Maybe even all the way back to the founding of the nation we have not seen such a thing. A major party nominee publicly trafficking rape and murder rumors against his opponent. Clearly Donald Trump is trying to sideline Bill Clinton as too toxic to help Hillary.
Why Democrats will unite in November: ColumnDan Carney
obviously, drumpf gets his jollies in his rape fixations. he seems to delight in using the word. remember the raping Mexicans speech accompanied by hard breathing and spittle drool?
could be too that he is personally envious of the big dawg’s popularity more than concerned about it’s political challenge. his vanity knows no bounds.
given his pattern of making preemptive strikes accusing his opponents of the very sins and crimes he himself has a record for, perhaps there are some rapes and murders in his past that need addressing.
Still panicked about Trump? Don’t be
Michael Cohen
Trump can do as he will.. If Starr and those rabid dog Republican’s of the 90’s couldn’t make President Clinton “toxic” Trump the serial cheater stands no chance of doing so. In fact it continues to show him for the loony tunes he is..
agree Tony (mostly) — I keep wondering about voters under 30-ish who weren’t old enough in those days to pay much attention (especially women) — how new is this stuff to them, how will they react?
1828. John Quincy Adams vs Andrew Jackson. Rumors of pimping, prostitution, bigamy, mixed race ancestry & murder. All brought to you through the printed word & good ol’ gossip.
Waiting for some enterprising dirty trickster to have a group of dark haired young ladies, clad in blue dresses, follow former President Bill Clinton from rally to rally. They would be the modern day version of the “Six Coffins” bugaboo that followed Jackson. Visuals are worth a thousand (silent) words.
SJWNY — difference is, I don’t think Adams or Jackson themselves ever publicly made those claims — that’s what seems unprecedented about Trump
Visuals? Clinton is no longer the virile vision he was. young women following the frail looking Bill Clinton- would look exactly as it is – a cheap trick
Mr Crawford,
1828 also didn’t have 24/7 Cable. Mr Trump is a salesman, selling his brand, which is himself. Saying anything to get face time, free airtime & buzz is part of marketing. This product just happens to be Leader of the Free World.
Hi…. I’m in the town where Stephen Kings The Stand started.
Enjoying reading the defense of Hillary.
Jack… You must have been more north of here. There are real beaches in southern Maine. But one must accept that ones toe turns numb when dipped in the surf. Get well soon.
Going to a play this afternoon.
OSH
In WA the State passed a law instituting a state run Primary at state expense, but the parties were free to decide how to allocate delegate selection. As a result, the GOP decided to count the Primary votes in that allocation, but the Democratic party decided to adhere to the caucus system. So we have both caucus and primary dates.
Last night, Donald Trump got delegates from WA.
WA also became the second state that Hillary would have won and received delegates if it had been a primary as she beat Bernie 54% to 46%. Instead Bernie got the majority of the delegates 70% to 30% from the caucus.
Hillary is not whining. Those are the rules the candidates agreed to and played by, but state Democrats really want the system changed for 2020.
HAPPY TOWEL DAY
“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.” Douglas Adams
The Clintons have always been fortunate in their choice of enemies. I don’t think Trump will be an exception.
“Saying anything to get face time, free airtime & buzz is part of marketing.”
sjwny, exactly. that’s why he’s been able to coast thru the campaigning cycle so far not spending much money… don’t need costly ads when media gives you a free ride. have a sneaky suspicion that nm riot last night at his rally might have been self-instigated along those lines.
The other evening I was watching CNN when the news host described Ms Lewinsky as a teen-aged intern. That didn’t match my recollections from years past. The appropriate wiki says she was 25-yo, a tremendous difference. Why can’t these agencies get their basic facts straight?
Renee, it’s WAAAYYY too soon to be getting into the Maine surf. In August it will be tolerable – barely. I remember the Maine ocean temperatures all too well. Enjoy it up there.
Perhaps HRC needs to take a page out of Senator Warren’s play book
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-donald-trump_us_5744dc38e4b03ede441335ca
example about why should drumpf buy the cow when you can get the media milk free acknowledged last night on pbs newshour:
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, do we know how much he’s really going to need? You said they’re saying $1 billion, but he has certainly got by on a lot less than that during the primary season.
He got so much news coverage, he didn’t need the kind of traditional TV advertising other candidates do. So, what do the people you talk to think he’s going to need?
MATEA GOLD: Well, I think most veteran party fund-raisers privately agree $1 billion is incredibly ambitious and difficult to pull off.
And, as you point out, he might not need that much. We haven’t seen him need to put the kind of millions of dollars into television advertising that the other candidates have had to do. He will, however, need a really robust on-the-ground field effort to identify voters and turn them out to the polls.
