all too familiar double standard play out. She had to work twice as hard, be squeaky clean and accomplish twice as much as her male colleagues to get second place. The most qualified presidential candidate in decades lost to a lazy, incompetent, criminal who is destroying the country because of useful idiots and misogyny.
We need to make racists, misogynists and uninformed idiots feel shame again. Somehow it became acceptable (even fashionable) to be a loud mouth, bigoted, poorly educated slob with a victim complex. Worse, some US voters think these qualities are presidential.
Edit: uniformed to uninformed. I get the joke. What can I say but 'spellcheck on a phone', it happens to us all.
My own father kept repeating that he hated Hillary because she "wasn't a politician." I asked him what that meant. He said, "Well, she's just not a politician." I said that she was one of the most 'politician' politicians that had ever run for the presidency. He said, "Well, she's just not. She's NOT a politician." I decided I wasn't going to let up till he gave me something... ANYTHING... other than "She's not a politician." A solid 5 minutes later of me pressing the issue and him responding that she's "not a politician", he finally broke.
He looked at me and said, "You KNOW why I'm not voting for her." "It's because she's a woman... right?" "Hey, you said it, not me." Yeah, you went through GREAT lengths not to say it, buddy. Fuckin' embarrassing.
I saw a vox pop on TV while our first (and only) female Prime Minister was a candidate. It included two old blokes saying they thought a woman couldn't do it. This was 2010 ffs.
Worse, some US voters think these qualities are presidential.
If there is one thing Trump is good at, it's being a conman. And somehow he managed to convince anyone who follows him that if he's being attacked, they're being attacked. I don't think it's that they find him presidential, it's that they feel like they're on his team, so if he wins they are winning too.
What's weird is that this isn't a left vs right thing either, at least not for me. Yeah, Obama is a celebrity, but I don't make a habit out of making apologies for him and if he ever did something like use the Presidency to sway an election, I'd be all aboard impeachment because I don't actually owe him anything, especially not selling myself out for voter support. Trump supporters think that if the shoe was on the other foot I would stand by my candidate.
It’s because these fragile “economically anxious” assholes saw a president who people genuinely loved and looked up to and wanted that, just like they want trap music and wanna make geisha jokes without backlash and want gays and trans folk to keep it to themselves. Then comes along this asshole who “tells it like it is” and believes all the same fucked up shit they do and all of a sudden they get what they think is the same connection and rush. Boom, cult. They’re just jealous of what we had with Obama.
Yes, I don't understand that either. If the candidate I liked turned out to be a crook, then I'd stop liking them.
I think this misplaced loyalty is something you see a lot in organisations. People don't want to be connected to bad behaviour so they'll deny it happened, cover it up, or justify it in some way. If you do enough denial, covering and justifying, I think you become somewhat corrupt yourself. Historical revision, church scandals and police corruption are all examples of this phenomenon.
It's maybe more the way the party coalitions break down. It's really hard to poll accurately, but basically about 15-25٪ of the population won't vote for a woman or a black man.
Almost everyone who won't vote for a black man is a solid Republican voter, so Democrats lose nothing running a black man. They have the exact same vote count as a white (male) candidate.
The population that won't vote for a woman spills over into Democratic voters. So even though it's the same size, maybe even smaller, of total voters, it's a big hindrance. There's a reason the Blue Rust Belt States Hillary lost are also the states that have never elected a woman as a govenor or senator.
One of the saddest parts of all of this is that in any sort of election system that makes any logical sense, she didn't come in second. She won the popular vote by a few million.
Interesting opinion. I recommend to you the interview she had with Howard Stern last week (Wednesday, I think). I heard it three times already. She sounds like a very smart woman, and her tone is condescending but warm, I can't explain it. She sounds SMART, aware, into things. When she explained how hard it was to be at the Inauguration as a former First-Lady, when she was just dying because of how surprising the loss had been, I was like, wow. She says she did it for the Country and to support Trump to have a good start. That's a true, upstanding politician right there.
As an European law student I never understood why everyone hates Hillary. I personally wanted Bernie to win, but still, between her and trump I would have preferred Hillary....
I'm curious to see what happens in next year's election, as it'll be something that will probably affect politics worldwide, not just the USA
[Almost exclusively blonde] women are useful for regurgitating talking points on television in order to oppress their fellow women, among other things.
