Oh, Wait …

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Yesterday’s upset in Michigan has the FiveThirtyEight crew reeling. The polls said that Hillary Clinton would take Michigan by at least 20 percentage points, if not 30. But she lost. The algorithm gods were wrong.  I dare say Nate Silver and crew have never been off by that much. “Sanders’s win in Michigan was one of the greatest upsets in modern political history,” said one.

And I must say I was surprised, too. During the two Michigan pre-primary debates/town halls/whatever, Hillary Clinton had attempted the Karl Rovian trick of saying  Sanders had voted against the auto bailout bill, leaving out the part about it being part of the TARP bill. Clinton did carry Flint and Detroit, but, glory be, the rest of electorate didn’t fall for it.

It’s possible Michigan was a fluke. It’s also possible that what happened in Michigan could happen in Ohio and Illinois next week. If the Dem establishment were smart — and I don’t think they are that smart, frankly — they would be paying attention to what Sanders supporters want, and taking it seriously.

I like what D.D. Guttenplan wrote in The Nation:

…what Michigan shows is that Bernie’s voters are every bit as important to a Democratic victory as Hillary’s. Especially if, as the Michigan results also suggest, those voters include an increasing number of African-American voters. Perhaps instead of telling Sanders voters to “get in line” behind the inevitable nominee, Clinton supporters should tell their candidate to stop telling lies.

We’ve all read thousands of words about how Bernie needs to respect Hillary, and how the Bernie Bros need to lay off Hillary supporters (much of which I agree with). And as the veteran broadcaster Salim Muwakkil pointed out recently on Facebook, Sanders needs to keep listening and learning to correct his racial blindspots—“and his supporters must not rush to keep [those] blinders intact.”

But we also need to say clearly that the Hillary supporters need to stop denigrating Bernie as a racist or sexist when he clearly isn’t, stop condescending to his supporters for wanting fundamental, rather than cosmetic, change to our rigged economy and corrupt politics, and stop using the kind of underhanded, Nixonian tactics that seem designed to keep Sanders voters home in November.

Meanwhile, as Sanders pulled off what was arguably a historic upset, the cable news networks were glued to Donald Trump’s utterly surreal victory speech. In a way I don’t blame them; it was so bizarre it was hard to not watch. Here’s just a bit:

And Mitt got up — and he really shouldn’t have done it, it wasn’t becoming, honestly — and he talked about the water company. Well, there’s…

Trump steaks — where are the steaks? Do we have steaks? We have Trump steaks. He said the steak company, and we have Trump steaks. And by the way,…

We have Trump Magazine. Let me see the magazine. He said Trump Magazine is out. I said, it is? I thought I read one two days ago. This comes out and it’s called The Jewel of Palm Beach and we…

So — and the airline, by the way, I sold the airline. You know, he said Trump Airline. Well, I sold the airline and I actually made a great deal,…

And by the way, Trump University, it’s — we’re holding it. When I win the lawsuit, which I’ll win, the — they did an ad — Rubio did an ad…

And I’m — I just want to explain. I — and the United States should be this — I don’t settle lawsuits, very rare, because once you settle lawsuits,…

So when I saw the different things — and by the way, the winery, you see the wine, because he mentioned Trump vodka, it’s the largest winery on the…

And so I just want to — so I want to put that to rest. So you have the water, you have the steaks, you have the airline that I sold. I mean, what’s…

That’s copied directly from the CSPAN transcript. He went on like that for nearly an hour.

Community Service

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It’s only March and I’m already in the ohgodwhenwillthisend phase of the political year. So let’s think about something more cheerful.

The Malheur Malcontents are still in jail. That’s something.

Saturday the faithful held demonstrations of support for the imprisoned, um, patriots. More than one hundred people rallied outside the Portland federal courthouse.