That’s something the party’s going to take the lead on, but that’s something they need substantial resources to finance.
Flatus, Monica was 22-23 in Nov. 1995 – Mar. 1997 when the “affair” occurred (born July 23, 1973). Basic facts are tough for the news media – especially CNN – I guess it’s too hard to do the in depth research it takes to get to Google and Wikipedia.
Could it be our political discourse has ended-up in the toilet? You betcha! All those years of changing text books, home schooling and budget cuts and we have a really uninformed electorate. I am watching the Trump road show in Albuquerque…one native American bragged about being Tony Hillerman trained and said “Hillary is a communist. Trump is a capitalist!” You betcha! She wants a capitalist! Trump dissing Susana our governor (announced with that deep voice over from her commercials). Blaming her for too many Syrian refugees in our state! Meanwhile here at the REAL border….thousands of Cubans have been entering the country, legally…special status. Everyday, our local news from El Paso details their travel as the new US citizen. This story gets very little attention, nationally. Old story from CNN. Food stamps? Shorty will be here soon enough…we wonder how they will get his out of Juarez…helicopter? The wait on the bridges is too long for his secret motorcade. He may already be on US soil. Yes, the border here has been active this year…Scalia, the Pope and El Chapo. This is the real border, not the fake one Trump describes.
Pogo,
Thanks for getting the exact dates. There’s a helluva lot of difference between enticing a kid just out of high-school into performing a sex act and having a college graduate volunteering for that duty. So far as the ‘press’ is concerned, it’s a choice between malfeasance and malpractice.
Sanders, the poor man’s Trump, is going after DNC Debbie continually. Hungry Bern pulls a Palin on Debbie. He will soon announce that his VP pick is Tulsi, just like Ted. In the Senate, Bern has the worst voting attendance of any Senator this year. He was close to Cruz, the other polarizing figure. The dems have the gun in their mouth and let us hope they do not pull the trigger over Bern. The only good news? If HRC does not become Prez??? Bern will get the historical blame. Very well deserved as the spoiler of 2016. Really, once the pretend magic is gone? Old coot who hasn’t been doing his job of late.
On digital economy cable, I can get the Albuquerque local network news for two hours in the morning on a traditional home shopping network channel. It is my only tv glimpse into our sister city to the north. Today the riots surrounding the Trump rally were covered…the message to New Mexicans? You are going to have to pay for this damage…you the tax payer and the damage was heavy. Lots of broken glass…cars destroyed, etc. Yeah buddy, the taxpayers ARE paying for Trump and his damage….let us hope not for years.
BW, thanks for the posts. I wondered about your perspective when I was driving in to work this morning and heard about the protest at teh drumpf rally.
Flatus
I still remember Monica saying that during their first meeting in the Oval Office, she let her skirt slip a little and snapped the band of her thong at him. Not giving the old Dawg a halo, but an attractive 22 yo sexually experienced woman fingering her panty line in front of a middle aged male of the species … Not exactly betrayed innocence personified.
Jamie44,
Next Product Presentation …. wait …. Trump Cigars. That pic of Bill with a stogie in his mouth? Priceless. One little image, so many meanings.
It’s going to be a longggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg hot summer.
Don’t wear your good shoes.
I assume Senator Sanders will be asking some of his Washington delegates to support Hillary to reflect the will of the voters.
Oregon Democrat is Talking Sense 😉
No one has to say anything about Trump Today he attacked Susanna Martinez (guess she isn’t being considered for the ticket)
and the crowd behind him is very scary
The thing about people like Strumpetta (and Joe McCarthy) is they always overstep
Craig
Agreed, the youth vote is an unknown.. Still my rational brain can’t see them caring in the age of Kardashian reality TV.. Also they just don’t vote in abundance..
Thank you Jamie. Yes I know how some young women can act from my own experience in city hall. Had one turn-off the elevator mid-trip. Shocked the hell out of me.
My take on the email mess.
It was up to the communications organization at State and other Federal offices to develop systems that would accommodate the varied needs of their top executives. Obviously, they didn’t do it. Clinton and others received and sent raw information over their private devices. To the best of my knowledge, these messages were not yet assigned a security classification, something that should have been done by the senders. To virtually any reader, they would look like international gossip.
Once sources and methods were determined and applied to the messages, they may have been highly classified. That’s a separate issue. I’m not surprised that she was unaware of the noise about the messages going on in the background. They were told to shut-up and don’t bother the Secretary. She was, therefore, unaware that people were anxious about what she was doing.
I suspect the FBI investigation of Hillary has been turned over to DOT’s airport security office.
