I've Had it With Hillary Clinton

[Homoaffectional]

^ I don't blame Senator Clinton as if she personally made it happen, but I do blame Congress as a whole (thus she is held responsible for her part of Congress' inexcusable collective action) for failing to follow the Constitution and declare war.

Agreed, and furthermore, high profile "shift with the wind" Dems like Clinton, by their very stature, are responsible for the votes of other Dems, who will look at the way they vote, and vote the same way. Examples, aside from my favorite war profiteer on the Dem side, Dianne Feinstein, are other senators who had no excuse for voting the way they did, such as Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, and Maria Cantwell.

The Republicans are by far the worst offenders as far as cheerleading this disastrous war, and will never get the slightest ounce of support for me no matter how 'moderate' they like to fancy themselves, but the fact of the matter is, that both parties are culpable for the current situation in Iraq, no matter how much many Dems are trying to distance themselves from it and lay the blame on Bush.


People like Dianne Feinstein have always been followers, and will always be. Note that now that Hillary and the others are now backing away from the conflict and swooping in after hundreds of thousands (and perhaps approaching or even surpassing one million) Iraqi civilians have died bloody deaths, she is joining the others, now that she doesn't have to stick her neck out for it in the least, even though she could have looked into history at the previous Gulf War, saw how 46 Democratic senators voted against it, and suffered no political consequences; not only did the Dems keep the Congress, but the country elected a Democratic president despite the "success" of the first Gulf War.


The only true heroes are those Dems in red and purple states that stuck to their guns and voted against the authorization of war when they thought their might be political consequences for doing so. And of course Lincoln Chafee - but being a 'hero' on the war issue alone, is of course not enough to engender support from me. I much prefer having Sheldon Whitehouse in Chafee's seat, and am quite glad he's there now.

Sadly, Nancy Pelosi, the only credible anti-war voice in the Dem leadership, is still not joined by enough support in both houses of Congress to end this nasty war, since many who displayed cowardice in voting for this war in the first place will not act to bring it to a close until they feel that their hands are sufficiently held, waiting for the political winds to catch up to them.

 

[lancelva]

Sadly, Nancy Pelosi, the only credible anti-war voice in the Dem leadership, is still not joined by enough support in both houses of Congress to end this nasty war, since many who displayed cowardice in voting for this war in the first place will not act to bring it to a close until they feel that their hands are sufficiently held, waiting for the political winds to catch up to them.

And Pelosi and Reid can only "end this war" with Republican votes--we saw that with Bush's veto. Many have criticized the Democratic leadership for passing the supplemental with just benchmarks and no timetables, but what else could they do? People need to realize that you cannot end a war with a stubborn President and 50 votes in the Senate.

 

[Homoaffectional]

And Pelosi and Reid can only "end this war" with Republican votes--we saw that with Bush's veto. Many have criticized the Democratic leadership for passing the supplemental with just benchmarks and no timetables, but what else could they do? People need to realize that you cannot end a war with a stubborn President and 50 votes in the Senate.

There's less onus on you to end a war if you weren't complicit in starting it in the first place. But go ahead, Lance -- repeat the whole "no Democrats voted for 'war' ". By that rationale, no Congressional Republicans voted for "war" either, so I have no reason to hold that against them, either, right?

Dianne Feinstein is an example of what's wrong with the modern DINO party. And she's far from the only one...

That's why I said Pelosi is the only credible anti-war voice in the party leadership. Obviously, it's not easy for her to gather the votes to end the war, but since she voted against it to begin with, she gets the benefit of the doubt that Hillary Clinton will never get... and rightfully so.

Signed,
Someone who was proud to vote for *neither* John Kerry or George Bush


P.S. On another note, I was watching C-SPAN recently and it was nice to see a high profile person in MoveOn.org say that she supported a "ten party system".

It's about time... pinning our hopes on the Democrats is more and more looking like a lost cause.

And yes, we may have a 'two-party system' right now in this country... but we also once had a country where there was slavery, a country where women lacked the vote, and a country where abortions had to be performed in back alleys, and I'm sure many people spoke of it as something they were happy about back then, but some people didn't accept it; they fought to change it. And our country is a better place as a result.