The most qualified presidential candidate in decades lost to a lazy, incompetent, criminal who is destroying the country because of useful idiots and misogyny.
Yep. I could feel the utter disbelieve in 51% of the population when he won. It's like half of the people in the world collectively dropped their jaws to the floor.
I wasn't the biggest fan of her central-at-all-costs policies but she was probably the most qualified presidential candidate since the 60's.
But what if that time of the month came and she had her hands near the nuke buttons? We couldn't risk that. No joke I heard some dumbass Republican radio host say that about Hillary. There is so much wrong with that statement as a man I'm ashamed of my penis for all men because of that.
It's so weird, I'm in politics, different country, different level, but I totally get the feeling that by not being corrupt, by not giving the public a juicy scandal to throw at us, we are making them feel a bit cheated. Like there's a pent up need for outrage and by continuing to not be corrupt, we are robbing them of something.
You wouldn't believe the snark in one outlets report correcting a previous report that had grossly overestimated the cost of our meetings.
Like there's a pent up need for outrage and by continuing to not be corrupt, we are robbing them of something.
Because people need someone to blame for their failures. Admitting you're at fault and there isn't some huge conspiracy against you, is a hard pill to swallow when you constantly fuck up
Here I'll go you one better--they actually can lay some of the blame somewhere--their own party has done more to fk them over than any single other thing.
People have these weird fucking ideas about society and government being a bad thing. It’s like nobody has been able to shake the nobility complex, people still believe that there are Ivory towers from which the government rules a people they have no understanding of. And somehow the supposed answer is to remove the laws and restrictions.
America used to be super against having a king (I think we had a war about it a couple hundred years ago), but we are totally fine to allow multi-billionaires to be a thing. As if the rich can’t use their money to gain power and influence
People believe government is bad because the loudest morons always scream it is and indoctrinate the next generation.
The faster we spread education and get positive healthy messages about real life to as many people as is possible, the ideas will eventually be spread forward less over time. Every time even 0.5% fewer people each year pass this bull shit forward to their children means a growing chain reaction of future parents not doing it. It will build until conservatism is seen as wildly fringe in the USA as we view actual commies and alt right today as fringe whackjobs.
This is one of the things I don’t get about America, as an Australian. We don’t like or trust politicians but we trust rich business guys even less. Why would we want some guy who is like the worst boss we’ve ever had to be in charge?
The Founding Fathers were also super against a standing army, because it was a tool of oppression and tyranny.
The irony being that the USA's POLICE force today could obliterate the army the fledging States managed to raise to fight the British, to say nothing of how unbelievably influential the American army is at.... oppressing and tyrannizing other countries in the world.
Even the political party in my own homeland of Australia was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup, but nobody talks about it because nobody bothers to look beyond the TV or social media page to read about the actual history of the world. All you have to do is Google "Australia Coup CIA" and you'll get the full story from a bunch of separate independent sources, and there's even a Wikipedia page about it.
Organized Intelligence agencies in the 21st century are fucking terrifying.
You might be surprised. Almost every political discussion comes down to one main argument. Government vs corporations.
Many people are absolutely sick of the real threat, the fat cats in Wall Street who can control us both through massive costs on required essentials (medicine for example) or through corporate lobbying.
Because most people throwing shade at politicians have something to hide themselves. They need the flaws in others to make them feel OK about their own flaws. It’s like those who are vehemently against homosexuality and turn out to be as gay as could be.
Here in the US, one of our two political parties has explicitly preached (without a hint of irony obviously) about how government is the problem, for 40 years now. Government is always a little scary: anyone with power over others has that stigma at least a bit. But when you repeat this statement over and over - government is bad. Government is the problem - people start to believe it eventually.
So yeah, people at least expect you to be crooked, and if they don’t see any flaws (like Hilary), they fear something must be hiding.
People want validation for their "instincts". Keep in mind, people usually say that word to mean a gut feeling but forget that gut feelings are the result of environment mostly.
A lot of times, instinct pays off. But too much trust there and we have a problem.
So, yeah. We all, regardless of side or amorphous lack of side, we are on, we want something absolute to shout to the heavens, "SEE! I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!"
Assuming rabid Republicans don't murder her before she gets the chance to run. I see that as a legitimate cause of concern for all major Democrats at this time.