Well, I opened a small envelope from Hillary that arrived this morning. Inside was a tasteful sticker. It is now on Rosie’s back window (on the Left edge, of course). I hope she doesn’t, both Hill and Rosie, get stoned.
flatus, got one too! nice surprise but was hoping it would be the “woman’s card” I ordered.
jack, have you received the ones you ordered?
🙁
Pat
Haven’t heard a thing and it is getting close 4 weeks.
I guess that is what happens when you contract your work outr to a company run by liberals
Grin duck and run
Jack
Poor Mark Toner, State Department Deputy Spokesman.
He is getting roughly interrogated on C-Span 3 about the Hillary Clinton e-mails IG report.
cnn:
Warren portrayed the billionaire real estate mogul as uncaring and dishonest — picking up on Trump’s comments he made about the 2008 financial crisis.
“What kind of a man roots for people to get thrown out of their houses? What kind of a man roots for people to get thrown out of their jobs? To root for people to lose their pensions?” Warren asked.
“I’ll tell you exactly what kind of a man does that,” she continued. “It is a man who cares about no one but himself. A small, insecure, money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as he makes a profit off it.”
[….]
The Massachusetts senator also hit the presumptive Republican nominee for his unwillingness to release his tax returns, noting that while every presidential candidate since 1976 has done so, “he doesn’t think that the rules that apply to everyone else should apply to him.”
“Maybe he is just a lousy businessman and he just doesn’t want everyone to know that he’s not as rich as he claims to be. But…the last time that his taxes were made public, Donald Trump paid nothing. Zero,” she noted, referencing a Washington Post report that revealed Trump had paid no taxes when his returns were made public in 1981.
Warren then skewered Trump for defending his desire to avoid paying taxes: “Two weeks ago, he said that he was more than happy to dodge taxes because he doesn’t want to throw his money, quote, ‘down the drain.'”
“Let’s be clear,” Warren said. “Nurses and teachers and dockworkers, they pay their fair share to keep Trump’s businesses going. Programmers and engineers and small business owners, they pay their fair share to support our military, who show courage and sacrifice every day.”
“Donald Trump thinks that supporting them is throwing money down the drain? Then I say we throw Donald Trump down the drain.”
give him hell, lizzie!
Flatus , good points, also she didn’t set this server up in a vacuum and The folks at state are very good at training new SOS leaders. So what I’m also hearing is a lot of Bureaucrats busy doing what they excel at, covering their own ass by invoking regulation that they had tended to ignore. No doubt it is a system that has many work arounds and ssome of those have now been cut off.
Funny thing is if HRC were Republican in a Republican administration the whole thing would have been classified sensitive and nobody would have been reading the Secretary’s emails.
Jack
Right now Sanders is speaking or should I say kvetching, moaning, whining and generally being aggrieved. His audience is booing every time he mentions Hillary or the Democratic Party and cheering the “revolution” while claiming that he will win the nomination which is total BS. His initials and what he is full of. The party should be glad I’m not in charge because this jerk has stepped on every last nerve and I genuinely hope he loses his Senate seat and disappears into a well earned has been existence.
Oh and the cable channels have been showing only clips of Hillary speaking to a very happy, crowd complete with a wonderful introduction by Jamie Lee Curtis.. Then they give massive coverage to Bernie & Trump while harping on the email report. Canada is looking better by the second.
Flatus, I guess you’re just one of those irresistible sorts. 🙂
I agree with your two comments at 12:21 & 1:08 (even the sarcasticish last one). I’ll never understand why the DoS OIG would do an investigation of an issue 4 years after the fact, although reading the WaPo article it appears John Kerry requested it.
jack, they must’ve run out of paper and ink. according to huffpo may 3 “Trump’s ‘Woman Card’ Remark Drives $2.4 Million In Fundraising — For Hillary Clinton:
Over the next three days, the Clinton campaign sent out a series of fundraising emails. “Claim your free Woman Card today, and let’s show Trump and the Republicans exactly who they’re up against,” read one of the appeals. The results were eye-popping.
From April 28 to April 30, more than 115,000 individual donors contributed to Clinton’s presidential campaign. Forty percent of them, or around 47,000, were first-time donors to Clinton’s White House bid.
The flood of donations in response to Trump’s “woman card” comments helped Clinton raise a total of $36 million in April, of which $26.4 million was for use in the presidential primary. Clinton also raised another $9.5 million for the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties.
reuters jamie leigh curtis intro
ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Actress Jamie Lee Curtis loudly states, on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, that the United States needs a president, “who has a woman’s heart. A warm, deep, loving woman’s heart. And it’s about time in this country that we had a woman running this country.” “So I’m going to play all of our women’s card. We are playing with a full deck,” shouts Curtis while introducing Hillary Clinton at a rally in Buena Park, California on Wednesday (May 25).