The so-called patriot movement made efforts to broaden its message to connect with other activist groups like Black Lives Matter. …

…”These people that are in these cells up here, right now, they’re guilty of a community service act,” said Rich Morelan, an Aumsville, Oregon, man who helped organize the protest. “They came in and they cleaned that [refuge] building up. There was no violence.”…

…The Malheur refuge was found in a state of disarray, the manager calling it “one big mess.” The Paiute tribe is still reeling from the disruption of their sacred sites on refuge grounds.

“Imagine if I went to Washington, D.C., to the cemetery where all the military are and dug a hole and made a latrine out of it, like they did to my people’s burial grounds,
he said. “That’s the only way I can explain it to non-natives.”

Cliven Bundy appeared before a federal judge Friday.

Bundy, 69, stood with a deputy federal public defender at his side as he heard the 16 charges against him including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, assault on a federal officer, threatening a federal officer, obstruction of justice, interference with interstate commerce by extortion and several firearms charges.

There is some question about whether Cliven qualifies for a public defender.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Hoffman said Bundy would remain in custody until at least next Thursday. The time will let him hire a lawyer or file revised financial disclosure forms.

The judge expressed doubt about whether a report that Bundy filed in Oregon qualifies him for a lawyer at federal expense.

Cliven own a ranch and a whole lot of cattle, right? Turns out rounding up Cliven’s cattle won’t be easy.

The 69-year-old landowner, whose ranch 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas was the scene of a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management, was arrested last month on charges related to the Nevada incident when he left his ranch to travel to Oregon, where his sons were involved in another standoff with federal officials. Meanwhile, his 1,000 head of cattle are still roaming federal lands due, in part, to his absence and also to what officials call his “unconventional, if not bizarre” ranching methods.

“Rather than manage and control his cattle, he lets them run wild on the public lands with little, if any, human interaction until such time when he traps them and hauls them off to be sold or slaughtered,” said court documents filed by federal prosecutors last month. “He does not vaccinate or treat his cattle for disease; does not employ cowboys to control and herd them; does not manage or control breeding; has no knowledge of where all the cattle are located at any given time; rarely brands them.” …

… With Bundy in prison, his cows are “left to fend for themselves year-round, fighting off predators and scrounging for the meager amounts of food and water,” according to federal prosecutors. In addition, the authorities maintain that the surviving cattle are “wild, mean and ornery” and are destroying fragile plant species and even destroying sacred Indian artifacts.

No wonder he had plenty of time to stand around talking to journalists. He doesn’t do any work. Apparently if he needs to sell some cattle he goes out and traps some. They also show up on roads and golf courses and other people’s property. Sounds like rounding them up and getting them off that land would be a real community service.

There were more arrests last week of “militia” members who participated in the 2014 standoff. These included two more of Clivin’s sons — Davey, 39, and Mel, 41 — and Jerry DeLemus, the New Hampshire co-chair for Donald Trump.   I’m surprised there were enough un-arrested people left to hold demonstrations. Lots of felony charges are being brought against these guys; I suspect their bad ranching days are over.

Meanwhile, the people who run Malheur say it’s a big mess. Not much structural damage, but files were scattered and the offices need a lot of cleaning. Also there was a lot of habitat work that had to be postponed because of the occupation.

How to Kill a State

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There’s a devastating article in the Washington Post about how falling oil prices and Bobby Jindal’s policies have pretty much destroyed Louisiana.

The math is daunting: For the fiscal year that ends June 30, Louisiana is facing a $940 million deficit, roughly one-eighth of what the state typically doles out from its general fund in a year. For 2016-2017, which begins July 1, the gap is $2 billion.

“This was years of mismanagement by a governor who was more concerned about satisfying a national audience in a presidential race,” said Jay Dardenne (R), the lieutenant governor under Jindal and now the state’s commissioner of administration. Dardenne said Jindal had helped the state put off its day of reckoning in a way that mirrored a “Ponzi scheme.”

Of course, the shit is hitting the fan just as a Democratic governor is taking office. Watch the Republican Party blame Louisiana’s pain on John Bel Edwards. And then they’ll persuade voters that the way back to prosperity is to run the state the way Bobby Jindal ran it. They might not use his name, but it’ll be the same Ponzi scheme.

