Hillary Clinton passes the buck

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

In an interview with the UK Guardian, Hillary Clinton claims that immigration "lit the flame" of right wing extremism in Europe.

Fascism always rises when the ruling elite is revealed as corrupt and dangerously out of touch.

Yes, sometimes the arrival of immigrants who are fleeing violence or seeking a better life for their families serves as the perfect scapegoat to "light the flame". The Other is always the most popular villain. But it only works if there is kindling to light.

Western Europe is governed mostly by centrists, like Mrs. Clinton herself. Many large countries are run by grand coalitions that cannot or will not make tough decisions for fear of the government falling.

Europe could've found a way to accommodate the migrants in a way that respected international law without undermining national societies. But this coordination required the leadership that Europe's centrist coalitions were lacking.

It's no surprise that as Europe's non-leaders dithered, the far right seized power in places like Poland and Hungary and is rapidly expanding in places like Sweden and Germany. Politics abhors a vacuum.

And that's how the far right seized power in the US. The ruling elite was revealed as corrupt and out of touch and a charismatic demagogue filled the void. Who was the standard bearer of the ruling class when this happened? Centrist Hillary Clinton.

Much of what African migrants are fleeing to Europe about are economic morasses and wars created or exacerbated in large part by European neo-colonialism. Just like much of what migrants are fleeing from in Mexico and Central America are similar collapses caused by American neo-colonialism... including those helped by Barack Obama's first secretary of state.

Hillary Clinton giving a nod to xenophobia is really just her making excuses for her own role in the rise of the US far right. The fascists needed a shady, out of touch ruling class member to vilify and the DNC obliged them. Hillary Clinton was hardly unique in that but just happened to be in that role at the wrong time. But it does make her supremely unqualified to lecture others about how to combat right wing extremism.

The biggest loser of this presidential election: journalism

I’ve been saying for a long time that the decline of journalism would have a major impact on civic life in America. It was not an original though... Chris Hedges even wrote a book about it. 

This decline did not start in 2016 nor did its effects.

My dad pointed out the start of this trend about 20 years ago. It was reinforced to me when I lived abroad and listened on shortwave to foreign radio stations and noticed how differently they covered issues.

The decline is essentially the increasing emphasis on polls and “analysis” and opinion at the expense of in-depth factual reporting. Journalism has become less about revealing what’s going on beneath the surface and mostly dominated by parroting of superficial conventional wisdom. It’s shallow b.s. and the media that pats itself on the bdack as watchdog is suffocated by it.

For the last several years, Nate Silver has been canonized by adherents of the analysis school of “journalism.” I think only a week before the election, I checked his site. It said that Hillary Clinton had at least a 95% chance of winning (might have been 99%). It said that she had 268 electoral votes in the bag and Trump 210. And that basically Trump had to win every single swing state, bar none, to win the election. Clinton will end up far short of even that 268 that Mr. Infallible predicted. He epitomizes the failure of modern journalism. He’s a statistician yet the media treated what he did as journalism.

Trump/Pence’s fascist bigoted agenda was only endorsed by one of every four Americans. Trump is our president but the overwhelming majority did not endorse his agenda. Only one of our four

Nearly half of all Americans did not vote. This shows how sick our democracy is far more so than the identity of the winning ticket. The media only reports on two choices. And despite overwhelming disgust with those two, they almost completely ignore the two (national ones) that offer something meaningfully different. “Conventional wisdom” was that you were wasting your vote if you voted for a smaller party candidate. Even on those rare occasions a smaller party candidate gets media attention, there is NEVER an occasion where s/he isn’t asked about being a “spoiler” or chances of winning or other horse race garbage. S/he is lucky if meaningful policy discussion is even half of the interview.

So when you are told that your choices are to waste your vote on a good candidate or support someone you find morally repugnant, it is any surprise nearly half of Americans said “the heck with all this”? When they find out that the person who gets the most votes doesn’t win – unlike EVERY OTHER OFFICE IN AMERICA – it makes the process seem even more pointless. When “experts” and the professional pundit class tell them must vote for the “lesser of two evils” and to vote for A because B sucks even more, does that really inspire them with a deep sense of patriotic and civic pride?

