Why do certain people absolutely abhor Hillary Clinton?

she seems like a lot of politicians to me--a little stiff and awkward, a little distant maybe. but that doesn't really make her stand out in the context of the senate.

i don't speak the english so good these days

And fair enough too. Bonking Bill may have become President without becoming a Republican first (always a big no-no) but at least he wasn't a recalcitrant First Lady.

I am failing to understand. Fundementalists do get twitchy at the thought of individual choice - if, by fundamentalists, you are referring to Christian fundementalists.
Christians being the only group that didn't make your -ist list.
Love her or hate her - Hilary is history.

i thought this had to do with a certain sexual position...

you finally figured out what those bidets are for, then?

you sure that he wasn't talking about Jeb Bush? i.e., why are right-wingers so quick to accuse democrats of plotting to do PRECISELY WHAT THE RIGHT-WINGERS ARE DOING?!?*

(* -- that's a rhetorical question)

Yes and i agree. he's a great guy - but he's conservative for all the wrong reasons. Actually, i should amend that - he's a small business owner who is fiscally conservative but is very liberal on social issues.Abortion, gay marriage - the hot button issues.
he's....deluded. Dynastic impulses are only for the Clintons - he does admit that the Bush family is just a tiny bit dynastic, but then throws the Kennedy's into the mix. We agree to disagree. because - who fucking cares? he is not benefitting from this administration, nor am I. i, at least, have the wisdom to see the source of the rot and choose to cut it out. He naively believes that the rotten core will somehow benefit him.
I'm already poor, so i have nothing to lose. he stands to lose everything.

I'm fucking serious about this too. The US needs a kick in the pants, and who better than Hilary and Oprah to deliver it. Hilary's hard edge for most people would be blunted by the fact that everyone loves Oprah(except most snobs). I bet an endorsement from Oprah would even get people to look at Hilary in a new light.

hm

I am referring to fundamentalists of all kinds including those 'isms' I listed. It matters not a sod what they are fundamentalist about.

They are all full of the same 'with us or against us' sanctimonious self-righteous arrogant bulldust. They all see themselves as their own particular -ism's gatekeepers and upholders and definers of ideological purity, as of course exemplified by themselves.

Unfortunately in any social or intellectual or political movement or group, they are an inevitable reality of group dynamics.

Long have I admired her, from afar.

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life.

i am beyond it, but you don't see me bragging about it.

oops...

I disagree, but that's how I would account for the rabid HRC-hatred.

I don't find that she has the world's most endearing personality and would not be thrilled if she ever ran for president, but she seems to be doing fine in the Senate.

"
An airplane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board, but
only 4 parachutes. The first passenger said,"I am Kobe Bryant; the best
NBA basketball player; the Lakers need me; I can't afford to die." So
he took the first pack and left the plane,

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton said, "I am the wife of the former
US President, a Senator form New York, and a potential future president.
An I am the smartest wormn in American history, so America"s people
don't want me to die." She took the second pack and jumped out of the
plane.

The third passenger, John Kerry, said, "I'm a War Hero; a Senator from
Massachusetts; and I am also going to be my party's nominee for
President." So he grabbed the pack next to him and jumped.

The fourth passenger, President George W. Bush, said to the fifth
passenger, a 10-year-old schoolgirl, "I have lived a full life; and
served my country well; I will sacrifice my life and let you have the
last parachute."

The girl said, "That's okay. There's a parachute left for you.

America's smartest woman took my schoolbag!"

cos' she looks like youuuuuuuuuu

This bit is the funniest part of the "joke".

xpost

now this kinda stuff is what i do not understand. the whole viscaeral hatred that hillary and bill clinton seemed/seem to inspire in ppl. what it is is abt 'em that inspires that level of loathing has been turned over and over by many but i am still bemused.

i like 'em both, i think bill has the political spine of a jellyfish but and that she can come of on TV as unlikebale but that doesn't mean she is evil. I also wonder what this playground of hers would look like, are we drinking electric koolaid? whas happenin' here?

"heil clintler"
http://www.fortliberty.org/lang/ko/patriotic-humor/patriotic-pictures/hitlery.jpg

feminazi?

what could she possibly do worse than bush, anyway?

don't say that.

