Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Please, just go away …

I concede I’ve never liked Hillary Clinton. 

I didn’t like her when she was First Lady, and Bill Clinton said we’d gotten “two for the price of one.” I didn’t like the idea of electing our own version of Juan and Eva Perón. 

Soon after, she lived down to my expectations.  It started with her secret meetings – against government rules – to plot her version of healthcare reform. It was as if she fully expected to continue the legacy of Clinton corruption and secret deals in Arkansas to Washington.  Like when, in 1978 as a novice investor with $1,000, she was able to amass $100,000 in about a year. 

She morphed into a full-blown weasel everyone could see when the Whitewater scandal broke. She hid or destroyed billing documents from her Rose Law Firm days during the Whitewater investigation.  The originals were never found.  Then a version of those miraculously reappeared in the White House, “discovered” by an aide in a storage area. Potential witnesses against her and Bill related to Whitewater disappeared, mysteriously died, or chose prison over testifying.

When a long line of women came forward to say Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted them, including one who claimed he brutally raped her, she dismissed them as bimbos, sluts and whores, saying “these women are trash, who will believe them.” She followed that by claiming reports of Bill’s well-documented history as a sexual predator and rapist – stretching back to his days as governor of Arkansas – were merely the result of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

She took a personal role in trying to destroy Bill’s victims, calling Gennifer Flowers, Bill’s one-time mistress, “trailer trash.” Even after Bill had to pay $850,000 to settle a suit against him from one of his victims, Paula Jones, she never let up.

She also took a personal role in firing the White House travel staff so she could give the business to a friend.  She helped her brother’s “pardon for money” scheme in the waning days of the Bill Clinton presidency that resulted in the pardon of known swindler Marc Rich. 

After leaving the White House, she said that she and Bill left “dead broke” because of all the legal expenses incurred during the investigation of Bill’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. She described Lewinsky as a “looney-tune narcissist.” Curiously, despite being “dead broke,” she and Bill soon bought a multimillion-dollar house in Chappaqua, NY.   

But she wasn’t done.  Not by a long shot. 

She sought and won a U.S. Senate seat in New York.  In the Senate, she accomplished absolutely nothing. However, she was able to start gathering more political allies. 

Meanwhile, the William J. Clinton Foundation – started by Bill in 2001 – began raking in money by the millions.  Which, apparently, the Clintons needed being so “dead broke.” It was also a great place to park the Clintons’ political cronies, pay them well, and keep them nearby. 

And also, of course, to fund Hillary’s next escapade – running for President. 

You’ll remember, she lost the nomination to Barack Obama.

That should have been the end, but nooooo … 

Obama appointed her Secretary of State. That was the golden ticket for Hillary.  She and Bill now had the means to rake in millions more by trading her approval of questionable deals for contributions to the Foundation. Contributions, I might add, from some of the most repressive regimes in the world.  She even approved the sale of a big chunk of our own uranium reserves to the Russians in exchange for a big contribution to the Foundation.   

Hillary turned the State Department into the same pay-to-play circus she and Bill had enjoyed in their halcyon days running Arkansas like an ATM. The money kept rolling in. Not just from foreign governments seeking influence – in violation of U.S. laws – but also from corporations who knew Hillary’s next move was to run for President. 

In fact, it’s been estimated that since the Foundation started, the Clintons raised more than $2 billion – that’s right, billion with a “b” – from corporations, largely as a combination of lavish (think $250,000 and up per event) speaker fees and direct contributions.

This fueled an amazing lifestyle for the once “dead broke” Clintons, and for their political allies, as well as financing Chelsea’s wedding to the son of a convicted felon.   

In Obama’s final term, Hillary predictably decided it was “her turn” to be President. She was “owed” it by Obama and the Democrat establishment, after all. She’d patiently waited her turn, was sitting on a huge pile of cash.  And she was a woman.   

She had her allies rig the rules to ensure she got the nomination, which she did. 

And then she proceeded to run perhaps the worst campaign in American history.  She had no plan. She had no policy. She had no message – except that her opponent was a sexist pig. 

And she was a woman. Standing up for women. And against sexism.  

The irony of that messaging was clearly lost on her. 

During her campaign, she also publicly dismissed roughly half the population – Trump supporters – as a “basket of deplorables.” “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that.” You could cut the arrogance with a knife. 

In the end, despite blowing off voters in the states she should have won, insulting traditional Democrat working-class voters, making light of the fact that she used an unsecured private server while she was Secretary of State – in violation of State Department policy, intentionally destroying thousands of subpoenaed e-mails, and wasting almost a billion dollars on ads that emphasized identity politics over substance, she was stunned she lost.

According to reports from those claiming to have been there on the night of the election, when she learned she lost she went to pieces, sobbing uncontrollably.  What is known for certain is that she didn’t even come out do a concession speech until the next day. 

In truth, she was such a flawed candidate – ethically and morally, and with such obvious disdain for most working-class Americans – almost anyone could have beaten her.

Even Trump with all HIS character flaws.  And he did. 

I thought, finally, that’s it.  No more Hillary. After such an embarrassing loss, she’s done.

Wrong again.   

Now she has a new book – “What happened?” The cover only has that title and her name. As one critic said, it’s the first book with both the question and answer on the cover. 

Of course, she’s blaming everyone but herself for the loss. That didn’t surprise me. 

Recently, in an NPR interview, she said she’d be open to a legal challenge to the results of the last election.  She knows, as a lawyer, there’s absolutely no way under our Constitution to overturn the results of a Presidential election. Still, she cited Kenya, where its supreme court just overturned the results of its most recent election, as precedent.

Kenya, really?  As a valid legal precedent for us to follow?  How nuts is she? 

More to the point, why am I not surprised? 

I never liked her. But I’ve now moved beyond pitying her as a pathetic, out-of-touch, entitled whiner and weasel who simply refuses to accept personal responsibility for anything.

She’s dangerously delusional.  I just wish she’d go away. 


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