If you want those half of Americans to actually vote, don’t lecture them. Don’t condescend to them. Give them a positive reason to do so.

 

Hillary Clinton's Al Gore problem

Even aside from propping up the oligarchy, purely as a campaigner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have two of the same problems as then Vice-President Al Gore did in 2000.

The first is that she, and her supporters, give the impression that she thinks she is owed victory, simply because it's her turn. When the fate of people who work for a living is center stage, coming across as entitled is bad politics.

Outrageously offensive comments by feminist icon Gloria Steinem and another former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, both supporters of Mrs. Clinton, illustrate that. Both are upset that young women overwhelmingly support Clinton's primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Steinem said that young women only supported Sanders to get boys. Albright said that a "special place in hell" was reserved for females who supported Clinton's opponent (some argue that there's a special place in hell reserved for Albright herself).

Their "feminist" message is that young women should shut up, turn their brains off and do what their (feminist) elders command them to. Does their idea of feminism want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy or with meritocracy? Seems like they are hijacking feminism to push their partisan agendas.

The second, and it's really related to the first, is that Clinton and Gore both suffer from what the French call syndrome de premier de classe, the smartest kid in the room syndrome. They are both extremely intelligent people. They think that alone is enough.

Being intelligent and well-versed on key issues is very important to being president. We've seen the disaster of presidents who aren't and end up being manipulated by their inner circle.

At the same time, we've also seen extremely intelligent presidents get themselves into trouble because either they were borderline sociopaths (Nixon) or they grew up thinking their intelligence gave them impunity (Bill Clinton).

Politics and governing are not school exams where the smartest person always come out on top. But politics does have one similarity with school: no one likes the person who thinks they're entitled.

Why Hillary's defeat matters

If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.

It’s no secret that I am a Green and will vote for Ralph Nader in November. And although I was initially enthused by some of his foreign policy comments, I've soured a bit on Barack Obama.

In recent months, he’s chosen to appease the gods of political correctness. These gods demand no deviation from the religion of militarism (Obama's commenting about bombing Pakistan!). These gods equate disagreeing with the Israeli government 0.01 percent of the time to promoting a second Holocaust.

This has undermined Obama's claim to being bold, his promise to bring a new kind of politics to Washington .

That said, Obama's effective clinching of the Democratic nomination is important because it is the triumph of a certain kind of politics over old-style sleaze-and-divide that G. Walker Bush and Hillary Clinton represent.

Now bear in mind, I don't think a President Obama would fundamentally transform American foreign policy. I don't think he will live up to then-Gov. G.W. Bush's observation (almost immediately betrayed by Pres. G. W. Bush) that, "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us; if we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."

I think Obama would change the tone of foreign policy, but not the substance. If elected, he'd return us to a (Bill) Clintonian 'kinder, gentler empire.' He'd make sure that all wars of aggression were multilateral.

Yet. a kinder, gentler empire is still an empire.

A multilateral war of aggression is still a war of aggression.

But Obama's nomination matters less because he won than because Hillary Clinton lost. Here's why.

I've noticed a recent trend in Africa and the Middle East for countries to become de facto monarchical republics. Dictators hand off to their sons. You’ve seen it in places like Syria and Togo. You’ve seen sons made heirs apparent in many other faux republics like Gabon, Egypt and Cameroon.

Had Hillary been elected this year, America would’ve risked turning into to a similar banana republic. The US could’ve been ruled by either a Bush or Clinton for 28 consecutive years. Perhaps longer if Brother Bush from Florida had decided to run in 2012 or 2016. Hillary’s defeat was bad for dynastic politics and as such, it was good for democracy.

Hillary was a victim of double standards she and her supporters promoted.

She said she wanted to be judged by the same standards as male politicians, But when you criticized her objective flaws, such as her being the favorite candidate of corporate special interests, you were reflexively dismissed as misogynistic, as hating strong women.