 

[Homoaffectional]

The truth is that Hillary admits she made a mistake in voting for the War.

She did? I must have missed it then. I know she said something about "if she knew then what she knew now, she wouldn't have voted for it", but last time I checked she has, up until this day, refused to admit or apologize or the like; she has only said "As president I will end this war", now that it's obvious to everyone that knows how to say no to kool-aid that it's obviously a bad thing for the country. And this is the person we're supposed to trust?

She did know Bush was an asshole and a conscience-less scumbag at that point. That should have been enough for her, and her "whichever way the wind blows" colleagues, Kerry, Dodd, Feinstein, and Murray, but we're supposed to believe her, and then trust her to run the country.

Truth to tell, I would pull the lever for Hillary if it was between her and that fascist weirdo Giuliani and my vote really counted -- but hearing from the partisans that try to convince me that I'm not just voting for the lesser of two evils is what makes it so I don't want to give people like Hillary a pass when they don't deserve it.

Hillary has not yet admitted her vote for the war (yes, THE WAR) was a mistake, and I will not let anyone say otherwise to me, even if I'll agree that I'd rather have her in the White House than any of the proto-fascist Repubs. But don't tell me either "choice" is something I should cheer about.

 

[chance1]

2 party system is simple - maybe room for a 3rd - less simple but still simple

10??

are there enough ideas for 10 parties??

you can categorize probably 75-80% of positions as democratic or republican - perhaps more

social issues are becoming more blurred party wise

but otherwise not so much

I go for a 3 party system

Independant sounds good - reasonable - less platform oriented

am I making sense?

 

[lancelva]

There's less onus on you to end a war if you weren't complicit in starting it in the first place. But go ahead, Lance -- repeat the whole "no Democrats voted for 'war' ". By that rationale, no Congressional Republicans voted for "war" either, so I have no reason to hold that against them, either, right?

That's why I said Pelosi is the only credible anti-war voice in the party leadership. Obviously, it's not easy for her to gather the votes to end the war, but since she voted against it to begin with, she gets the benefit of the doubt that Hillary Clinton will never get... and rightfully so.

The flaw in that "reasoning"--if it can be called that--is that Senator Clinton has been a critic of the management of the war from day one and wants to change the current course in Iraq. The same cannot be said for Republicans who voted for the war and voted not to override the veto of the timetable for withdrawal. So, again, you are comparing apples to oranges. If you put it in perspective, Senator Clinton deserves respect for having the ability to see that the current operations in Iraq are not working. She has outlined a comprehensive, three-step plan to deal with the future of Iraq--begin a phased redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq, pressure the Iraqi government to take responsibility while cutting aid if they don't, and engage in intensive regional diplomacy to enlist the help of other countries in confronting the problems in Iraq. That's what distinguishes her from Republicans and others who the Bush Administration and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

Signed,
Someone who was proud to vote for *neither* John Kerry or George Bush

You have to admit that our country would be far better off if John Kerry were President today and not Geroge Bush. If more people, like you, had voted for him, we probably wouldn't be facing these problems. The fact that that didn't happen is nothing to be proud about.

 

[chance1]

People who are simple enough to think life is so black and white are the ones that believe we should have a two-party system. Fun fact: life isn't black and white.

yeah but u have to make the process simple

if people r not up to speed on the current candidates positions

how r they gonna get up to speed with 10 choices???

u could have people voting for folks thinking that they stand for 1 thing and not knowing about something else

too much

life is very black and white with shades of grey

when u look at it as all grey - u miss a lot - a lot of it is simple - and making the simple stuff hard is what makes life unmanageable

wow - I'm pretty deep - or maybe I'm not

 

[Sexual]

Well she has my vote and that's what matters to me.

 

[lancelva]

Well she has my vote and that's what matters to me.

Welcome to JUB! I'm starting to like you already .