An airplane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board, but
only 4 parachutes. The first passenger said,"I am Kobe Bryant; the best
NBA basketball player; the Lakers need me; I can't afford to die." So
he took the first pack and left the plane,

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton said, "I am the wife of the former
US President, a Senator form New York, and a potential future president.
An I am the smartest wormn in American history, so America"s people
don't want me to die." She took the second pack and jumped out of the
plane.

The third passenger, John Kerry, said, "I'm a War Hero; a Senator from
Massachusetts; and I am also going to be my party's nominee for
President." So he grabbed the pack next to him and jumped.

The fourth passenger, President George W. Bush, said to the fifth
passenger, a 10-year-old schoolgirl, "I have lived a full life; and
served my country well; I will sacrifice my life and let you have the
last parachute."

The girl said, "That's okay. There's a parachute left for you.

America's smartest woman took my schoolbag!

I think most of the Hillary hate is quite visceral and the 'joke' above gives a big clue to where some of it comes from. Hillary is not just smart, she knows she is smart, is proud of her intelligence and refuses to hide it. For a very large number of people, this is infuriating. They want their women to be demure and yielding and their politicians to be aw-shucks demotic. Hillary is neither.

Interestingly, the Shrub is something of a mirror image. For a Yale graduate, he is resolutely folksy in the public eye. He can't pronounciate his words perzackly,and he practically dribbles tobacco juice from the corner of his mouth. Being a man, he is expected by these same people to be a brash and a bit pugnacious. He delivers on this in a big way. They lap it up.

It is predictable that the most loyal Bush voters would line up to hate Hillary for almost precisely the same reasons they love Bush.

where do you think kobe, kerry, hillary and bush were all going together? and why was a 10-year-old schoolgirl on the plane too?

was it some kind of government fact-finding mission?

also do you think maybe terrorists blew up the plane? and thats why it was about to crash?

Hillary is not just smart, she knows she is smart, is proud of her intelligence and refuses to hide it.

I'm just sick of the Amazingly Inevitable Hilary Machine.

I think once you recognize that an IQ of 100 represents the exact midle of the bell curve, such small sins as saying "deja vu all over again" will not rankle quite so much.

if you have another clinton in the white house everything will be great again, like in the 90s!!!

i will buy a plaid shirt to celebrate.

If your frame of reference is how shitty things have been under Messers Bush and Cheney, then, yes, the 90s start to look pretty golden. Corporate greed and political insincerity are rather more tolerable than illegal wars that will cost $1 trillion, with a side order of torture.

where do you think kobe, kerry, hillary and bush were all going together? and why was a 10-year-old schoolgirl on the plane too?

http://www.mtv.com/movies/photos/l/little_miss_sunshine_060717/flip-a.jpg

I think once you recognize that an IQ of 100 represents the exact midle of the bell curve, such small sins as saying "deja vu all over again" will not rankle quite so much.

http://democrats-who-hate-hillary.blogspot.com/

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001536.html

http://www.i-hate-hillary.com/

http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/fun-images/lipsmove.jpg

http://www.staggeron.org/images/hillary_diplomat.jpg
LOL

WHY DID YOU SHOW ME THAT

Every time I encounter her statements I’m reminded what a phony act she puts on to seem down with Middle America; from using corny expressions like “déjà vu all over again” to her fickling accent, everything about her just bawls affectation.

yeah this is more or less my take on her too. if things go as they're going it seems inevitable i'll end up voting for her sometime in 2008. (and i didn't have any problem voting her back into the senate.) but i find her irritating in her calculation and her political timidity. i think she is both more calculating and more timid than she actually needs to be. and i'm sure her advisers would say that she needs those extra layers of insulation, because she's a woman, because she's a clinton, etc etc. ok. i might feel the same way in their shoes or hers. but as an outside observer it makes it hard to like or respect her to any great degree.

sometimes I wonder if a lot of her calcualting-ness is related to a degree of social awkwardneess in her personality. Sometimes, like with Bush, she seems really uncomfortable when the spotlight is on her. He comes off sounding like a retard and she comes off sounding like she's reading from a script. She doesn't seem like she has great political instinct, and so a lot of times it comes off like she's trying to hard.

er, "too" hard.

In politics, liking and respect should always take a back seat to policy. It's what laws she (or any other candidate) would sign, or would encourage Congress to pass, and what the budget she sends them would look like, and how effectively she can enforce her policy priorities that really matters.