She said the media was sexist because it made a big deal of the fact she cried (never mind that this was the same media that massively overplayed the Howard Dean Scream in 2004) but she had no problem making statements implying or even stating explicitly that women make better leaders than men.

Liberal-minded people, the people most open to voting for a non-white male candidate, objected to these double standards. They resented being called sexist because they asked fair questions. They resented the suggestion that not supporting Hillary was a slap in the face not to a woman, but to all women.

She made people most likely to support her into the people most likely to loathe her. The harshest comments I’ve heard about her in the last six months have been not from the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ but from liberals and progressives who were offended by her and her most rabid supporters' affront to their sense of fairness.

There are 300 million Americans, about half of whom are female. Many of whom are as smart and talented as Hillary but without her air of cronyism, of presumptuousness, of arrogance and, most gallingly for a ‘feminist’ icon,’ of nepotism.

To most liberal-minded people, it seems fair to say, "I’d vote for a good female candidate but Hillary isn't that candidate."

But Hillary supporters treated a vote against her as a vote against all women, as a vote against womanhood, as a rejection of female equality.

It’s no coincidence that Obama’s speeches are rife with the word ‘we’ while Hillary’s overuse the word ‘I’.

The biggest single reason so many Hillary supporters are bitter is because they thought the nomination ‘belonged’ to her before the first voters were cast.

That makes it so they think Obama 'stole' the nomination that, in their delusional minds, rightly belonged to her before the first vote was even cast. Their rejection of her was, in their eyes, the height of ingratitude.

This mentality exemplifies why it's good that Hillary lost. Any president needs a healthy ego, but we've seen damage that can be done by a president with a gargantuan sense of entitlement and an absolute belief that people owe him something.

The reason Obama’s win is good isn't so much because Obama's a transformational candidate. He's not.

The reason it's important is because political office should be earned, not given. It should be a race, not a coronation. Obama is certainly flawed, but he's far less bad than Hillary. Kudos to Democratic voters for thinking for themselves and making their own decisions rather than listening to the media-decreed conventional wisdom of last December and January which had already anointed Hillary the next president as a foregone conclusion.

The US has spent eight years being misruled by a corporate-owned president with a massive sense of entitlement, with no moral compass, who thinks the rules and the laws don't apply to him, who divides people for his personal benefit and who felt like he had a God-given right to absolute power because of who he happened to be related to.

The Democrats rejected Hillary because so many of them saw the every single one of those qualities in her. And in doing so, they did the nation a favor. In doing so, they gave America the small hope that one day in the future that the Democratic Party might actually break the shackles of corporate control and nominate a truly progressive candidate.


Update: You need more than vague talk about 'change' to impress me. I can't remember the last non-incumbent candidate who DIDN'T talk about change. I can't remember the last non-incumbent nominee who DIDN'T promise to shake up Washington. And fearmongering like the 'a vote for Nader is a vote for (insert Republican Devil Incarnate du jour)' lie only repels me. But when you start doing stuff like this, now you've got my attention.

Hillary's appeal to middle America: blacks are lazy!

If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.

How desperate and despicable is that egomaniacal (expletive deleted) Hillary Clinton?

We've long known she's corporate owned. But she's now stooped to a new low, even for her.

The woman of privilege recently claimed that Obama's support was "weakening" among "hard-working Americans, white Americans."

It's a good thing she added that clarification. Because she wouldn't want to leave the impression with saintly "middle America" that she thought black Americans were hard working.

Democrats should ask, if they haven't already, if they really want someone so divisive and contemptible as their nominee.

As I've said before, I was never a huge fan of hers before the campaign but I didn't hate her.

I do now.

Is there any question now she's willing, more so that even the ordinary politician, to put her own gargantuan ego ahead of the good of not only her party but her nation? How in Heaven's name can anyone still see her as having a shred of honor?

Liberals like to think that such pathetic garbage is the unique provenance of the Republican Party. And it certainly is more popular in the GOP. But some Democrats obviously aren't above appealing to such naked bigotry in order to help their poll ratings.