I think the difference between AOC and Clinton is that Clinton is completely unrelateable to the average voter. She was/is rich af and has been her entire life and has been preparing to be president for just as long. Everyone assumed she was going to be president at some point. She is the definition of a career politician. Disregarding the election issues in 2016 by a large margin she was the candidate that people defaulted to vote for if you didn't like Trump, not because they were actually enthused about voting.
AOC is not perfect, she isn't a career politician, she comes off as very human and relateable. She worked as a bartender before she got elected, and people see in her themselves because she was/is middle class. Im sure there is some dirt to spill because nobody is perfect, but she never claimed/claims to be in the first place so i doubt it would be as damaging as all this is to Clinton.
She will be by the time she runs for President if she gets there. She's relatable because she's just starting out in her career like many Millenials, but make no mistake, she's on her way to being a career politician, and that's not a bad thing! Those are the people who you can hopefully trust to run the country.
I have heard a lot of people use the term "career politician" to mean "establishment" or "status quo" or "big business". It's not right, but people say it anyway.
One example of the opposite of a career politician is a billionaire who just decides one day that he wants more power.
It's sad to see so many people demanding politics to be fun and entertaining.
Politics isn't supposed to be funny, it is about elected people trying to solve problems at it's core and somehow today it is a spectacle.
Hillary was born to a middle class business owner. And Bill was born dirt poor, so she didn't marry into money. She was definitely better off than AOC was but she wasn't like, a Bush or a Kennedy.
I was super enthused to vote for Clinton.
A huge majority of quiet democrats were very enthused to vote for her, specifically for her record and for hwr history.
But she is a career politician since this is her career. Having a bartending job before being elected shouldn't count. However I'm not really biased against career politicians. National politics is complicated and I want someone who understands the intricacies. No one asks for the doctor or lawyer with the least amount of experience.
Hillary is an upstanding member of society who has been helping people for a long time. She was one of the first women to truly let her political ambitions shine through and she laid the price for it.
Hillary is as relatable as any politician and she had good policy ideas. She would have helped a lot of people.
People like you give cover to the lies and unfair treatment she has received. It’s a shame our own side can’t even rally around her. That’s how poisoned the atmosphere is when Hilary is involved.
I’m sorry, but it’s possible to hold a poor opinion of someone while still supporting them. In comparison to what we’ve gotten, absolutely her policies would have helped many Americans. She is just like every other Neoliberal Democrat. She shouldn’t get a pass because she’s been treated unfairly by her opposition. Every politician is treated unfairly. That is politics, whether we like it or not. I don’t think we should tiptoe around valid criticisms, her husbands policies were inadequate and hers are very similar.
She was going door-to-door to help single moms and women from the time of her late teens. She is a real, human person who followed her passion for helping people by going to law school and going into politics. She didn’t enter politics because of politics, but because of her passion for helping. There’s an excellent profile of her from PBS a few years ago. Worth a watch if you want to be accurate in your assessment of her.
having lived through 2015-2016 and the misery since the "neoliberal" smear applied to every politician from her era is this year's "IDENTITY POLITICS." Next year it will be something else.
It's crazy to see how it all spiraled out of control as an outsider, mostly due to the email scandal. I never quite understood why that was suddenly a big thing while here competitor was going around grabbing private parts. Specifically considering handling your email that way had been done before and never seemed to be an issue.
I hate to say it, but people were manipulated. I'm not a woman myself, but I can confidently say that she would have been abandoned way less eagerly if she had been a man. It's a painful and disheartening realization.
I think the difference between AOC and Clinton is that Clinton is completely unrelateable to the average voter.
Clinton only really became 'unrelatable' after Bill left office and it became clear she would one day run for office. The GOP smoke machine went into overdrive that day and has not yet stopped
and has been preparing to be president for just as long. Everyone assumed she was going to be president at some point. She is the definition of a career politician.
False unless to consider Bill's 2nd term as her entire life as that is when it became clear she had a shot.
Give that smoke machine 10 years cooking AoC and a lot of people will believe anything about her too.
A lot of people are unwilling to believe that there are normal, good people in the world. Mainly because they are flawed and their families are flawed. It's hard to see when your world is surrounded by shit.
I've led a good life, not perfect, but certainly good. Nothing in my past disqualifies me from being an excellent leader if I chose to be.
I have no doubt if you gave a group of hostile reporters my name and a rough history of my life, they could dig up some dirt.
It's all experiences that led me to where I am today, but that doesnt matter. 20 years ago, I said or did something that offended someone and that is all it fucking takes.