And then there’s Chris Christie.

What Christie did when he endorsed the brashly divisive billionaire is between him and his conscience. How he got there is the more interesting question.

When this whole process started eons ago, many experts predicted that voters who found President Obama’s experience lacking would find executive records appealing. And indeed, the field filled with governors, not just Christie but Florida’s Jeb Bush, Texas’ Rick Perry, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and of course, Louisiana’s own Bobby Jindal.

Turns out governing experience what not what most primary voters wanted.  …

…There are many reasons this is so, but one could be how these governors have behaved in office. Rather than show the world what they could do by running a state well, Jindal and Christie in particular tailored their policies and priorities to sell on the national stage.

And both paid the price back home. Jindal left office in January with stunningly low approval numbers, and anger over his fiscal irresponsibility is about the only thing Republicans and Democrats in Baton Rouge have in common. Christie too is deeply unpopular in his own state. After he shocked the world by signing on as a Trump surrogate, six New Jersey newspapers published a joint editorial calling him to resign.

“We’re fed up with Gov. Chris Christie’s arrogance,” the papers wrote. “We’re fed up with his opportunism. We’re fed up with his hypocrisy.”

I don’t think we yet know how much damage Christie did to New Jersey, although NJ’s proximity to New York City tends to buffer it from total ruin.

Perhaps Jeb Bush didn’t destroy Florida, but Jeb wasn’t quite as “conservative” as his successor Rick Scott.  From what I can see from here, Scott and Rick Perry of Texas are very much alike. They can both pull all kinds of statistics out of their butts to show how their policies helped their states, but when the dust settles somehow low- and middle-income people are still getting poorer and poorer.

And what can one say about Scott Walker, except … damn, what a maroon. See Scott Walker destroyed his state’s economy and A closer look at Wisconsin’s economy under Gov. Scott Walker, which begins,

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is looking for a new job but, unfortunately, so are too many of his constituents.

At least Sam Brownback, who destroyed Kansas; and Rick Snyder of Flint, Michigan lead poisoning fame are not running for President.

And now we get to John Kasich, the allegedly “centrist” Republican still running for President. You can find a lot of puff pieces about the wonderful things Kasich has done for Ohio, but others are not so sure. Ohio has mirrored the national recovery rate; Kasich takes credit. However, for 32 consecutive months, the state has trailed the national average for monthly job growth, says an article published in August 2015. About the best thing one can say about Kasich’s Ohio is that it doesn’t seem to be as bad off as Kansas. Or Louisiana. Or Wisconsin …

In short, if you really want to destroy your state’s economy, elect a Republican governor. That’ll do the job.

Hillary Clinton: “Shame on You, Barack Obama”

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Hillary Clinton really cannot learn. The longer her campaign goes on, the more it seems like a re-run of 2008 against Barack Obama.

Example: In his rallies Sanders has been calling Hillary Clinton the “outsourcer in chief” because of her past support of trade deals such as NAFTA and the TPP. She very recently changed her tune on TPP — her pollsters must have told her it’s not a popular position. (In one of the debates, Anderson Cooper accused her of “political expediency.”)  And now she’s playing one of her classic victims games to say she’s being smeared.  “Bernie Sanders stoops to desperate tactics” her surrogates shriek.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a blast from the past. Here is a moment from the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, needing wins in delegate-rich Texas and Ohio to overtake Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, ramped up her criticism of Obama Saturday, accusing his team of negative campaign tactics “straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook.”

Clinton addressed two mailings the Obama campaign distributed in Ohio – one that lambasts her position on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which her husband, former President Bill Clinton, signed into law, and another that criticizes her proposed health-care plan.

“I have to express my deep disappointment – he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings with information that is not true to the voters of Ohio,” she said, shaking the mailings to punctuate her remarks.

