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!
Thursday, June 30, 2016
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 …
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