For me, if she can run the government in such a way as to improve the country and the lives of ordianry people, she will have my respect (and, yes, my liking) no matter how stilted she seems or how phony a note her public appearances strike. The chances I will ever spend one minute in the same room with her are mostly nil, so I could give a shit how well we'd get along in person. It's her use of power that will matter to me.

Aimless OTM.

i think she is both more calculating and more timid than she actually needs to be . . .

In terms of what policy positions? I suppose you can say it about her stance on foreign policy, but it appears to me that's she is genuinely hawkish (which draws a sharp contrast between her and Obama, by the way,which could work to his advantage with primary voters, but he's been unable to effectively highlight this key difference between himself and Clinton).

^ oh, the sands of time write their own jokes

I guess I have to stop off at the liberry and read Henwood's paywalled piece in Harper's.

She was very closely involved with Bill’s creation of the whole New Democrat movement, the DLC; she was very tightly involved with Tony Blair and the international version of [the New Democrat style], the “Third Way.” So she’s very much a part of that center-to-right-wing move of the Democrats. And it’s deeply unfortunate.

Whatever novelty that approach might have had in 1992, this is really not the kind of politics we need for our present situation, which is: structural economic stagnation, polarization, climate change and all these very profound structural challenges [and] I think the “business as usual” [approach] that Hillary and much of her party represents is not up to the task....

I’ve long known that the U.S. Communist Party, despite its name, essentially shills for Democrats come election time. But it’s funny to see that a lot of liberal Democrats have an almost Stalinist spirit about dissent. They really … try to either ignore you or crush you. They’re not very open to criticism....

There’s no doubt that a lot of the opposition to Obama is just racism, subtle or crude; and there’s no doubt that a lot of the dislike of Hillary is sexist, and much of that is not very subtle and fairly crude. It makes it hard to be critical of them for political reasons.

But we do have to keep these things separate. Her politics are very similar to her husband’s, and people had no reservations about criticizing him. Just because she’s a woman, that shouldn’t inhibit us from criticizing her.

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/24/a_stink_bomb_into_liberals_certainty_doug_henwood_on_his_anti_clinton_crusade/

I bought the issue. The piece is good but it could be longer. The ISIS piece is also very good.

Interestingly, it's actually one of the least bilious takedowns I've ever read, which makes it all the more convincing. There's no sense of frothing hatred, and he's very careful not to just latch onto any negative innuendo he can find. Even where he's the most critical of her character he shows an ability to understand her human motivations, even as he disapproves.

lol I was just watching the US Communist Party convention proceedings on CSPAN the other night. it was sad lolz.

wow, didn't realize that could be seen on CSPAN, sounds amusing

there was a lot of members praising their fellows for the great, groundbreaking work they were doing (like, uh, organizing fast-food workers). I was kinda surprised how many people were there tbh. granted it was probably only a few hundred but still, so many pseudo-academic crackpots, I would have expected more fistfights to break out

Academics don't fight – they log protests at faculty senate meetings

was also a little surprised at how ethnically diverse it was

why Goldman & friends will bounce from Mitt to HRC

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/why-wall-street-loves-hillary-112782_full.html#.VGPVd_nF9yx

Nides (with whom I once shared a one-week summer rental on Nantucket)

god politico is the worst

you have a low threshold of... something, whatever the thresholds on Nantucket are made of.

poor people

thx for yr substantive comments anyhoo

what were you previously unaware that the former Senator from New York was in love with Wall Street

any Sen from NY is going to be bought and paid by those people

there are degrees

also Schmuck is never going to be prez, nor was Fonzie Tomato

I forget what yr adorable nickname for Hillary is

Schmuck is never going to be prez

^ the secret sorrow of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)

morbs what do you think of this andrew o'hehir piece?
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/08/democracy_on_the_critical_list_how_do_we_escape_this_toxic_political_cycle/

A few WTFs at the start (it appears few ppl on the board were shocked by the Dem wipeout, expected it for weeks if not months) but he's right that the voting minority in this country essentially throws tantrums. Also, this:

In the fullness of time, the (Emerging Democratic Majority) hypothesis may be borne out. But an awful lot of ifs come along with that, and too many Democrats seem content to kick back with a cold microbrew and some hilarious YouTube nuggets and wait it out, confident that their principle-free, identity-less, Madison Avenue goes to Hollywood party will rule the heavens and the earth forever just as soon as the right ingredients are added to the population stew. This assumes that demographics will not alter in some unanticipated way, that Republicans will always be too stupid and too suicidal to figure out how to siphon off middle-class Asians and Latinos, and that the Democratic Party of 2040 or 2050 will present an agenda worth voting for, by people of any race or color. It assumes, in short, that democracy will continue to function and the public will take it seriously. Since that isn’t happening now, I don’t see much reason to believe it will happen in the future.