 

[chance1]

Life is a rainbow of color, dude. It isn't "very black and white"...

please

do not misrepresent what I wrote

I wrote/meant that there are shades of grey but that most things are black & white

like right and wrong
like good and evil

life is a rainbow of color? if u mean diversity wise, I hear u and would not suggest otherwise

but to see the whole world as grey or "in question" well to me that is anarchy - with no decisions - just compromises

 

[Kulindahr]

What? Are you jealous? You want a handjob too?

No, I want a blowjob and I'm prepared to trade my vote for same.

I'd take a handjob, just not from Clinton.
Now, if she has any cute slender (male) office interns....

But then I'd be with Alfie on this one, though in true 'bipartisan' fashion I'd want to give and get.

 

[Kulindahr]

You have to admit that our country would be far better off if John Kerry were President today and not Geroge Bush. If more people, like you, had voted for him, we probably wouldn't be facing these problems. The fact that that didn't happen is nothing to be proud about.

Uh, no, I don't. If Kerry had been elected, with his views we'd just be on a different track to a police state. He just wouldn't have played adventurer overseas to whip up his tyrannical agenda; he'd have done it in a nice, friendly, dignified, two-faced manner.

 

[Kulindahr]

A comment about the "two-party system":

It arises from treating politics as a tug of war, fighting over the spoils, instead of looking at politics as a way of keeping our liberties intact so we don't need to have a tug-of-war.

 

[Kulindahr]

And Pelosi and Reid can only "end this war" with Republican votes--we saw that with Bush's veto. Many have criticized the Democratic leadership for passing the supplemental with just benchmarks and no timetables, but what else could they do? People need to realize that you cannot end a war with a stubborn President and 50 votes in the Senate.

They could apply some imagination.

For starters, pass a law mandating that National Guard troops can be used overseas only in situations of formally declared war; make it effective July 4, 2007. Since this is NOT a declared war, those NG people would have to be brought back ASAP starting July 5.

Another would be to set a percentage of personnel and forces required to be based in or near the U.S. itself except in times of war or as otherwise authorized -- after all, they do call it the "department of Defense". Set it at say, 50% of the Air Force, 20% of the Navy, 100% of the Coast Guard... whatever numbers seem reasonable. Then get whatever forces those result in back home, say by Thanksgiving.

A bit of thought should produce more of these. They should be worded to make sense -- like, the National Guard is supposed to GUARD, so who's watching the store with them gone?!! -- and to appeal to street smarts and loyalties. Yes, I mean an appeal to emotion, but one woven into just plain common understandings and desires, fueled by grumblings about trying to be the world's policeman, scattering our troops across the globe, etc., even tying things to well-loved holidays such as Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

It would be very difficult, I think, for any Republican to campaign on a platform of having opposed such clearly patriotic initiatives -- and if Bush vetoed them, well.. anyone ever seen a president with an approval rating below two digits?

 

[chance1]

So the problem is perception; some just have better vision than others and can see the nuance and variation. *shrug*

yeah

and we could go on forever with this

but I can't let u suggest what ur suggesting w/o a response

some people see nuance everywhere - and are paralyzed the shear amount of "what do we do's"

 

[Homoaffectional]

The flaw in that "reasoning"--if it can be called that--is that Senator Clinton has been a critic of the management of the war from day one and wants to change the current course in Iraq.

ROFL! Yeah, OK...

"Oh, Mr. Bush... here's the deal --

declare all the wars you want... as long as it's neat and squeaky clean. We'll take the cowardly route and be complicit in your militaristic route. Don't worry, you have our support.

But if they go bad, you can be sure that we'll do our best to blame you for everything that goes wrong, and hope no one notices that we've been calling you 'The Worst President in history for years', but we also just gave someone with that title a blank check to go to war."

In other words...

war is OK... as long as you manage it awfully well.

Senator Clinton, and her gang of pundit-hugging centrists like Feinstein, Schumer, and the like... aren't criticizing the decision to go to war... or denouncing war as something that should be avoided at just about all costs barring a situation like World War II (which we *all* now know isn't the current situation, and anyone who didn't have our heads up our asses knew four years ago).

They're criticizing the "management" of the war. That's it... just the 'management' of it. And you try to shame me into the fact that I didn't vote for Kerry? Sorry, baby, I'm quite proud of voting the way I did.