I have been the peon in charge when trying to accommodate top management desires. It never included breaking the law which Secretary Clinton’s staff did like FOIA.
Starting on page 38 of the IG report appears to be an effort to accommodate Secretary Clinton to no avail. Also check out what happen to Ambassador Gration who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya starting on page 40.
The entire point is mis-direct peoples attention from low Interest rates, high stockmarket prices, the resurrection of the real estate market, fewer homeless, high employment, low unemployment, no major military misadventures, and good relations with our allies and neutral nations. Now all we need is the rise of pay for the non-exec & non-owner class. deadbeat donald doesn’t want anyone to look there. If you don’t look there, you won’t learn that Obama/Clinton has pulled America out of the republican ditch and driven us to high ground – despite Congressional negligence and corruption.
God bless Jamie Lee Curtis.
PiT,
First, Clinton should not have used the private email server. That said, the IG report points out that Powell and Gration both did what Clinton did – exclusively used non-departmental systems for day-to-day business of the department. In Powell’s case, it was done through a commercial internet provider, accessed through a private line in his office Gration issued a policy allowing him and other mission personnel in Nairobi to use commercial email to conduct official business. He was warned against conforming with that policy, had cybersecurity personnel assigned to review the Nairobi email situation, expressed the concern of those personnel involved with internet security, but despite all that he persisted in using internet based email to conduct official business. (I got an email from a Kenyan prince about using my bank account to bring money into the US, but I digress). What would have happened to Gration had he remained at State is speculation at best.
I disagree with the animus you attribute to the page 38-40 bullet points. They are descriptive and do not appear to be calculated to provide cover for Clinton, and in my view do not, particularly in light of the comments on page 23, which are anything but exculpatory. They (38-40) do establish that the cyber security folks at State were aware of her email server and I infer that no one, including the Director of S/ES IRM pushed the issue further. However, NARA and the OIG found that the 55000 page production, while not complete, mitigated the preservation of documents issue – which goes to the FOIA issue.
The conclusion on page 42 and the following says it all.
“As is the case throughout the Federal Government…”
God Bless Jamie Lee Curtis (complete agreement)
For fun I have been busy. I keep repeating to myself ‘I work for boat parts. I work for boat parts’
Trump looking to scam a billion from his supporters and those foolish money men of the Republicans. I think it is hilarious. They are dumb enough to give it to him too. Without any doubt I am sure that for years the FEC will be fielding charges about Trump taking the money for personal use, and for his staff no way they will not pick out the best for themselves. Grifters all.
Ziva dead and Tony a single dad! (okay I am slowly catching up on what little television I watch on “demand”) How could that happen? Oh well. I prefer to go to sleep with my adult fairy tale, West Wing, on Netflix.
Craig, please let us know you are not in Utah.
For both the Trump and Sanders crowds that attend their rallies this question remains: how many of them are registered to and will vote?
Most of the crowds that attend their rallies are not noted for being voters. They may like the message they hear but unless you can and will vote it means nothing. For Hillary to get the Sanders people means nothing if they can’t or won’t vote.
XR,
For the first time in more than 130 years, Americans ages 18-34 are more likely to live with their parents than in any other living situation. That is understandable given the financial prospects in today’s economy.
On an annual basis we are at records for the Civilian Labor Force (Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Series Id: LNU01000000) but the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate (BLS Series Id: LNU01300000) is 62.7 versus its peak in 2000 of 67.1 during Bill Clinton’s DOT COM bubble. It has not been this low since 1977.
That is not a very good economy that Wall Street Obama has provided. It is better that a Republican would have done. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, had nothing to do with the economy.
Pogo,
Yes, the Federal Government is a bureaucratic nightmare that is difficult to change. It has been that way for years. That does not mean we give up instead of trying to correct it. Hillary and Obama are just bad managers. You don’t compound a problem to correct it.
Pogo
perhap my favorite paragraph in the document PIT linked to.
“These officials all stated that they were not asked to approve or otherwise review the use of Secretary Clinton’s server and that they had no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff. These officials also stated that they were unaware of the scope or extent of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account, though many of them sent emails to the Secretary on this account.”
So nobody can find document #XXXOOOX that give official approval yet there are emails where Clinton CoS ask about the possibility of one, there are emails documenting coordination between the relevant departments.
Once you remove the obvious CYA going on it becomes clear Clinton is not the one who broke any rules.
Jack
PIT
What proof do you have of Hillary and Obama being bad managers? Last time I checked, budgetary matters resided with Congress and it was the Executives job to enforce legislation and budgetary matters through the Secretarial Departments. When you have a totally “Do Nothing” Congress, the Executive can only rely on Executive orders. President Obama has been relatively restrained compared to previous Presidents despite all the GOP yowling every time he issues an order, but they won’t do anything legislatively so just gag them.