I don't see the USA surving the century, or maybe 2050, and am glad I won't be here.

the weird thing is i think even people who don't vote and who are contemptuous of the system rarely have the clarity of mind to actually openly doubt the sort of reflexive exceptionalism that binds to our idea of the United States.

i.e. i think the disaffection is rarely coherent

that doesn't mean it's not rational

I think o'hehir is most likely correct to conclude that the United States is likely to be stuck with the politics of impasse until it ends in some as-yet-unforeseeable cataclysm or else government morphs into something only distantly related to the present system. You'd think that the financial crisis would have been cataclysmic enough, but no.

hit us again, harder.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE
TO THE FLAG
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AND TO THE REPUBLIC
FOR WHICH IT STANDS
ONE NATION
UNDER GOD
INVISIBLE...INDIVISIBLE
WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

god DAMN that feels good to say, great pledge!

sorry for that outburst. it's been a weird day.

@ggreenwald ·
Hillary Clinton, 2009: "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family."

https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/i-really-consider-president-and-mrs-mubarak-to-be-friends-of-my-family/

Hey, who doesn't have an unexpectedly warm comment about Mubarak in their past? Let's be cool about this.

it's true, they sent me a nice cake once

he was cool when he started posting on the gay threads in early '08.

http://gbdmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/140331-hillary-editorial3.jpg

hillary clinton. wrong for egypt.... wrong for america

xxxp: Dynastic rule is a bad idea, and HRC appears in the pocket of Wall St. and AIPAC. I'll vote for anyone else in the primaries (preferably Warren), and hold my nose and vote HRC in the general.

xxp: The "under God" was only added in 1954, its an artifact of McCarthyism. The whole scoundrel refuge should be unsettling for any with a passing interest in history.

Warren's not running, nor is anyone else who wdn't be the feeblest of protest candidates. An empty exercise.

Don't vote for POTUS, it only encourages them.

The "under God" was only added in 1954, its an artifact of McCarthyism.

so tired of hearing people saying this that i'm starting to believe in god & american exceptionalism

yeah I doubt I'll be able to bring myself to vote for Hillary. write-in vote for Morbz probably

so tired of hearing people saying this

it's just a harmless fact. it won't hurt you.

so Bill de Blasio went on TV and suggested how a Clinton campaign needed "a vision" -- however that could be imagined -- before he would endorse her, and the Hatchet Hilary (Rosen) in the HRC camp went to work on him:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/587348291253211136

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/nyregion/on-national-television-de-blasio-declines-to-endorse-clinton-for-president.html

(I'm sure you recall H Rosen's reign at the RIAA during the death of the record industry.)

ew Rosen gross.

does Hillary have anyone decent in her circle at all

I reread Renata Adler's coverage of the impeachment proceedings yesterday and she said (I paraphrase): "what emerges from this White House is that the president has no friends with any judgment."

what for? xp

oh idk...to kick around/heap scorn on/ignore

is there anything about this 'coronation' that doesn't smell like autocracy? has anyone but a sitting prez or VP (and usually not even veeps) been handed a modern major-party presidential nomination?

money's got a lot to do with that

Define "modern." Reagan faced a mild primary scare from Poppy Bush but that's it.

I remember that, it was a dogfight compared to this cakewalk.

I guess 'modern' wd be post-smokefilled rooms. You know, when voting made everything "democratic," not to get too nostalgic.

been handed a modern major-party presidential nomination?

You have to remember that HRC was at the center of two successful campaigns for governor and one unsuccessful one, two successful presidential runs, one successful campaign for NY senator, ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign herself, recouped her loss by snagging a top cabinet post, and has been positioning herself for this nomination for almost two decades. Very little she has done was not done with a view to how it would affect her chance to be president. She knows the inside game better than anyone out there. Her money connections are solid gold. Too bad she's a dreadful campaigner.

This description applied to me in 2007 and 2008. It would take some thought to articulate why--I hope there's no sexism there, but I don't know, maybe there is. During her time as SOS, I started not to mind her. I watched her announcement YouTube, and as soon as she appeared halfway through, the aversion was still there.

i like hillary. she seems tough + smart to me.