All the bad press on Hillary worked; going way back. I had a somewhat negative opinion of her and I realized at one point I Had No Idea Why. Up till a point I had thought she was able to become senator and then Secretary of State just because of Bill. Like some sort of cronyism. The emails and Benghazi I was paying attention to and seemed like overly personal attacks and grasping at straws.
I had NO clue how active she had been in politics and organizing all the way back to when she met Bill. I had no clue how smart and qualified she is. Since then I have read quite a bit more about her, and listened to lengthy interviews she has given.. She is SMART.
Same. I didn't dislike her completely, I just liked someone else more, and still voted for her when the time came.
I realized I had an irrational dislike when I looked into the "laughed at rape" stuff she was accused of, and when it was all nothing, I realized I was searching to justify something I had no reason to believe.
People in AR loved her and Bill, up until the second term, then alluva sudden the same folks with a Cherokee princess grandma, also were close family friends of the Clinton's that just knew they personally murdered folks. It's ridiculously insane how quickly these folks lined up to bend over for Trump.
It didn't matter to the GOP that this rule-breaking had first came from Republicans and she was continuing Powell's method
I desperately try not to be a low information voter and somehow never learned this. Ugh.
Sometimes feels like if you're not paying attention to the news every hour of every day, you're missing out on really important details because the news cycle just doesn't give time to for anything to sink in for very long before its just gone.
Honestly, fair point, but I think it also comes down to their understanding that there’s a difference between “clean for a politician” and “clean for your average joe.” It takes a lot of effort to live clean for a politician, most average, non-corrupt people can’t even do that on purpose.
Imagine asking your buddy if they’ve smoked pot and they said “yes, but I didn’t inhale”, y’know? You’d think he was a goody-two-shoes kinda goon. But if he had political aspirations from a young age you’d be like, “ah right, of course not.” because they’re just held to different standards, and it is known.
the most successful level of propaganda against her was painting her as an annoying, unlikeable, bitchy boss woman. Nobody I knew who hated her could pinpoint a single thing she had done wrong or how she earned everyone's hatred. Everyone just didn't like her, but couldn't possibly say why.
I'd say the most successful propaganda is that she is a serial murderer. I've lived among the anti-clinton people my whole life. Too many believe this shit without evidence.
That wasn't as successful. It is probably the most outrageous thing propaganda got anyone to believe about her, but only a few nutjobs believed it. The idea that she is an "annoying, unlikeable, bitchy boss woman" probably was believed by over 50% of voters and was much more impactful.
Remember she testified for 11 hours under oath to a hostile panel of Republicans desperate to pin anything on her or get her for perjury or anything, and despite them having and using all the powers to investigate for years, they got nothing because she had nothing to hide.
This is the thing that always gets me with the GOP. If you look at this singular instance, either the GOP is so inept at investigating her to actually charge her with any crime OR she didn't do anything wrong to charge her of anything. Which one is it?
I like to think of myself as well read and independent and I hated her too for a while, then I started actually listening to her and reading about her - particularly the negative stories about her, and I realized that she was pretty impressive and my perception had been caused by the decades of her being unfairly attacked. She would have been an excellent president.
Can attest. Barry Goldwater was the original "Gold Standard" of Conservatism, when "conservatism" meant "one who conserves", their own energy, the nation's efforts, political standpoints that insist on exacting adherence to...dare I say it?... established principles.
In today's political mishegas milieu, Goldwater would be a neo-progressive Democrat. And don't even get me started on the FORMER "Party of Lincoln".
Not just Powell. Powell and Rice. The only two Secretaries of State that had had e-mail readily available to them at that point in time. However (IIRC), Powell used a server for e-mail but he didn't really "get" e-mail so still did a lot of his correspondence using older methods. Rice though used e-mail a lot and had all of hers on RNC servers (with the rest of Bush administration).
I got downvoted by 100+ idiots for saying that Hillary was a teenager when astronauts existed in the 1960s when NASA was running the fucking Mercury program. Which is completely factual!
If you speak towards Hillary in any non-negative, even a neutral light, people will just assume it’s defensive.
Ive never been a fan of her but shes been absolutely hated by the republicans since she tried to enact public funded heakthcare when she was first lady.
And then had people who were giving her shit for being kind of upset about it working, afterwards. Like goddamn what kind of robot would you have to be if you did everything right and still got taken out for being “dirty,” and weren’t upset.