And supposedly, my "reasoning" is the one that has flaws...

You have to admit that our country would be far better off if John Kerry were President today and not Geroge Bush.

I find it hard that even you would admit that, because it would mean Hillary would have to have waited at least another four years to be president, wouldn't she have? We all know that's mostly all you care about.

But as to your point, on the contrary, it's very possible that people would have taken all that energy that they put into the 2004 race, declared things "OK" again, and given up, fully convinced that things were OK again, instead of continuing to examine the inherent flaws in the current system. The media (especially the beltway gasbags), the electoral system, the one/two party system, the lack of grassroots input in the political process, the horde of pigs feeding at the trough in Washington; all those things would have continued to go unquestioned. That would have been an unintended consequence of installing Kerry in the WH... at least on the part of most voters. It would have been an intended consequence, however of the political elite.

The only thing that happened post 2004 that wasn't already happening pre 2004 (meaning things like Iraqi civilians dying; nobody gave a shit about them before, so I doubt anyone would now), and is almost impossible to reverse, and a broad-based coalition of people are forced to care about because it impacts so many issues, is the appointment of two more conservative Supreme Court justices.

I'd like to think that Americans would have followed along even if Kerry had actually been able to take the position he won in spite of himself (because everyone knows he didn't have the stomach to fight for it), but one thing we both agree, is that we simply can't expect Americans to perform their civic duty to educate themselves. So, since Kerry never actually made it to the WH, the two conservative Supreme Court justices seem to be the only thing that will force the 'security moms' (if there actually were more than three or four) to really examine the consequences of voting based on ridiculous rhetoric instead of based on reason and education.

If more people, like you, had voted for him, we probably wouldn't be facing these problems. The fact that that didn't happen is nothing to be proud about.

First off, there are no "people like me".

Secondly, it makes no difference how many people vote for Kerry, if he isn't willing to fight for his victory, and leaves millions of people hanging there, including his own VP candidate who vowed not to quit until every last vote was counted. I felt very bad for all those people that waited for hours in line to vote in Ohio, never got to, and the fact that they were betrayed and abandoned for all their efforts -- it just wasn't something that made me regret me not casting a vote for Kerry in a state that went blue long before the night was running long, and people's hearts started beating fast and they started getting really, really nervous as the "number of precincts reporting" and the percents from each precinct accumulated into a number that seemed to continue to mutate one way even as exit polls predicted something different earlier in the night, and a sinking feeling started developing in a LOT of people's stomachs.

Finally, if anything is happening because of these last four years with Bush as a lame duck president, Americans are being forced to question whether their country is as great as they've been brainwashed to believe it is. They're being forced to look into the mirror, something that they never really let themselves do for very long... because they didn't necessarily like what they see. Waving all the flags in the world won't let them out of that one. And neither will bombing some random country on a map when you don't like to look at what's terribly wrong with your own. After all, they've already tried it, and it failed to fix anything. Maybe once this is over, America can reclaim the moral leadership it lost the right to invoke every time it pointed the finger at some other country... and not just in the past six years or so, either.

 

[lancelva]

She did? I must have missed it then. I know she said something about "if she knew then what she knew now, she wouldn't have voted for it", but last time I checked she has, up until this day, refused to admit or apologize or the like; she has only said "As president I will end this war", now that it's obvious to everyone that knows how to say no to kool-aid that it's obviously a bad thing for the country. And this is the person we're supposed to trust?

Hillary has not yet admitted her vote for the war was a mistake, and I will not let anyone say otherwise to me, even if I'll agree that I'd rather have her in the White House than any of the proto-fascist Repubs. But don't tell me either "choice" is something I should cheer about.

If you actually read S. J. Res. 45--the resolution authorizing the use of force after diplomatic alternatives were used--it was merely a vote for coercive inspections, not war. Legislation is complex and things are not obviously defined in "black and white" terms. That's why a Senator must way all the options and make conclusions based on the information they are given at the time. Despite your claim, Senator Clinton uses the word "mistake" in explaining her vote for the resolution during the NH debate:

 

[Kulindahr]

Senator Clinton, and her gang of pundit-hugging centrists like Feinstein, Schumer, and the like...