I showed my class the infamous "You're likeable enough, Hillary" clip this morning. I like her in that.

In a Time poll of the most evil people of the 20th Century, she rated in the Top 10, just below Saddam Hussein and two spots above her husband.

this is so crazy

Hilary (smiling): "I think he's very evil."
Charles Manson (reluctantly): "You're evil enough, Hillary."

she's a monstrous asshole.

(potential to surpass the spouse on that score)

ur unbridled hatred for hillary only makes me like her more

i don't give a fuck about what you think, go root for Jeff Francouer.

Aimless, none of that stuff you cite is supposed to 'guarantee' a nomination for president. Again, before it became a 100% auction, tho the CW around here has assured me "it always was just like this."

i like in the announcement video when she says that we've come back from some tough economic times "but the deck is still stacked in favor of those on the top", like humanity is about to be freed at last from power by hillary clinton

she's all set to stack the deck in favor of those at the bottom

wait till you hear what she's promising the meek

the rankest patronage

i don't have anything against hillary as a person, it's hard not to admire someone who seems so unscathed by the kind of deranged criticism she's been getting for decades. (offhand, i can't think of a single first lady who was subjected to remotely the kind of abuse she got in the 90s.) she's also been wrong about basically every major foreign policy issue of recent years, so i think her nomination is a bad thing. tbh i wish i didn't think that, since i'd also like to be excited about the near-certain election of the first female president.

The democratic field is no doubt full of politicians bitten with the presidential bug, but like it or not HRC has been extremely shrewd in playing her hand. The pols who are thinking of challenging her are looking at little money, long odds and the likelihood that a presidential run would take so much time and effort it could jeopardize their hold on their current office. Her challengers would either be playing a nothing-to-lose throw of the dice because their career has reached a dead end or else they'd be setting up a long game of losing now, but boosting their national profile and credibility for a later run.

... against Chelsea.

I agree with Nate Silver's assessment that HRC's chances of winning it all are about 50/50. I have the nasty feeling Jeb will walk away with the Republican nomination on the first ballot, in a nomination contest that looks closer than it really is. If so, HRC would be a slight underdog, imo.

if that matchup doesn't spark a velvet revolution, nothing will.

(Nothing will.)

Agree.

jeff francoeur is from my hometown

HRC will win pretty easily imo

How can you predict that?

The Clintons suck. It's gross to hear her bang on abt "stacked decks" when she and her husband directly targeted welfare in the 90s

I noticed this pattern years ago, was amazed that it was so obvious and so unremarked upon. Have meant to write on it at length and still never gotten around to it.

Check out the 8 year Party White House control pattern, presidential elections from 1952-2012. Go 8 years R, 8 years D, 8 years R .... How many periods of time do not fit into this pattern?

16 elections, precisely 1 surprise result. Find it, it's perfect.

15 out of 16 over 60 years is what I'd call an undeniably significant statistical pattern, not to be ignored, even though what it means is up for grabs. I lean toward basic, unflattering, unprovable ideas about disaffected voters mindlessly 'getting tired of' the party currently in the White House. Or perhaps there's a fatigue/energy pattern, where supporters of the party in the White House have a lack of energy that only grows while the party out of the White House has enthusiastic support and a more energetic political culture.

Not to say this pattern couldn't be broken again - of course it has to again sometime - but seriously, American voters have been sort of mind-bogglingly predictable across a few generations now - it's obviously not the same citizens voting in, say, 1956, as the people voting in, say, 2008.

Anyway, if the Democratic Party retains the White House as a result of the 2016 election, it will be quite an upset, from the long perspective of the last 60+ years.

as neither party really represents politics that a majority of voters embrace, there's going to be precious little about policy in this election (even less than usual) - this is all going to come down to who can most effectively slander their opponent.

xp

what was the surprise result? gb sr?

yes

which this election is totally gonna be a re-run of

1980, Reagan. Mindless 1952-2012 pattern suggests Democrats "scheduled" to win in 76 & 80.

How can you predict that?

― Treeship, Monday, April 13, 2015 8:08 PM (5 minutes ago)

HRC will have a much easier time uniting her party and getting out the vote than any GOP candidate will. she has basically no plausible challengers this time and is overwhelmingly popular with the democratic base.