The NAFTA mailer accuses Clinton of switching her position on the trade agreement, saying the senator from New York was a “champion” for NAFTA while first lady, but now opposes it. …

…

The mailers are “blatantly false and yet he continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods. That is not the new politics that the speeches are about,” she said. “It is not hopeful; it is destructive.”

She added, “Shame on you, Barack Obama – it is time that you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That is what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio and let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.”

Obama spokesman Bill Burton denied Clinton’s assertions that the mailers were false.

Her pattern is to just love those job-killing trade bills until she’s running for the presidency, and then she suddenly realizes they were a bad idea after all — until the next job-killing trade bill comes along later.

Here’s another one, from another 2008 news clip.

Hillary Clinton accused Barack Obama of stooping to “desperate” tactics, as polls put her on track for a solid, morale-boosting win in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania presidential primary. …

…

The New York senator argued in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer that despite trailing Obama in nominating wins and elected delegates, she was still the most likely Democrat to beat Republican John McCain in November.

“He can be elected; I will be elected,” Clinton said, and accused Obama of resorting to sharply negative tactics in the final hours of the battle for Pennsylvania, which heralds the end-game of the contentious White House battle.

“I think he’s doing what candidates do when they get desperate at the end of an election,” Clinton said. “He is now undermining his message. He has spent all this time crossing Pennsylvania talking about how he runs a positive campaign, except when he gets pressed, and he starts throwing … the ‘kitchen sink’ at me.” …

… She argues that only she can capture big states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, by wooing socially conservative blue-collar voters that Democrats need to piece together a route back to the White House.

Clinton’s people also are pushing for Sanders to get out of the race, as she has a nearly (but not completely) insurmountable lead. This is rich, coming from someone who didn’t concede to Obama until June, and even then was spectacularly ungracious about it.  Read this post by Chris Suellentrop from the New York Times, June 4, 2008:

Maybe it was her night after all: Hillary Clinton decided not to withdraw from the presidential campaign tonight, and the liberals in blogville are not happy about it, to put it mildly. Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic begins his blog post on Clinton’s speech by writing, “I probably shouldn’t write any more about this woman and her staff. Suffice it to say that I’ve found her behavior over the past couple of months to be utterly unconscionable and this speech is no different.” He continues,  “I think if I were to try to express how I really feel about the people who’ve been enabling her behavior, I’d say something deeply unwise. Suffice it to say, that for quite a while now all of John McCain’s most effective allies have been on Hillary Clinton’s payroll.”

At The American Prospect’s Tapped blog, Dana Goldstein calls Clinton’s speech “troublesome.” “The more I think about it, the more it seems that Hillary’s entire speech was manufactured to rile up her supporters — instead of priming them to shift their allegiance to Obama,” Goldstein writes. “Yes, there’s a situation with Michigan and Florida. But is it really fair for Clinton to claim that her 18 million supporters nationwide have been made “invisible?” Who’s supposed to be the bad guy here, scary Howard Dean? Clinton is offering more fighting rhetoric. But the fight should be over. Hillary tonight was a woman standing down more than half her party’s supporters and practically the entire Democratic establishment.”

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait uses even tougher language. “I’d say that anybody on her staff who cares about their party has a moral obligation to publicly quit and endorse Obama,” he writes at The Plank, TNR’s staff blog. Chait also writes of the speech:

Incredible. She justifies her continuing the campaign by saying that she finished the campaign. She doesn’t concede that Obama has a majority of delegates, let alone that he’s won. She repeats her bogus popular vote argument. She congratulates Obama’s campaign on its “achievements,” but barely musters a single good word about him.

Chait’s colleagues at The New Republic are almost as exercised. Isaac Chotiner, also writing at The Plank, calls the speech “combative and petty” and headlines his post, “A Total Disgrace.” He concludes, “If Clinton wants people to believe that she cares more about the Democratic Party than her own career, she is failing badly.”

There’s a lot more to that. It’s not pretty.  I guess a lot of people have forgotten this; I have not.