But as to your point, on the contrary, it's very possible that people would have taken all that energy that they put into the 2004 race, declared things "OK" again, and given up, fully convinced that things were OK again, instead of continuing to examine the inherent flaws in the current system. The media (especially the beltway gasbags), the electoral system, the one/two party system, the lack of grassroots input in the political process, the horde of pigs feeding at the trough in Washington; all those things would have continued to go unquestioned. That would have been an unintended consequence of installing Kerry in the WH... at least on the part of most voters. It would have been an intended consequence, however of the political elite.

That's quite insightful. Sometimes it takes having a loser in charge to make it clear just how screwed-up things are. It makes me think of a documentary on test pilots I watched some time back, where one of the greatest test pilots pointed out that how good a plane is isn't shown by how well it flies at the hands of an expert born to the sky, but by how well it performs at the hands of a dithering klutz.
I don't think there are any experts born to the job, these days; our educational system breeds greatness out of people -- but for God's sake, can we at least get someone capable of holding a steady course while (please, God) someone fixes the problems the klutz made evident (and the ones he added to it!)?

 

[Just_Believe18]

A perfect rendition?

 

[Homoaffectional]

If you actually read S. J. Res. 45--the resolution authorizing the use of force after diplomatic alternatives were used--it was merely a vote for coercive inspections, not war. Legislation is complex and things are not obviously defined in "black and white" terms. That's why a Senator must way all the options and make conclusions based on the information they are given at the time. Despite your claim, Senator Clinton uses the word "mistake" in explaining her vote for the resolution during the NH debate:

No, it was a vote for war. Resolutions don't mean shit when you basically give that power to a psychotic that you know has no interest in all the things you try to delineate as proof that it wasn't a vote for war.

You want me to care about the following tripe you typed:

"If you actually read S. J. Res. 45--the resolution authorizing the use of force after diplomatic alternatives were used--it was merely a vote for coercive inspections, not war. Legislation is complex and things are not obviously defined in "black and white" terms. That's why a Senator must way all the options and make conclusions based on the information they are given at the time. "

But do you think Bush cared about all that stuff? I could read the resolution till I'm blue in the face, but it's not me being given the power to go to war... you're trying to convince me that Hillary should get my vote, but maybe you would have better luck convincing George Bush to vote for Hillary. I mean one good *vote* (authorization for war) deserves another (Bush voting for Hillary). Wouldn't you say?

As to the clip you cite, Hillary said it was a 'mistake' to *trust George Bush*. That's like saying it's a mistake to give a four year old a loaded gun before he goes into a classroom full of people he doesn't particularly care for, and trust him not to shoot them. But lest one might get the impression I'm being unfair... let me clarify that this is a four year old that has been instilled with no sense of conscience whatsoever. I'm sure even a four year old has more sense of right and wrong than that psycho Bush does.

If all the stuff you say about it being better if Kerry was president being better than George Bush true, then you've basically shot your own credibility to hell, along with your candidate's. Why should I bother voting Bush out because he's so horrible, and then replace him with someone who clearly is too stupid to know how horrible he is when they should have?

Later in that same clip, Hillary says "it wasn't wrong", so again, she can't say that she didn't play her part in the war. She pretends that she thought George Bush was trustworthy and was somehow suckered into it.

So either she's a poor judge of character or she's completely immoral. Not the kind of person who's getting my vote, if I can help it. In 2004, I could. In 2008, I might not have the luxury, although I do encourage people in Florida and Ohio to vote for her. *snicker* No, really, I do. But only because she's the lesser of two evils. I think I've made it clear that her being the lesser of two evils doesn't mean she's going to get a pass from me. Because there's a saying -- "The lesser of two evils is still... evil." And nothing puts that on display more clearly than this bloody, immoral war.

What might actually make me respect her enough to consider voting for her in 2008 if she could actually come clean and admit that her "yea" vote provided plenty of political cover for her pals Schumer, Dodd, Cantwell, and Feinstein to follow her lead. Because that would be the first time she was actually honest about her part in voting for the war.