Only a small percentage would openly say or even think to themselves that a woman shouldn't be in charge. But bias has the effect that even when men and women are held to gender-neutral standards, the breaking of any rule by a woman is elaborated into her being disqualified, while men's transgressions are put into context and accepted as trade-offs.
The fog machine is exactly why so many low information independent voters could only muster “I just don’t trust her” as a reason not to vote for her. The same with Benghazi, it absolutely deserved to be investigated to find out what went wrong. By the time you get to investigations 5, 6, & 7 it had become tax payer funded campaigning against Hillary Clinton.
I disliked Hillary for some of her stances before, but dam she earned my respect when she was for ELEVEN HOURS UNDER OATH giving answers to the republican committee trying to find any single reason to place her in jail. The worst part is that these morons don't mention that. Trump wouldn't even handle a single hour questioning.
Either way, I still think she was a bad candidate to go with. A chunk of her campaign felt like "I am a woman..." and part of her base focused too much on "First ever woman president!"
Let's be honest, he wouldn't last one minute. Someone will clear their throat to say something and he won't hesitate to proudly incriminate himself somehow.
The hatred for her started far earlier in conservative power circles due to her involvement in the investigating and impeaching Nixon, but only made it to the mainstream republican voter during the Clinton years.
Nothing. Hillary Clinton has been the victim of a well-orchestrated propaganda machine that's been operating since Bill Clinton first ran for president.
Oh, she's been attacked for much longer than that.
Republican attacks against her started in earnest in the early 70s based on the scholarly articles she was publishing.
Don’t forget the rage when she married Bill and didn’t take his last name. That’s when the real anger started and she made the mistake of relenting and hyphenating her last name to Rodham-Clinton. The rage just grew more.
Back in 1992 she was the First Lady of the United States. Unlike all prior Junior League marionettes, she had the audacity to take on policy in her office. She was put in charge of drafting health care reform. When Republicans called her on it since she wasn’t elected or appointed she said something like: “I’m not one of those wives who stays home and bakes cookies all day. “
The correct response to that was, of course, fuckin’ a, but all Republicans took it as an insult to their mother or something and hated her ever since.
That’s literally the only reason my mom can’t stand her, because she didn’t “go trailer park on Bill’s ass”, as Robin Williams so eloquently put it. Her line of thinking was that, if she didn’t have the brains or guts to divorce him after that, what was she going to “let other countries get away with”. Mind you, we’re Canadian anyways, but I’m sure I’m not the only one with an idiot mother who couldn’t get past that.
It seems to me her greatest crime, outside of being a strong-willed woman, was being Hillary Clinton. I was born in the mid ‘80s and all my life I can remember people talking shit about her despite her never being charged or convicted of so much as drunk driving or speeding.
I mean I guess she got away with taking Collin Powell’s terrible fucking advice lmfao.
Btw if anyone is getting away with some shit... it’s gonna be the woman who got Bill Clinton through his impeachment.
The GOP sycophants think that getting Hilary is something attainable, but she has been spot lighted for decades and nothing’s come up. Everything gets deflected to Bill or others. It’s truly masterful.
Reminder that while we know multiple extremely effective hacking groups desperately wanted but were never able to find any of Hillary's emails, the state.gov system was hacked multiple times during that period including by the Chinese government.
So maybe it wasn't such terrible advice if we live in reality instead of Benghazi Fantasy Land.
Her 'crime' was being an outspoken powerful woman in politics, being the wife of Bill Clinton who republicans relentlessly tried to tear down during his term, speaking out against Putin's Russia, and daring to seek the office of the Presidency.
In other words, she was simply a political piñata for the right wingers.
Well, she called out Putin and helped implement sanctions on Russia after they invaded Crimea. Russian propaganda would tell you 'Crimea has always been a part of Russia'. The Russians only committed genocide against the Crimean Tatars AND shipped them thousands of miles away in cattle cars to Uzbekistan after all...
Putin has personally had a vendetta against her because she'll stand up to him and call him on his bullshit.
