Clinton’s Speech Shows that Only Sanders is Fit for the Presidency

Hillary Clinton’s recent foreign policy speech was an attack on Donald Trump but was also a reminder that Clinton is a deeply flawed and worrisome candidate. Her record as Secretary of State was one of the worst in modern US history; her policies have enmeshed America in new Middle East wars, rising terrorism, and even a new Cold War with Russia. Of the three leading candidates, only Bernie Sanders has the sound judgment to avoid further war and to cooperate with the rest of the world.

Clinton is intoxicated with American power. She has favored one war of choice after the next: bombing Belgrade (1999); invading Iraq (2003); toppling Qaddafi (2011); funding Jihadists in Syria (2011 till now). The result has been one bloodbath after another, with open wounds until today fostering ISIS, terrorism, and mass refugee flows.

In her speech, Clinton engaged in her own Trump-like grandiose fear mongering: “[I]f America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum - and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety - and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit.”

This kind of arrogance - that America and America alone must run the world - has led straight to overstretch: perpetual wars that cannot be won, and unending and escalating confrontations with Russia, China, Iran and others that make the world more dangerous. It doesn’t seem to dawn on Clinton that in today’s world, we need cooperation, not endless bravado.

Clinton professed her belief “with all my heart that America is an exceptional country - that we’re still, in Lincoln’s words, the last, best hope of earth.” Yet surely President Lincoln was speaking in moral terms, not in Clinton’s militaristic terms. Lincoln did not mean that the last best hope of earth should send NATO bombers into Libya, the CIA into Syria, and Special Ops forces into countless other countries. Surely Lincoln would have been more prudent than to push NATO expansion to Russia’s very doorstep in Ukraine and Georgia, thereby triggering a violent response from Russia and a new Cold War.

Clinton lacks all self-awareness of how poorly she performed as Secretary of State. She trumpets her “successes” as follows:

Unlike [Trump], I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world.

Pure braggadocio. While Clinton “wrestled with China” over a climate deal, she failed to achieve one. While she “brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas,” she failed to head off the disastrous Gaza War in the first place. While she “negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia,” she championed a remarkably confrontational approach with Russia based on NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia and a new nuclear arms race that will cost American taxpayers more than $355 billion over a decade. While she claims to have “stood up for the rights of women [and] religious minorities,” her Syrian adventurism left Syria devastated, displaced 10 million people, and destroyed the religious minority communities she claimed to defend.

Clinton declared that she has a plan to defeat ISIS, but ISIS wouldn’t even exist were it not for Clinton’s “regime change” policy in Syria. ISIS emerged as a result of the US policy to partner with Saudi Arabia to topple Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. This mistaken policy created the chaos in which ISIS gained ground and weaponry, including US weaponry that was diverted from American-backed jihadists.

Clinton rightly accused Trump of being unpredictable, yet Clinton is dangerously predictable. She is always trying to prove how tough she is, how tough America is, how exceptional is America’s power. Trump is unqualified to be President because he lacks both the necessary experience and good judgment. Clinton, by contrast, has the extensive experience that proves that she too lacks the good judgment to be President.

Bernie Sanders, by contrast, not only offers a vastly better economic program than Clinton, but also a foreign policy based on wisdom, decency, and especially restraint. As a result, the American people trust Sanders rather than Clinton. She wins the closed primaries while he wins the open ones, that is, primaries that include the independent voters who will decide the November elections.

The Democrats would be foolhardy to accept Clinton as the “inevitable” nominee; she is the voice of foreign policy failure, while Sanders is the voice of hope, the young, and the future, and who is far more likely to beat Trump this fall.

We'll be fighting in the streets with our children at our feetAnd the morals that they worship will be goneAnd the men who spurred us on sit in judgment of all wrongThey decide and the shotgun sings the song...

Out of the three, in the US oligarchic controlled election system , Trump broke the fix on the GOP side knocking out all the Neocon candidates. Sanders has a slim chance of breaking The Democrat fix, trying to get rid of the Neocon Clinton.

Bush and Clinton were chosen by a corrupt political system. Sanders and Trump came out of nowhere.

Clinton belongs in prison. She owns the Iraq vote, the Saudis, Libya and Syria. To me, she has done enough damage and is a guaranteed disaster for everyone except her masters.

Trump is a wild card. He is unpredictable but not a guaranteed disaster. I do not know for sure but if I have to roll the dice between Clinton and Trump, I’ll go Trump.

IMO the only sane choice is Sanders but everyone should know that the US political system is fixed.

US foreign policy is a catastrophe for great parts of the World and the average US citizen has been hurt by the oligarchs and their servants in Washington. Sanders and Trump have tapped into that worrisome development that is the real threat to US freedom and welfare and the American people are waking up.

Sanders is smart, sane and cautious. He is not owned by anyone. He is a decent human being.

There is no other reasonable choice and I am solidly behind Sanders and would ask anyone to vote their self interest and support Bernie Sanders.

Well, if you think that Europe, in the middle ages, was the apogee of Political/Social aspirations, you should be fine with a Gary Johnson administration.

However, if feudalism isn't on your wish list for America, the Libertarian fantasy of eliminating Social Security, Medicare, the Minimum Wage, the EPA, and the Food and Drug Administration might not be your cup of tea.

In short, a vote for Gary Johnson is a "vanity vote," pure and simple - the practical equivalent of staying home. If it makes you feel better, do it; but don't pretend that you're really taking part in Democracy.

