Thursday, June 30, 2016

Hillary with Huge Early Lead


Donald Trump as the Republican nomination for President is bad enough; him as president is almost unthinkable. According to Nate Silver, the odds are long at the moment, a month after they were about 60-40 for Clinton. Now it stands at Hillary having a 80.6 percent chance of being elected in November, with a projected total of 353 electoral votes. Included below are the current projections by Silver’s 538. It is, of course, early, but Silver has only wrongly forecast one state in the past two presidential election cycles. Yes, one state!




Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Benghazi Report Finally Out … Nothing to See Here!

There have now been eight, yes eight, congressional investigations into Benghazi and the death of four Americans. The latest, at a cost of $7 million to taxpayers, is clearly a political document again seeking to condemn Hillary Clinton and undermine her run for the presidency ("The Politics of the Benghazi Report"). The Democrats, essentially locked out of the process, have responded to the 800-page tome with their own of well over 300 pages. Both are heavily politicized documents that provide little in the way of concrete answers beyond what we have known for years.

One interesting byproduct of the report is an interview the New Yorker conducted with Dr. Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens (who was killed in the attack). Her perspective is that the process has been politicized to the detriment of the truth and that Clinton is not really culpable for the events that unfolded. That is the consensus of the Democratic party, much of the media and even of the victims’ families. The question of why we must continue to harp on the matter is clearly related to the fact that the GOP is worried about losing a third straight election in a row. It also ties in with an obsession with the Clintons that goes back to Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. During his tenure, millions and millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on a witch hunt to try to destroy his presidency. The only tangible result was the overhyped Monica Lewinsky case and the fallout.

Of course, Bill Clinton left office with one of the highest approval ratings in history and has since largely built on his reputation, with some detractors, for his humanitarian work with the Clinton Foundation. Hillary has been a Senator from New York and Secretary of State since the family left the White House and made a boatload of money together with her husband writing books and giving speeches.

The point, however, is the rather coarse way in which the GOP is playing politics with commissions set up almost exclusively to indict their competitors, while largely ignoring their own sins. The tradition goes back to the early days of American independence but has gotten nastier and more ubiquitous in the past 30 years or so, a byproduct of a conservative revolution big on promises, but short on tangible improvements in the quality of life of citizens (beyond the top 1 to 10 percent). Benghazi is really a non-story at this point, but will continue to embolden a certain portion of the constituency of right-wing conservatives, who have spewed out more conspiracy theories of the Clintons than all those surrounding JFK, the illuminati and secret alien visits combined.


There have now been eight, yes eight, congressional investigations into Benghazi and the death of four Americans. The latest, at a cost of $7 million to taxpayers, is clearly a political document again seeking to condemn Hillary Clinton and undermine her run for the presidency ("The Politics of the Benghazi Report"). The Democrats, essentially locked out of the process, have responded to the 800-page tome with their own of well over 300 pages. Both are heavily politicized documents that provide little in the way of concrete answers beyond what we have known for years.

One interesting byproduct of the report is an interview the New Yorker conducted with Dr. Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens (who was killed in the attack). Her perspective is that the process has been politicized to the detriment of the truth and that Clinton is not really culpable for the events that unfolded. That is the consensus of the Democratic party, much of the media and even of the victims’ families. The question of why we must continue to harp on the matter is clearly related to the fact that the GOP is worried about losing a third straight election in a row. It also ties in with an obsession with the Clintons that goes back to Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. During his tenure, millions and millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on a witch hunt to try to destroy his presidency. The only tangible result was the overhyped Monica Lewinsky case and the fallout.

Of course, Bill Clinton left office with one of the highest approval ratings in history and has since largely built on his reputation, with some detractors, for his humanitarian work with the Clinton Foundation. Hillary has been a Senator from New York and Secretary of State since the family left the White House and made a boatload of money together with her husband writing books and giving speeches.

The point, however, is the rather coarse way in which the GOP is playing politics with commissions set up almost exclusively to indict their competitors, while largely ignoring their own sins. The tradition goes back to the early days of American independence but has gotten nastier and more ubiquitous in the past 30 years or so, a byproduct of a conservative revolution big on promises, but short on tangible improvements in the quality of life of citizens (beyond the top 1 to 10 percent). Benghazi is really a non-story at this point, but will continue to embolden a certain portion of the constituency of right-wing conservatives, who have spewed out more conspiracy theories of the Clintons than all those surrounding JFK, the illuminati and secret alien visits combined.

One doesn’t expect any change in the tone of political rhetoric in the short term, but can hope the mainstream media at least reports the findings with the several barrelsful of salt it deserves …