My Advice to the GOP Establishment Regarding Donald Trump

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Hoo boy, this is rich:

Mitt Romney and John McCain Denounce Donald Trump as a Danger to Democracy

Yeah, I’m sure the baggers supporting Trump will see this and say, “Really? Gosh, I didn’t know, but if Senator McCain and Governor Romney say so, it must be true!”

Snort. Baggers hate McCain, and I assume they don’t have a lot of use for Romney, either.

Oh, wait; I just did a quickie tour of some right-wing blogs. Reactions to Romney’s speech today denouncing Trump ran the gamut from derision to more derision.  However, one fellow pointed out that the GOP candidates are debating in Michigan tonight. Romney’s father was a governor of Michigan and remembered fondly, I understand, even if there is less love lost for Mittens. This might have an impact in the upcoming Michigan primary.

From Matt Yglesias at Vox:

And Romney isn’t alone. A bevy of prominent Republican foreign policy hands — most though by no means all hardcore neoconservatives — signed a letter today in which they slammed Trump’s honesty, his trade policies, his commitment to torture, and his views on Russia while stating plainly that “as committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head.”

I agree with Steve M that the Establishment hopes that Trump will still be short of delegates needed for the nomination at convention time, and then of course no one would mind if the convention ignores the will of voters and settles on someone else.  Right? All those Republican primary voters will just fall in line behind anyone the GOP chooses, right?

Actually, they might. The headline of Yglesias’s column is “Trump needs to unify the GOP to win in November. This week suggested he can’t.” No, he probably can’t. But there is someone who can.

Hillary Clinton.

The baggers would trip all over themselves rushing to the polls to vote for the Devil himself to prevent Hillary Clinton from being President. She could prove to be the Great Uniter of the Republican Party.

There you go, GOP establishment. Go ahead and broker your rigged convention, and give the nomination to whomever you please. Then make sure Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.  Problem solved.

How the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Made Hillary Clinton Invincible

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Andrew O’Hehir:

By the time you read this votes will already have been cast in 11 states (and American Samoa!) that in all likelihood will doom us to an eight-month campaign between a vacuous, proto-fascist huckster with no accomplishments or principles and an unregenerate war hawk who represents the neoliberal global elite. Thanks, America!

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The nominations are not sewn up yet, but you wouldn’t know that by reading news media this morning.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes President, she will have the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to thank. She represents everything about the Democratic Party that progressives have been bitching about for years — she’s too accommodating to the Right; too reluctant to push for anything beyond incremental baby steps; too compromised by ties to big money donors; and, for whatever reason, way too hawkish. Yet if you point that out to people, you get reactions like this —

I am sick up to my fucking eyeballs of listening to supposed Dems call HRC corrupt. If you want to be a TeaBagger and push GOP talking points, at least be honest enough to declare yourself one of them. She’s been slandered, smeared and vilified by the Right for 30+ years. If there was dirt there to uncover it would have been found, but nothing, NOTHING has ever been found, let alone proven.

In other words, the steady drumbeat of hysterical, over-the-top animus and accusations that the Right has flung at Hillary Rodham Clinton all these years has inoculated her from criticism from the Left. Because of Darrell Issa’s idiot and dishonest Benghazi!!!! hearings, for example, the Left is closing its eyes to a real issue, which is that Secretary of State Clinton sold President Obama on policies in Libya that turned out to be disastrous.

After all we have gone through from Vietnam to Iraq, you’d think lefties would be extremely reluctant to support an obvious hawk like Clinton. But leftie groupthink has taken hold that doesn’t allow us to talk about this.

As far as corruption is concerned, I doubt we will ever find clear quid pro quos in her record. She’s not one to cross the line toward doing anything clearly criminal. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no reason to be concerned.  I’ve quoted this before, but I think Jeffrey Feldman clearly spells out what the real issue is:

While not guilty of corruption in the explicit sense of quid pro quo, Clinton not only participates in, but actively cultivates patron-client relationships with Wall Street. In the clientelism that Clinton embraces and defends, she claims the American public to be the sole beneficiary via her representation, but she refuses to acknowledge how Wall St. benefits.  And yet, in a patron-client system, both the patron and the client always benefit. Always. That is how it works. In this case: Clinton gets resources to run for office, while Wall Street gets the guarantee that the candidate they gave so much money in one place (e.g., a speech) will tacitly if not explicitly support their views of economic reality in another place (e.g., The White House). It is a long term strategy for both.