Hillary was head of a Dept whose budget was severely constrained despite wartime conditions and Congressional unwillingness to negotiate. Kerry is facing many of the same problems
At present we are at the usual stalemate of: Point with Pride and View With Alarm. Pick a side and do one or the other since nothing is actually getting done, we might as well talk about it.
Blue Bronc,
Michael Weatherly (Anthony “Tony” DiNozzo) of NCIS fame is returning to CBS in the new series Bull.
Jamie Lee Curtis was great!!!
Obama’s Failures
Obama projects so brilliant an aura that it’s almost blinding. In my 73 year lifetime, we haven’t had a politician with his gifts: his writing talent; his eloquence; his charisma; his mastery of public policy; his ability to run a national campaign against formidable rivals. During the 2008 election, Obama promised us hope and change, recovery and prosperity. When Barack Obama was elected with strong majorities in both houses of Congress, he had an unprecedented opportunity to shape American history by bringing the country’s financial oligarchy under control. Obama could have done great things. Instead, he gave us deterioration, poverty, despair and steadfastness.
This is the Obama approach to middle class interests in a nutshell. Opt for initiatives that are clearly going to fail over ones that have good odds of success but cost real money. Obama seems to be getting his wish of being a transformative president. Everything he touches turns to dross.
Obama’s first economic team disaster said if Congress passed a grossly inadequate Stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) unemployment wouldn’t top 8%, it exceeded 10% in January 2010 and the labor force participation rate reached the lowest level since March 1978. The number of people employed is about 3 million less than 2007 and Obama promised to cut the deficit in half but during his first term increased it by over 50%. Obama said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down, they have increased by over 15%.
President Obama is a highly intelligence and gifted con man. He is a great orator and campaigner. He prefers campaigning to governing. He lacks judgment, leadership skills, executive command, management ability, and common sense.
Obama and his administration deserve a big fat “F” for Judgment and Leadership:
• Demonstration of a Total Disregard for the American People.
• The President began his term of office by slandering the American people who wanted him to restore the rule of law and bring the banksters to justice. Obama claimed to 13 bankers at a March 31, 2009 meeting that he was all that was protecting them from the public’s “pitchforks” as the defining event of the administration on financial issues. Obama’s catchphrase was “We’re all in this together.” Obama choose the banking oligarchs as his financial partner was the complete destruction of the rule of law when it comes to the bankers who led the three great fraud epidemics (liar’s loans, inflated appraisals, and false “reps and warranties” in sales to the secondary market) that drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
• Supported the big pharmaceutical companies with the U.S. FDA listing 286 different drugs as being in “short supply” which has tripled since 2006 and at least 15 deaths have been linked to drug shortages since June 2010 because the pharmaceutical companies don’t make “enough profit” to produce the drugs. The number of deaths should be increases by at least 243 West Nile Virus (WNV) deaths of the total 5,387 cases in just the 2012 outbreak because it is not profitable enough to develop a licensed vaccines for treating or preventing WNV in humans. Horses yes but humans no!
• The Obama Administration has carried on the Bush Administration’s cover-up of the government of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks including the Justice Department joining the kingdom in trying to have the lawsuits thrown out of court even after an appellate court reversed an earlier court decision in November 2011 which stated that foreign nations were not immune to lawsuits under certain terrorism claims.
• The Obama Administration officials have asserted that the President may kill, without due process, an American anywhere and anytime, including in the United States.
• Economic Recovery is in the toilet with only Wall Street and large corporations, not small businesses or the American People, doing well.
• Federal Income as a percentage of GDP is at its lowest level since 1950.
• The appointment or reappointment of people that were complicit in the 2008 Financial Crisis and Great Recession such as Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, tax cheat Tim Geithner, Peter Orszag, Gary Gensler, Michael Froman, and Gene Sperling.
• The Economic Recovery is stymied by Obama’s disaster of economic teams which are a virtual constellation of former Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s, Goldman Sacks based, and Wall Street loving players.
• Has offered nothing to help improve the Dismal Jobs situation.
• A grossly inadequate Stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) was half the size that his advisers recommended, a minimal amount for infrastructure spending, tax cuts to appease Republicans and a massive amount of pork.
• Encouraged Health Care Issues similar to Republican state plans and pointedly rejected the single-payer option.
• Obama promised his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would lower health care costs and insurance premiums but the fact is the law has caused an increase in both.
• A total Lack of Transparency using behind-the-scenes deals with doctor and hospital groups, insurance industry, and pharmaceutical companies to block any Congressional effort to extract any extra cost savings.