A kinder, gentler Empire

This year's version of the empty 'vote for the lesser of two evils' blackmail is that a McCain administration would be Bush lite and soooooo much worse than a Clinton or Obama adminstration, especially in international affairs, that we have to vote for Democrat no matter what.

Turns out foreign policy experts disagree with this 'conventional wisdom'.

They echo the Naderite contention that while both Democrats might tweak foreign policy around the largely inconsequential edges, neither would change it in any fundamental fashion.

Sweeping oratory aside, a President Barack Obama or a President Hillary Rodham Clinton -- let alone a President John McCain -- might chart a course in the world that's surprisingly similar to that of George W. Bush in his second term, summarizes Washington Post writer Michael Michael Abramowitz.

As I've mentioned in this blog before, neither Democrat offers any substantive challenge to the American empire's core tenet. They merely offer the same old militarism but with a more charismastic face. They'll meddle in other countries' internal affairs for the benefit of the multinationals that own them, but at least they'll do it with a smile!

Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor who served for two years as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, echoed that thought. Obama and Clinton's "critique in general of the administration, aside from Iraq, is we are going to be more competent and collegial," he said. "They don't really debate many of the underlying premises of the administration's current policies."

This shouldn't come as any surprise. Both John Kerry in '04 and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in '06 made the basis of their campaigns the premise "Bush's foreign policy is fundamentally right. It's just the execution that needs work."

Sadly, many desperate, self-described progressives bit on this hook, line and sinker.

A kinder, gentler empire is still an empire.


Reminder: if you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.

Fanatics: they're not just for Republicans anymore

Hillary Clinton has decided to prop up her floundering coronation march by trying to out-Bush John McCain. The New York senator recently promised to 'obliterate' Iran if they tried 'launching an attack on Israel.'

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," AFP quoted the senator.

No, she doesn't specify what kind of attack would meet her standard. Would bombing raids on Tel Aviv and, say, kidnapping an Israeli sailor at sea both meet Clinton's threshold for launching a nuclear holocaust?

And yes, that's the same Israel that has a nuclear arsenal of its own as well as the region's most powerful and well-funded military.

But heaven forbid you criticize Clinton's militarism or anything else about her slimy campaign. It's okay to attack McCain's fetish for perpetual war as reckless and a frightening trait in someone in charge of this country's nuclear arsenal. But apparently it's sexist to ask the same question of Clinton.

Hillary: working class hero

One of the key tenets of Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is how she's glomming on to her husband's legacy. That her 'service' as First Lady makes her ready to lead on day one in a way that Barack Obama isn't. Forget for a second that the only official policy role she had ended with a hideously complex plan that failed miserably to gain public support. Let's just go with this idea that she'll head the Restoration of the House of Clinton. Let's go with the idea that she was virtually co-president during the 90s.

The first Clinton administration effectively ushered in the end of American manufacturing. It was already in decline to some extent, but its death knell was the NAFTA and WTO agreements put it on life support. The House of Clinton (of which Hillary claims to have been an integral part) essentially completed the Reagan Revolution. The House of Clinton and the afforementioned agreements completely dismantled both public and workers' health and safety protections in the name of the mythical panacea known as 'free trade.' Or at least, whatever hadn't been previously been annhilated by Reagan-Bush I.

Even aside from the fact that she's far and away the most corporate-owned candidate left in the race in either party, this legacy she's leeching on to makes me truly at a loss to figure out why her strongest base of support is from none other than... blue collar workers.

Why is someone claiming this record, someone who was on the board of one of the most infamously anti-union corporations in this country (Wal-Mart)... getting so much support from unions? Why is someone who claims to have been an integral part of an administration that emascualted worker protections so strongly supported by the working class?

I am truly mystified with this is the case. Can anyone offer me some insight? Even speculation or conjecture is fine. I'm really at a loss trying to wrap my mind around this. Of all the candidates for the working class to attach themselves to, why her?