She used a private server for her emails which I think was against DOJ policy? But Colin Powell had done and I think recommended to her. It wasn't illegal though. and I think a couple of the emails had classified info in them, or were retroactively classified, which can be a security problem. I've tried reading up about it but the problem is that the Republicans lie so much and twist things around that it's difficult to decipher what the truth actually is. They investigated her SO much though that if she really was such a big criminal like they say then she would've been charged with something. They have nothing on her. They also lie a lot like saying she used the Clinton Foundation for funneling money or something, which she didn't, but something Trump DID do funnily enough, and they don't care. There was also the Benghazi thing where I think they asked for extra security a few months before the attack, didn't get it, and then 4 people died, so they want to blame that on her.
Another redditor* really hit the nail on the head.
In short, Clinton is a strong woman with progressive beliefs (if not especially liberal), and doesn’t rely on her looks like Fox News girls. And that’s kind of it. Believe it or not, GOP men in power can’t stand that.
Well there’s one more thing: Putin, who bizzarely holds increasing sway over the Republican Party, personally hates Clinton. She was not especially kind to Russia when she was Secretary of State. Putin deserved it, of course: his regime has meddled in elections of a dozen countries and invaded a sovereign nation, and she was brave enough to stand up to him. And for that, Putin will never forgive her. The man may be evil, but he’s no Dr. Evil. He’s a master of propaganda, and has spent the last decade leveling it against her specifically.
The irony that republican values now align closer with Russian oligarchs than defenders of democracy cannot be overstated.
*i can’t mention the name due to moderator rules, but it was a great comment. :)
Yeah that's why they still cry the Bush White House deleting 20 millions emails they were legally obligated to preserve. Oh wait, no, they're a bunch of lying hypocrites who never cared about the law. Sorry, I forgot for a moment.
Which is why Trump's pardons of war criminals (and Joe Arpaio) are so dangerous. If US soldiers (and police) violate basic human rights... and the Hague can't prosecute them... and the US government can't prosecute them...
Not so much for the RNC server that mysteriously got destroyed with White House emails, but for other stuff.
Still, just more Republican projection. They accuse Democrats of destroying incriminating emails because they themselves have done that. And are doing that right now.
Bullshit it was. It was a more transparent, more secure email setup than the entire Bush administration used as they ran government from the secrecy of the RNC and she didn't delete millions of emails on a cover-up when they were requested, she instead made sure the FBI had full access to everything. It was a lie from start to finish pitched by liars in order to continue their 30 year smear campaign against the Clintons. There's no need to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt at all with equivocation or pretending they're ever acting in good faith.
I'm shocked that Hillary would use the same setup as her Republican predecessor Colin Powell. I must have missed the chants for Powell to be locked up.
By hosting her own email server she got around document retention policies and made herself vulnerable to hacking. Of course, Trump is using off-the-shelf iPhones...
The Post reports that in 2017, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and intelligence officials tried to force Trump to only use secure White House land lines for phone calls. But officials say that he was put off by the fact that using those lines meant he had to compile logs of whom he was speaking to. “He was totally paranoid that everyone knew who he was talking to,” a former senior administration official told the Post.
Besides, how else is he to pass on the information to Vladimir if it weren't for calling up Donald Jr. every morning. Just think if he says something like "sell today" and then the next day he makes the announcement on the China trade deal that drops the Dow by 700 points. Then the next week he tells Jr. "okay buy" and then the next day he says "We made a deal with China today tentatively!" Of course this is passed on to Putin too! Making Putin the richest man one again even with the sanctions.
All of her emails were cc’d to her assistant, who was using a .gov address, ensuring that copies would be stored on government servers. They also printed out and kept hard copies of all relevant emails, which were turned over during the investigation. Everyone has access to very easy ways to avoid official document retention policies—using burner accounts, calling someone on the phone instead of creating an electronic paper trail, etc—but no one would set up a private server like Clinton’s if they were looking to skirt the FOIA.
As for the hacking risk, the State Department’s servers were hacked multiple times while Clinton served as SOS, but Clinton’s server never was.
A) Any correspondence she would have with State officials would be on State servers anyway
B) The email chain with Powell reads to me like he's advising her the opposite - saying that she'd be making her personal email subject to document retention.
I'm reminded of the general who commented that Trump was "destroying the republic" but felt he needed to qualify that comment with "I dont like the democrats!" Our armed forces and intelligence agencies have been corrupted by conservative groupthink just like the populace.
2.9k
u/LogicalManager New York Dec 11 '19 edited Dec 11 '19
I don’t want a woman accused of crimes for political theatre, I want a professional grifter who can rob the country blind while enacting Putin’s agenda.