• Continuing the Bush administration’s policy of expanding the executive branch’s powers, privilege and authority.
• Failure of Prosecution for the Parties Responsible for the Financial Crisis unlike the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and the ERON collapse where the government put over 3,500 bankers in jail including 1,000 senior insiders.
• Ignores the Failed Plans for Reducing Foreclosures and a total lack of direction for Improving the Housing Market. The Obama administration said that its main housing program would help 4 million homeowners. It came nowhere close. The entire premise of the administration’s housing efforts was based on helping the banks, or “foaming the runway”, as Geithner put it, rather than stopping foreclosures.
• Obama Administration sponsored settlements with the major banks that protects the banks from future state and federal enforcement actions and prevents litigation on both the civil and criminal matters relating to the improper bank practices including foreclosure improprieties of robo-signing and submitting fraudulent documents to the courts.
• Barack Obama’s selection of Eric Holder for his Attorney General. Holder was Bill Clinton’s deputy Attorney General who played a significant role in the pardons Marc Rich and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists. Marc Rich was indicted in 1983 on 65 counts of tax evasion and related matters. Before he could be prosecuted, however, he fled to Switzerland, avoiding extradition. Rich eventually arranged to be represented by Jack Quinn, a Washington lawyer, Clinton’s onetime White House counsel and a certified D.C. power broker. Quinn went directly to Holder and the White House in an end run around the Justice Department’s pardon office. With a stroke of Bill Clinton’s pen, justice was not done.
• Failure to prosecute Bush-era law-breaking and war crimes because Obama and his team feared a revolt or coup by the military/national security forces that he is supposed to be commanding.
• Continuing the Bush administration’s National Security policies that include warrantless wiretapping programs, and suspects that are detained or rendition, without formal proceedings, placed on CIA flights to secret sites in third party countries that allow torture which gives the U.S. a “legal loophole” to allow enhanced harsh interrogation techniques (torture) without being legally liable.
• Lack of Real Improved Regulation of the Banks and Wall Street.
• Failure to close the ERON loopholes for automated and/or “foreign” (server in Atlanta, GA) oil speculators that cause increased fuel and gas prices.
• Appointment of regulators that don’t believe in government regulation of the “Free Market” and find excuses not to regulate and permit self regulation.
• President Obama has allowed his appointments of the chairman for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs partner at 30, anti-regulation, and derivatives cheerleader, and the conservative majority on the CFTC has refused to implement the mandate from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill to curb speculators’ abuses in the $5 trillion physical commodity futures contracts including oil and gas, economically equivalent swaps, and foreign board of trade price-linked contracts for over a year.
• The total lack of Prevention, Cleanup and Distribution of Reimbursements for the Gulf Coast BP and like Oil Spills.
• Failure to repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes and even capitulated on extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush Tax cuts for an additional two years with nothing gained in return.
• Failure to eliminate income taxes for 7 million seniors making less than $50,000 that would have saved them an average of $1,400 a year.
• An Oblivious Deadpan Involvement in the 2011 Debt Ceiling Crisis except for supporting deficit reductions that went far beyond those offered by Republicans including cuts in poor and middle class programs, and cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
• The Obama administration is waging a full bore campaign to shutdown the US unionized space program and the turnover of the government agency NASA to his financial supporters who want to build a new space program in a “regulation free zone” in Florida and Texas.
• Canceling American’s Manned Space Flight Program, which won the Space Race, causing the waste of billions of dollars in previous developments and eliminating over 12,000 jobs when unemployment was over 9%.
• Failure to renegotiate NAFTA to add strong labor and environmental protections including other new free trade agreements. Obama pretty clearly was lying in 2008 when it emerged that his campaign economist Austan Goolsbee had assured the Canadians that Obama did not intend to honor his campaign promises on NAFTA.
• Shipping truck driving jobs to Mexican truck drivers with a NAFTA cross-border trucking agreement when the jobless rate is over 9%, something George W. Bush could not accomplish in 2007.
• Obama’s Off Shoring of American Jobs – The massive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or NAFTA on steroids, is a global secret deal to subordinate American sovereignty to international tribunals of private corporate lawyers and off shoring whatever jobs are left in America. It’s being negotiated right now.
• The Obama Administration Is Corrupt – The examples here are numerous. There was the secret deal with pharma to spend money on elections if big pharma got certain multi-billion dollar concessions in Obamacare. There’s the pay to play revolving door, such as Peter Orszag going to Citigroup after running OMB. In the first chapter of Bailout, Herb Allison essentially offered a bribe to Neil Barofsky if he’d go easier on Treasury around TARP. This is corruption. It’s not hard to prove.