Especially when you have a candidate like Ralph Nader who's done the exact opposite, who's based not just his campaign but his whole life advocating on behalf of public and workers' health and safety issues.

Follow the money

Upon reading the comments of an acquaintance on another blog, I decided to take a look at the contribution pages for the campaigns of both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Each of them has a series of conditions you have to agree to. Such as being of a minimum age, donating your own money, etc. Most of the conditions were similiar between the campaigns except for two.

Obama's campaign required you to swear that...

-This contribution is not made from the funds of a political action committee

and

-This contribution is not made from the funds of an individual registered as a federal lobbyist or a foreign agent, or an entity that is a federally registered lobbying firm or foreign agent.

Hillary's campaign had no problem accepting money from political action committees and lobbyists for corporations or even foreign agents.

Is anyone really shocked?

But it's certainly something in plus column for the Obama campaign.

Update: His foreign policy mindset is worth a look too.

Hillary: bigot or power hungry at any cost?

I've never liked Hillary Clinton and I've never quite trusted her, but I've never loathed her. But I'm starting to. My senator seems bound and determined to eradicate every last shred of respect progressives have for her.

It's bad enough that she's a corporate tool, the favorite candidate of lobbyists and special interests. But now, she's apparently lowered herself to exploiting Islamophobia.

CNN reported that a photo's been circulating of Barack Obama in traditional Somali Islamic dress. This was from a trip the senator took last year to east Africa.

The Obama camp accused the Clinton camp of circulating the photo. The Clinton camp offered a tortured smokescreen but refused to deny the allegation.

Obama is Christian but his father was Muslim. Both the far right and Hillary's camp are keen for this to be more widely known. This is why the Obama camp rightly accused the Clinton camp of hate mongering, of pandering to Islamophobia.

Maggie Williams, Hillary's Karl Rove, offered this lame obfuscation: “Enough. If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed... This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry."

You can easily envisage a Bush-esque smirk on her face as she's saying this.

Now this diversionary huffing and puffing begs the question: if a photo of Obama in Islamic clothing during a visit to an Islamic country is a non-story, then WHY DID THE CLINTON CAMP CIRCULATE THE PHOTO?

It's really no different than the far right fearmongers who insist on using Barack Obama's middle name (Hussein). And then when challenged, they accuse critics of being Islamophobic saying "Gee, why do you object to his full name?" This, when they don't use the middle name of any other candidate....

(Let's bear in mind that if Rush Limbaugh or someone of his ilk had circulated a photo of First Lady or Senator Hillary in Islamic garb, they would've gone ballistic, raged about the right-wing smear machine and whipped out the martyr card yet again)

The mere fact that she's so power hungry that she'd pander to hatred and bigotry to obtain it should automatically exclude her from presidency.

We've spent the last eight years with a divisive, corporate-owned, fear mongering president with a gargantuan sense of entitlement. The last thing we need is another eight years of it.

The counterreaction to fear mongering torpedoed the Rudy Giuliani campaign. Hopefully it will do the same to Hillary's.

Selected, not elected?

I heard a rather interesting fact on the news yesterday. Apparently, even if either Sens. Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton won every single elected delegate remaining in the race (which is virtually impossible since the Democrats allocate them proportionally), neither would have the majority need to win the nomination. So that means the "superdelegates" will decide the race.

"Superdelegates" are basically Democratic elected officials and other establishment figures. They were created to make sure the party establishment had a modicum of control of the unwashed masses that make up their rank-and-file.

I believe that if either candidate has a comfortable lead going into the convention, the "superdelegates" won't overrule the will of their voters. It would cause an uprising in the party and probably kill them in November.

But if the vote is relatively close, these appointed figures will decide the race. Which is precisely their raison d'etre, don't forget.

And given Hillary's status as an establishment tool and her husband's status as as person to whom surely a lot of favors are owed, I have no doubt that in a close race, the "superdelegates" will tip the balance for Hillary... regardless of who won more of the elected delegates.

Essentially, "superdelegates" are the electoral college of the Democratic Party. And they could easily give the nomination to Hillary even if Obama was the deserved winner.