15 out of 16 over 60 years is what I'd call an undeniably significant statistical pattern

not sure about this tho. 16 is a very small sample size.

the stolen election of 2000 kinda messes that up. xxxp

is overwhelmingly popular with the democratic base.

dunno about this

If the Super Bowl had followed such an obvious pattern over 16 years (rather than 60) everybody would talk about it like it was a thing.

all going to come down to who can most effectively slander their opponent.

really the truth would be enough in a sane world.

let's try to keep it to why HRC and Hillaryites are so loathsome in this thread.

like if the every second superbowl over 16 years alternated between an NFC and AFC team? i can't imagine anyone would make anything of that?

are you joking?

Anyway, via pattern, good old Al Gore is off the hook for letting that election get close enough to steal. Romney & Kerry & Mondale & Dole can be understood as the sacrificial offerings they ran their campaigns like. And so on.

joking about what? whether 16 is too small a sample size to declare any trend statistically significant? (it is.) or whether alternating superbowls would garner attention? (maybe, idk. what kind of attention? what conclusions could you possibly draw from that kind of thing?)

omg can we not do the sports analogy thing

Her abysmal foreign policy positions alone should disqualify her. So should her fealty to the Trans Pacific Partnership (which I can see the right transforming into a left bugaboo just like they did with "Keystone"). What I imagine to be her devotion to corporate dough/policies is probably her husband's fault more than Mrs. Walmart's.

Eh. I disrupted a date three weeks ago when the conversation turned to the Clintons and after only one drink I called Bubba "Reagan, Jr." The dude supported 'welfare reform' so I guess he deserved it.

It is nothing more than a sport; don't you watch TV? (The BBC World Service treats it this way too, at least last night.) xp

Kerry came awfully close to winning for a sacrificial lamb.

what do you call Bubba after three drinks, I wonder

xp

But the entire number of presidential elections we've ever had is probably "too small a sample size" too, right? So best to ignore rather obvious patterns?

No snark intended: I simply disagree on the Super Bowl bit, given that sports people obsess over every statistical pattern they can find. Something that obvious would attract notice I believe. (I'm more familiar with baseball, you know, hits .328 against left-handers in road games kind of talk).

can we run Poppy Bush instead of HRC?

do you know they called GHWB 'Poppy' at Yale in the '40s? wtf does Poppy mean?

heroin connection

The Bushes are The Poppy Family. Where Evil Grows.

http://ak8.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3952640/preview/stock-footage-field-of-red-poppy-flowers-in-early-summer-w-fisheye.jpg

poppers

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140118161729-george-h-w-bush-ns-duke-basketball-story-top.jpg

My babysitter from when I was 5 just invoked Vincent Foster on Facebook.

I CALL YE FROM THE VASTY DEEP, VINCE FOSTER

Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House.

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187

At 5:00 p.m. (yesterday), the Clinton campaign was holding a Washington, D.C. fundraiser with the McGuireWoods law firm’s PAC. According to lobby registration documents, the firm’s McGuireWoods Consulting subsidiary is lobbying on behalf of Smithfield Foods to help pass both the TPP and TPA.

Despite mounting pressure to take a position, Clinton has only provided non-commital answers regarding her stance on both TPP and TPA. On Sunday, at a rally in Iowa, Clinton said there should be better protections for American workers and called for the president to work with Democrats in Congress — hardly a clarifying statement. Earlier that day, her chief pollster dismissed a call from ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to provide a clear stance on TPA, casting the issue as simply “Washington inside baseball.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/18/congress-scrambles-reschedule-trade-promotion-vote-clintons-campaign-hosts-fundraiser-tpp-lobbying-firm/

The Hillary Clinton emails released last week include some telling exchanges about the June 2009 military coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was seen as a threat by the Honduran establishment and U.S. business interests.

At a time when the State Department strategized over how best to keep Zelaya out of power while not explicitly endorsing the coup, Clinton suggested using longtime Clinton confidant Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president installed after the coup.

During that period, Davis was working as a consultant to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported the coup.

In an email chain discussing a meeting between Davis and State Department officials, Clinton asked, “Can he help me talk w Micheletti?”

Davis rose to prominence as an adviser to the Clintons during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and has since served as a high-powered “crisis communications” adviser to a variety of people and organizations facing negative attention in the media, from scandal-plagued for-profit college companies to African dictators. His client list has elicited frequent accusations of hypocrisy.