• Failure to listen to Paul Volcker, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Warren Buffett, Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair, instead relied on the Robert Rubin constellation of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Peter Orszag, Gary Gensler, Michael Froman, Gene Sperling….
• Most of his appointments believe in the Third Way (a Wall Street-funded “think tank”/lobbying group) concept of neoliberal macro-economic model and political doctrine holding that a capitalist economy can regulate itself in an environment where business are governed by the laws of supply and demand and not restrained by government intervention, interference, regulation and that tax cuts increase government revenue. They subscribe to the Supply Side laissez-faire economic theory that tells them anything that increases corporate profits is good for the economy and if government quits regulating and stays out of business, business will grow jobs.
• Inequality Skyrocketing Under Obama – Growth of inequality is higher under Obama than under Bush. This is because Obama reflated financial assets and not housing assets, and has compounded that by legalizing fraud among the elite financial actors.
• In the second quarter 2015, the Not Seasonally Adjusted Home Ownership Rate fell to 63.4%, down from 63.7% in the first quarter. The Home Ownership Rate is now the lowest since a 63.3% in the first quarter of 1967. The rate peaked at 69.2% in the second and fourth quarters of 2004.
• Suppression of Dissent – The administration’s DHS collaborated with local and state law enforcement to get rid of “Occupy” encampments.
• Confusing Compromise (settlement of differences by mutual concessions) with Capitulate (to surrender unconditionally or on stipulated terms).
Ben Bernanke Chairman of the Federal Reserve even permitted the big Investment Banks to be classified as a commercial bank holding company with lifesaving unlimited access to short-term funding and Federal Reserve oversight. We have seen the aid pour out to the former Investment Banks but sure do NOT see any oversight by the Fed. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve even helped to reduce competition in the Global Investment Banking arena with the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. Goldman Sachs and the big Investment Banks are actually running the government. Obama reappointed Ben Bernanke Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
President Obama was during the 2008 election, and still is, a socially moderate fiscal conservative (Wall Street) Democrat.
When will we get a President, like Eisenhower, that does not need someone else’s brain, just good advisors and they can think for themselves? George W. Bush’s brain was reported to be Karl Rove. Now Valerie Jarrett is Barack Obama brain. Obama’s biggest problem is that he now only has two (2) advisors that he trusts. Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett share a worldview of “boardroom liberalism.” It accepts, unlike Republicans, that government has a role to play in building infrastructure, regulating business, training workers, smoothing out the boom-bust cycles of the economy, providing for the poor and disadvantaged. Those are some good things. But it is a view that presumes a dominant role for large institutions like corporations and wisdom on the part of elites. It accepts as true that the world works best when the elites use their power magnanimously, and should never be forced to share it. That is similar to Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) proclamation of papal infallibility at the twentieth ecumenical council of 1869.
The Obama Whisperer
No one has understood Valerie Jarrett’s role, until now
By Noam Scheiber, New Republic, November 9, 2014
Even at this late date in the Obama presidency, there is no surer way to elicit paranoid whispers or armchair psychoanalysis from Democrats than to mention the name Valerie Jarrett. Party operatives, administration officials—they are shocked by her sheer longevity and marvel at her influence. When I asked a longtime source who left the Obama White House years ago for his impressions of Jarrett, he confessed that he was too fearful to speak with me, even off the record.
This is not as irrational as it sounds. Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing,” says Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, “He was not there.” (Holder hastened to add that “someone had spoken to him.”)
Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Lady’s Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above. She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administration—“you can be my person over there,” is a common refrain.
And Jarrett has been known to enjoy the perks of high office herself. When administration aides plan “bilats,” the term of art for meetings of two countries’ top officials, they realize that whatever size meeting they negotiate—nine by nine, eight by eight, etc.—our side will typically include one less foreign policy hand, because Jarrett has a standing seat at any table that includes the president.
Not surprisingly, all this influence has won Jarrett legions of detractors. They complain that she has too much control over who sees the president. That she skews his decision-making with her after-hours visits. That she is an incorrigible yes-woman. That she has, in effect, become the chief architect of his very prominent and occasionally suffocating bubble.
There is an element of truth to this critique. While aboard Air Force One at the end of the 2012 campaign, Jarrett turned to Obama and told him, “Mr. President, I don’t understand how you’re not getting eighty-five percent of the vote.” The other Obama aides in the cabin looked around in disbelief before concluding that she’d been earnest.
Perhaps no episode illustrates this mind-set better than the fate of the consumer agency that the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill created. In 2010, Jarrett and two other advisers persuaded Obama to install a genuine populist in the person of Elizabeth Warren to set up the agency. But they never intended for her to actually run it, a promotion Warren aggressively sought. “Having Warren in the short-term role was their elegant solution,” says a former administration official. “It was the best way to appease the left while preserving [Obama’s] reasonableness to business. That’s what drives him: Do they look reasonable? … That’s what Valerie’s all about.”