All the people who voted for Obama will feel like their vote was stolen by party insiders. It's a big risk and would split the party. But will a party that's under the control of lobbyists have the guts to against the person who's far and away the lobbyists' favorite candidate?

If not, then the party that has spent the last year eight years whining that the current president was selected not elected may well have a nominee of their own who'll be exactly that.

Hillary: the Wal-Mart years

Common Dreams has a good article on how then-Wal-Mart director Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world’s largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

Not surprisingly, her official biography makes no mention of her half dozen years on the board of directors of one of America's most anti-union corporations.

Obama-Clinton

Although most of you know this, I will start this essay by saying I'm not a Democrat. I am a progressive, a group which used to be influential in that party but has become virtually irrelevant.

But I am an American and I am following closely the race Democratic presidential nomination. Although I'm not a Democrat anymore, whoever they nominate has a very good chance of becoming the next president.

I thought the Democrats had some good candidates. I liked what Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich had to say, although they never had a chance of winning in today's corporate controlled Democratic Party. I had issues with John Edwards, but I appreciated the fact that he was the only major candidate who actually talked about poor people as though they were human beings to the same degree as middle class folks. He talked about them like they were actually part of this country. He was the only one that acknowledged their existence. I think this was useful.

Of the two remaining candidates, I prefer Barack Obama. I know that will displease some people who are Hillary Clinton fanatics and others who think I shouldn't like any Democrat. But although some of my preference for Obama is based on a mistrust of Hillary Clinton, there are aspects of Obama that I actively like. So please hear me out.

I was reading this article about how Obama went to Martin Luther King Jr's church in Atlanta and condemned the homophobia that many blacks hold. He said that bigotry was bigotry, no matter who was engaging in it. He said that you shouldn't get a free pass for gay bashing or anti-Semitism just because you're black. He countered that blacks should be MORE sensitive to others suffering from immoral discrimination. Humanity and empathy are not a zero sum gain. He said this in a black church.

I contrast this with Hillary Clinton's vote in favor of giving President Bush a blank check to launch his unprovoked assaults against both Iraq and the Constitution. It's my suspicion that Hillary truly believed that these were bad ideas but didn't have the guts to cast the right vote. I believe she was afraid that Republicans would tar her as soft on "national security" and she didn't want to give them that. Because she did the wrong thing to appease them, I'm sure they're going to take it easy on her come summertime if she wins the nomination (rolls eyes).

And that's exactly what's wrong with Hillary Clinton. She's spent seven years as my senator desperately trying to not give the Republicans ammunition for the presidential bid we all knew would happen eventually. Even though the most politically unsavvy person knew that they were going to pillory her anyway, no matter how conservative her voting record as an elected official was.

I say good for Barack Obama. Guts means saying what's right to an unfriendly audience. Cowardice is voting for the wrong thing not because you believe it's right but because someone might call you meanie names.

If one's most important experience is cowardice when it most matters, then maybe that's not the kind of experience one should want from their prospective commander-in-chief.

I will not vote for anyone whose objective is to win Ann Coulter's support, however backhanded it may be. I will not vote for a corporate tool for president, regardless of whether there's a D or R or Z or X or V after their name.

The corporatists desperately want Hillary. So Obama is the only chance to prevent the them from completely emasculating what little progressivism is left in the Democratic Party. Eight years of Clinton II will surely finish what Clinton I got rolling.

Obama's the only chance to get a semi-decent candidate out of one of the major parties. If you're a Democrat and don't want your party to become as corporate-owned as the Republicans (they're pretty close as it is already but Hillary would seal the deal), then please vote for Obama.

But my preference for Obama is not solely based on the fact that he's not Hillary Clinton. I actually think he might make a decent president.

In this time of America's tattered international reputation, it's even more important to have a president who actually has a worldview. A worldview beyond "let's bomb the hell out of (devil country of the month)." A president with a worldview will be better able to challenge advisors. A president without a worldview will swallow whole hog whatever bill of goods advisors are trying to sell. Witness the last eight years.