Davis was not the only foreign agent with access to Clinton. As The Guardian and Politico have reported, other emails point to lobbyists with direct access to Clinton’s personal email.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/06/clinton-honduras-coup/

sadly, this doesn't surprise me in the least.

even more sadly, i doubt all that many people would care, since it won't factor into the partisan horse race.

i don't know if it was just the milieu i grew up in (during the reagan years, largely), but i seem to remember people caring about latin america--and US involvement in it--more once upon a time.

yeah but see the right doesn't give a shit about toppled regimes. It wants BENGAHZI questions.

right, that's my point.

maybe i misunderstand but sounds to me like State didn't have access to the interim president which suggests they were not intimately involved w/ the coup itself

As they say about omelets, you can't manage a global empire without breaking a few third world countries.

the scandal here is that she used a lobbyist w/ an unsavory reputation to try and make contact w/ the interim president of Honduras following a coup, not that she broke a third world country

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

mordy, it's obvious that she gave tacit support to an illegal coup and the subsequent dubious "election" that occurred against the wishes of the regional and international community

there's a big difference between 'tactic' support for a coup and actually fomenting one yrself, and Hillary asking to be put in touch w/ Micheletti is mostly indicative of how out of touch w/ the coup State was.

tacit support for an illegal coup is still bad

Mordy, why did you put the word 'tactic' in scare quotes when i actually typed the word 'tacit'

and did you not read the part about how the State Dep't celebrated the dubious election as a "victory for democracy" despite that the fact that most regional and international observers thought it was a travesty?

sometimes i can't tell whether you're just trolling or if you even know yourself. but in any case you should read the linked article carefully before you start to argue about it.

it was a typo i meant to quote u directly

i read the linked article. the State Dep't celebrated the fact that there was a record turnout as well and framed their happiness w/ the results in terms of the ppl of Honduras democratically repudiating Zelaya. it's telling that not insinuating secret conspiracies is "trolling."

again, who were you arguing w/?

nobody is saying that tacitly supporting a coup is the same as actively fomenting one

so i guess we can say that in this case hillary clinton re. honduras was better than, i dunno, JFK re. cuba (or name your interventionist moment here)

but how does that let her off the hook? why does that make her eagerness to embrace a government installed by a coup any less odious?

you obviously are trolling or you are terrifically dense

the eagerness by the state dept to 'celebrate' the election goes against the evidence that it was an improper election

it's pretty obvious that clinton was concerned about the results of the election rather than its credibility as a democratic election (the turnout figures were produced by the coup regime and were questioned by most authorities)

i mean in a sense this is just the sort of cynical realpolitik you'd expect from the state dept and i doubt many of her predecessors would have done anything different

that doesn't mean it's not news, though

what are you arguing again?

"As they say about omelets, you can't manage a global empire without breaking a few third world countries." << this is what I was replying to which implies a much greater hand in the coup than what this scoop says.

well in a sense that's right, b/c if the USA had signalled their displeasure w/ the coup and not reached out to those who orchestrated it, it might have shifted the balance. certainly the coup leaders would have lost more credibility.

by her own standards, off to prison with her.

It turns out that at least two of the emails which traversed Hillary Clinton’s personal email account and server were “top secret,” according to the inspector general for the Intelligence Community as reported by McClatchy. To describe that as reckless is an understatement given that, as AP notes, “There is no evidence she used encryption to shield the emails or her personal server from foreign intelligence services or other potentially prying eyes.” The FBI has now taken possession of that server....

It goes without saying that the U.S. government wildly overclassifies almost everything it touches, even the most benign information. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said in 2010, “Everything’s secret. I mean, I got an email saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ It carried a top secret NSA classification marking.”

For that reason, almost all of these prosecutions for mishandling classified information have been wildly overzealous, way out of proportion to any harm they caused or could have caused, certainly out of proportion to the actual wrongdoing.

But that’s an argument that Hillary Clinton never uttered in order to object as people’s lives and careers were destroyed and they were hauled off to prison. To the contrary, she more often than not defended it, using rationale that, as it turns out, condemned herself and her own behavior at least as much as those whose persecution she was defending.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/12/hillary-clinton-sanctity-protecting-classified-information/

by a lesbian feminist in a lgbt newspaper

http://gaycitynews.nyc/hillary-vaginal-vote-best-identity-politics-ever/

HILLARY went to see BETTE in HELLO, DOLLY! last night. Where's [redacted] when you need 'em?

[Al Smith]?

Al... for sure