It’s no surprise that Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett would govern as reasonable people. It’s who they are. The tragedy is that we live in surpassingly unreasonable times.
Purple – I applaud you. So nice to see that not everyone here is living in a rose-colored bubble when it comes to the poor records of Obama & Clinton.
The Change They Believe In
Speech for Harlem Tenants Association, November 14, 2008
By Robert Fitch
Purple,
Wow, your so harsh! I agree ‘Hope and Change” was a bust. I voted for Obama because Hillary endorsed him and the Supreme Court. I think you and many of Obama’s 2008 supporters believed in a fairytale given the makeup of the Congress.. Same can be said for Bernie supporters today and if he were elected the glow would fade fast. Obama has lived up to my expectations and then some. All in all, a terrific President..
PiT,
Taking one of your points, oil and gas are at near record lows, inflation adjusted. Oil is just above 50 bucks a barrel, it was over 100 when Obama took office I believe (I’ll check this out and get back to you). And while you might not have agreed with clinton’s pardons, they were his to make, not Holder’s.TPP was recently evaluated to be a net gain for the US economy and is an answer to Chinese dominance of the Pacific rim economic structure. You make some decent points but much of your criticism is a difference of opinion.
And honest to god, could you not quote huge blocks? Please provide links and selected quotes.
Pit
Ya wanna give a little credit to that collection of quotes? I realise you can’t link all of them there are too many but at least let us know you were quoting Bill Black or Noam Scheiber at the New Republic. Just to name a couple I was able to spot. (google, don’t ya love it?)
BTW why it is important was Blues comment where she thought the ideas were yours.
Jack
Btw, following an artificial spike in crude and NG in 2008 and precipitous fall in 2009, both energy sources continued their upward trend until 2015 and are now below where they were before the speculation before and fall during the bush economic disaster. Global demand drove the price increases, and increased production combined with somewhat reduced global demand have led to lower prices.
Pogo,
For Oil, Flatus is the expert. Oil price average for January 2009 was $46.86 for a 55 galleon barrel. The Saudis are controlling the drop in price with controlled production, a lot of it, to stop the fracking. Wall Street speculators are trying to create volatilely to make money. Oil is one of the best examples that a supply and demand market does not work. It is all controlled.
If you want to understand labor participation rates a great set of charts from the St Louis fed
Warren blasts Trump; he calls her ‘Pocahontas’
David Wright CNN
Obama could have done great things. Instead, he gave us deterioration, poverty, despair and steadfastness.
Balderdash.
Bill Clinton Spends 30 Minutes Debating Bernie Sanders Supporter
By MATTHEW CLAIBORNE
United Auto Workers union endorses Hillary Clinton
AP
Glad to see my union doing the right thing!
Eric Boehlert @EricBoehlert 2m2 minutes ago
ha @maddow noted Hillary handed over 55k private account emails to State Dept. Colin Powell handed over 0. but yes it’s scandal for her.
Jack,
I am sure that blueINdallis is smart enough to know that it is a 7 year complication of Obama’s continued screw-ups from a large variety of sources, including, but not limited to:
Naked Capitalism by Yves Smith, a pen name of Susan Webber
New Economic Perspectives where Bill Black is active,
Economic Policy Institute
Tampa Bay Times
Bloomberg, etc.
and of course the many posts here.
Jack,
I have an account at the St. Louis Fed.
I prefer raw data!
Click on the Image I included. It is what I am currently working on using raw data.
The data is from the following sources:
The World Wealth and Income Database
U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, 1862-2013 (Nominal and Inflation-Adjusted Brackets)
Historical Capital Gains and Taxes
and of course the IRS
Sturgeone,
Check out the U.S. Census Bureau Historical Poverty Tables – People
Check out Table 22. Number of People Below 50 Percent of Poverty Level, that is, I do believe, called Hard Poverty!
When Obama came into office in 2009 there were 19,028,000 people or 6.3%, in 2014 there are 20,803,000 or 6.6%. I don’t consider the 1,775,000 people that hit Hard Poverty under Obama as Balderdash.
I believe you are the professor, not I. What would you call it!
See Jack that is raw data. Real raw!
Purple….I cuss a lot but I’m no professor……I only know what I know……from 2007 to 2011 or so there was NO work.and I had to sell everything I could lay my hands on just to have hot dogs for supper now and then……now I’m working my ass off, and gas is cheap…….
that’s quite selfish, I’m sure, but that’s what I know…..