It's important to have a president that can truly engage with other countries, rather than acting like we have a God-given right to their subservience. If a candidate thinks she has a God-given right to the female vote or the Latino vote or the gay vote, then that Bushesque sense of entitlement will carry over into governance and foreign policy.

What I like about Obama is that when he addresses foreign policy questions, he actually betrays that most mocked of emotions in political circles: empathy. He actually tries to put himself in the shoes of other people. I don't doubt that's related to the fact that he's lived in a developing country (Indonesia) and has roots in another (Kenya).

There's no doubt in my mind that as president, his judgment would be wisened by this humanity... something that has been sorely lacking in the White House for a long time and something that none of the other candidates have had the guts to show on foreign policy questions whatsoever.

Sen. Clinton's sense of entitlement

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt

Most open minded people are pleased at the pathetic implosion of Rudy 9iu1an1's campaign. And we've all had fun teasing fans of Ron Paul for their Scientology-like fervor... although their cult leader has humiliated 9iu1an1 in the voting so far.

But Hillary Clinton and her supporters deserve real scorn.

It's no secret that I've never been a fan of Hillary. I didn't vote for her US senatorial campaign in 2000 or in 2006. And while I'd consider voting for Barack Obama if Ralph Nader doesn't run, I'd never vote for Hillary. I'd be happy to vote for a good woman president, but the good part is more important to me than the woman part.

If you want a corporate tool who's served on that "liberal" haven, the Wal-Mart board of directors, then she's your candidate! Hillary brags about her experience, but she's been an elected official four years fewer than Obama. And her experience as an elected official consists of voting for the Patriot Act, the Aggression against Iraq and most of Bush's war against civil liberties.

Her campaign is trying to have it both ways. She's pandering to women on the basis that it's time for a woman leader, that she'd be more sensible than the belligerent men, etc.

I can deal with this. All candidates pander to whichever group they feel they can squeeze the most votes from.

But at the same time she's bragging about how great she'd be as a woman president, she, her campaign and her supporters are whining like insufferable children about the supposed double standard, about how They are picking on her unfairly because she's a woman.

Well guess what Einstein: if your sales' pitch is to be judged differently because you're a woman, then quit your whiny-ass bitching when you are judged differently because you're a woman!

Take this sniveling entry by a bitter Hillary supporter.

He has no problem with Hillary playing the gender card but rages when Obama supposedly "plays the race card."

He pouts, "I think it is incredibly disappointing that we live in a country where people continue to clique up to that degree based on skin color. I think it is ridiculous that almost half of the voters in an entire state would choose a candidate for the foolish reason of race."

This guy AUTOMATICALLY assumes that every single black person who voted for Obama ONLY did so for the sole reason of his skin color.

(If Obama's popularity is only due to the "race card," as this guy puts it, then I wonder how he won Iowa, a state that's 97 percent white.

But this isn't the only hypocrisy. Bill Clinton has launched blistering attacks on Obama. But when anyone criticizes Bill for it, we're told that he's just the candidate's spouse and he should be treated with kid gloves.)

However, if someone else were to assert that every single woman who voted for Hillary did so for the sole reason of her gender, he'd flip out about this alleged double standard.

When half the population is black (which it rarely is) and Obama wins, it's because of race. But when half the population is female (which it usually is) and Hillary wins, it's NOT because of gender.

What arrogance. What a whiny-ass sore loser.

And this is exactly what people have always associated with Hillary: Arrogance. The presumption that it's her God-given right to be president just because she's a smart woman. That anyone who votes against her must be either far right loon, a raging sexist or both. Because no one with half a brain could possibly vote against this most brilliant woman on the planet!

One of the reason so many people can't stand George W. Bush (even before he started his Crusade against American values) is because he came across as feeling he had this gigantic sense of entitlement. That he was owed the world because of who he was related to. Hillary Clinton has exactly this same sense of entitlement. And that, not her gender, is why so many people both of the right AND the left can't stand her.