I did and you overstated them. His positions seem quite reasonable on their face and a POTUS doesn't write legislation so his main weapon, domestically would be a veto. I'm guessing, in addition, he will tack to the center in a atonal contest were he 8n contention.

Is he running? Clinton and Trump are so bad there has got to be other options. The "establishment" loves controlling the 2 options in a 2 party system. They lost control of one side to a buffoon and a third option makes them quake as evidenced by Galopn2's response.

I could write in "Quirk's dog," or "Rat's horse," or "My dick," but would that be participating in Democracy?

He supports raising the retirement age, multi-pronged means testing for Social Security recipients, and changing the escalator built into Social Security from the wage index to the inflation rate. He wants Congress to investigate privatizing part or all of Social Security with the goal being that the investment of contributions could be self-directed.[7]

Johnson supports cutting federal Medicare and Medicaid expenditures by 43% by ending the federal, top-down bureaucracy that controls these programs, including all strings and mandates to states. Instead, he would block grant the remaining funds to the states to control all aspects of their own Medicaid and Medicare programs, making for "50 laboratories of innovation" from which best practices would emerge and eventually be duplicated.[7] He believes the states will "innovate, find efficiencies and provide better service at lower cost." He says "common-sense cost savings" will place Medicare and Medicaid "on a path toward long-term solvency."[10]

Johnson believes that funding for Social Security and Medicare should not come from payroll taxes, but instead should be funded out of revenues from the FairTax (sales taxes.)

We may get a depression no matter who wins the election. If any candidate posed that threat I would argue Trump presidency would most likely to be the catalyst. In fact a self described fiscal conservative at POTUS would be least likely to be that catalyst.

How will we know when a key historical moment has arrived? We won’t, any more than we will know when the end has arrived, unless someone takes us for a ride and points it out. Fortunately, God sits outside your house, in a black car, with the motor running.

Eternity is but a fraction of the solemn spinOf bundled pinwheels of the distant stars That fill the blackness of the void that God and we are inA blackness matched by countless blackened carsThat carry us from birth to death to destinies unseenThe driver asking nothing in returnAlong the way the driver says, his voice soft and sereneNow look about you, tell what you discernYou say the stars are brighter than the lights upon the lakeWhere swans sing of the magic of the spheresAnd what was crystal clear before is now dark and opaqueAnd what was once our joys is now our fearsAnd so it is, the driver says, the swans are never wrongThey sing of what you are and what you’ve beenWe’ll sit awhile in this black car and listen to their songAnd after which your journey will begin

Gonzalez is among thousands of felons benefiting from a grand experiment, an act of mass forgiveness unprecedented in U.S. history. In California, once a national innovator in draconian policies to get tough on crime, voters and lawmakers are now innovating in the opposite direction, adopting laws that have released tens of thousands of inmates and are preventing even more from going to prison in the first place.

The most famous is a landmark ballot measure called Proposition 47, which in 2014 made California the first state in the nation to make possession of any drug — including cocaine and heroin — a misdemeanor. More astonishing is the state’s decision to show leniency toward violent offenders, including murderers like Gonzalez.

subotaibahadur • an hour agoI have been watching the follow up on the San Jose riots andattacks on Trump supporters. For some reason, I cannot get the aerial view of the San Jose Convention Center area to paste here, so bear with a description

The San Jose Convention Center is on the corner of S. Market andViola. There is an access door for pedestrians to reclaim their cars for the parking garage one block away on South Market. The San Jose Police Department directed the attendees to walk the roundabout way around the whole area starting by turning up E. San Salvador Street instead of walking a straight 1/2 block from E. San Salvador Street to the safe entrance to the parking garage.

1) 2 blocks NE on San Salvador Street. 2) 1 block SE on S. Second Street. 3) 2 blocks SW on E. William Street which is back to South Market a block away from where they started. 4) 1/2 block SW in an alley off of South Market. 5) 1/2 block SE down a driveway off the alley to Pierce Avenue. 6) 1/2 block SW down Pierce Avenue to S. Alm?den Street [street name garbled in picture] 7) 1/2 block SE on S. Alm?den Street to W. Reed Street. 8) 1 block W on Reed Street to the NW bound lane of Vine [divided street with a median]. 9) 3 blocks NW on Vine to the Vine Street door to the parking garage, which is on the opposite end of the parking garage from the safe and close door on South Market.

The rioters were waiting there . . . AND HAD BEEN ADVISED BY THE POLICE of the route of the attendees. And that is where the police stood by and watched as the attendees were attacked.

The cops, by the way, were not there in the role of hired security, but rather as on-duty city employees on city property as both the Convention Center and the parking garage are city property. Being on duty, it is why the police were subject to the Mayor's orders not to break ranks and let the attacks continue.

Multiple victims of the attack have stated that the police insisted that they take the route that they did.

It's worth pointing out that violence at Trump rallies largely helps one person: Donald Trump, by rallying his supporters and allowing them -- justifiably here -- to claim the mantle of the victim. To return one more second to the 1960s parallels, protests and urban riots then fueled the rise of "law-and-order" candidate Richard Nixon, which in turn gave us Kent State.

...

But there's a much bigger and simpler reason to denounce the violence that occurred in San Diego. Brute force, except in moments of self-defense, is morally wrong. Always.

It is mankind's greatest sin. Even if you think -- falsely -- that it's preventing the nightmare of a Trump presidency.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.