Suffice it to say that if an industry seeks to play the long game–seeks to control the rule governing financial sector for the benefit of their firm–then they are much better off seeking to build as many patron-client relationships with government as possible, rather than a few risky acts of corruption.

Do read the whole thing.

And this is why Clinton will never promote far-reaching reform in the financial sector. She’s likely to give us a few tweaks to keep the worst of the vampire squid impulses at bay, but she won’t try to change The System itself.  But if it doesn’t change, and substantially, we’re all screwed. The young folks especially.

And, of course, there’s the gender card. I said something pro-Bernie on Facebook last night and was accused of sexism. She accuser refused to believe me when I said I was a woman, and a feminist. Because, apparently, the only reason to oppose a Clinton presidency is misogyny.

I wrote last week:

Hillary Clinton has some utterly and passionately devoted supporters, many of them older women, who appear to devoutly wish for a Clinton win because, in their heads, that would be paypack for all the sleights and obstacles and disrespect they’ve suffered through the years.

And that’s why they want her to win. Issues? Income inequality? Election reform? The corruption (or, as Jeffrey Feldman calls it, “clientelism“) in government? Nope, not on their radar. She’s going to do so much for women! they gush. (If you point out that Sanders is a feminist, also, they don’t want to hear about it. A Sanders win would deny them their symbolic victory.)

I submit that a Clinton presidency would reduce sexism about as much as the Barack Obama presidency reduced racism. But it would give many women a few hours of glorious gloating, so I guess that’s all they care about.

Let’s talk about the Democratic Party. I wrote back on February 8 about the sentiment among many that we must support Hillary Clinton because she’s a real Democrat, and Bernie Sanders isn’t. Sometimes I feel that with all my years of voting for Dems and $5 I could get a 20-piece Chicken McNuggets. The Obama Administration has made a real difference, of course, and I certainly don’t want to turn the keys of the White House over to Donald Trump. And there are some genuinely progressive Dems, of course.

But the party as a whole, going back decades, time and time again hasn’t given us what we need from them. We vote for them mostly because the alternative is worse.

Yet this is the party we’re supposed to support, just because it’s Our Home Team? Or something? There are people I have personally heard badmouth wishy-washy Dems for years who suddenly think Hillary Clinton can do no wrong and we must be loyal to her because she is a real Democrat, and Sanders is not.

Well, bleep that.

It is because of corruption in the Dem Party that Clinton is Miss Invincibility. Back in August Martin O’Malley accused the DNC of rigging the primary system in Hillary Clinton’s favor. And now we can see at least one reason why — obviously, Clinton worked out a deal with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that helped solve the DNC’s financial crunch while it funneled PAC money to Clinton that she has been able to count as direct donations.

With inept news media that does nothing to inform voters about candidates — except who is winning, and who isn’t — we’ve got a perfect storm of derp going on. Voters support Hillary, yes, but for the wrong reasons.

In other words, Dem voters have not been real allowed input into the process of choosing our candidate. And we’re all just supposed to support the candidate we’re told to support.

One more time — bleep that.

Sanders isn’t done yet; he’s saying he will stay in the race until all states have voted, or until he stops getting donations, whichever comes first. I’ve said earlier that the primary calendar in April and may gets friendlier for him, and if I were him I wouldn’t quit yet either.

But I acknowledge there is very little hope that Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t be the Dem nominee for the presidency. Between her and Trump, it’s like a choice between a quick death or a slow one.

Update: One more thought — it occurs to me that, given the lack of analysis and debate actual issues, American voters are viewing the presidential campaigns as morality plays. Your perspective of who is the hero and who is the villain rests on your own social-psychological wiring, of course.  The fact that HRC has been the victim of many lunatic witch hunts has given her a veneer of innocent righteousness in the eyes of many people who are not wingnuts. But the real world isn’t that simple, and just because she isn’t the evil bitch queen the Right thinks she is doesn’t mean she deserves your vote for President.

Also, too  — the Apartment Fund fundraiser is close to the halfway mark! Just because you are reading this post doesn’t mean I deserve donations, but I’ll leave that to your judgment.

Quickie Fundraiser Time

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This is me rattling the tin cup again. Having completed the year’s residence at the Fire Lotus Zen temple in Brooklyn, I am camping out temporarily on my daughter’s sofa. I need to find my own place asap, however, before we both go crazy. I find I need to scare up some money so I have some available for a deposit and the move. Just $1,000 would make all things happen.  Otherwise I will be here for several weeks, which will be a strain on everyone.

Here’s a PayPal link.

And for those who hate Paypal, here’s a GoFundMe link.

Go Fund Me!

Thank you all for your help and support over the years. You help keep me sane.

Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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Do read the multi-part series in the NY Times on how Secretary of State Clinton screwed up Libya. That may be a simplistic way of looking at it, and the Times tries to soften it a bit, but it’s not exactly a puff piece, either.

Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.

The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.

This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Muslim country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation’s chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows her at what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.

While Darrell Issa endlessly obsessed over Benghazi!!!, there were all manner of real issues he could have grilled the former Secretary of State about. But of course real issues may go over Issa’s head.

See also Jeffrey Sachs, Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine. Lee Fang writes that “as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfer to the Saudi government a ‘top priority,’ according to her closest military aide.”

Mark Weisbrot writes in Hard choices: Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath that Clinton greenlighted the 2009 military coup that ousted the democratically elected president of Honduras.

The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras’ police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.

Despite this, however, both under Clinton and Kerry, the State Department’s response to the violence and military and police impunity has largely been silence, along with continued U.S. aid to Honduran security forces. In “Hard Choices,” Clinton describes her role in the aftermath of the coup that brought about this dire situation. Her firsthand account is significant both for the confession of an important truth and for a crucial false testimony.

For more details about this and other foreign misadventures, see The case against Hillary Clinton by P.J. Podesta and Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is pure fantasy by Marcy Wheeler.

A Hillary Clinton administration wouldn’t be anything like Bush/Cheney, though. More like Nixon/Kissinger. Be afraid.

I’m packing to move out of the temple — it’s been a year! Also bummed about the results of the South Carolina primary. Clinton probably will snag the nomination by the end of March, if not sooner. And I do not want that woman to be President.

The Fruit Salad of Their Minds

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They had a tenth Republican debate last night. Only the tenth? I would have sworn there’d been a couple of dozen by now. There seems to be a consensus in the media that Rubio “won,” but I cannot discern why the bobbleheads think that. He certainly impressed Juan Cole — with his robust display of derp. Professor Cole tells us that Rubio has become Sheldon Adelson’s sock puppet.

I did find a highlight film showing Rubio going after Trump fairly aggressively. Maybe that’s what impressed the pundits.

More videos here, if you want to watch them.

Best comment I’ve seen so far is from John Cole: “You know how sometimes in a city you see someone disheveled and crazy looking walking along talking to themselves? I think Ben Carson is having the other half of the conversation with them.”

Carson also inspired the title of this post. When asked about how he would choose Supreme Court nominees, he said, “The fruit salad of their life is what I will look at.”

Someone has calculated that Donald Trump has a 90 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination.

March is still promising to be a rough month for Sanders supporters. I already wrote that if he’s still in the race by the end of March he’s got a shot at the nomination. But that’s a big if. He’s likely going to be slaughtered in South Carolina tomorrow.  Super Tuesday is not looking good. The most recent polls have Clinton winning everything except Vermont. Massachusetts remains close, though.