Hillary Clinton Thread

[Ridgerunner]

I was waiting on you to come back! LOL You know a big Sanders/Hillary supporter like me wouldn’t have said that and meant it! I’ll admit, I even proofread it wrong! No excuse!

Instead of me typing it all out, I’ll just offer this:

forwardprogressives.com/debunking-almost-every-republican-lie-against-president-obama/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferc14bb&utm_medium=twitter

Of course you probably won’t accept the source.

No, the source provided several dead straw men that they shot. And, of course, the article is old, so the deficit citation is outdated. Repubs, generally, didn’t buy into the “Muslim” or the “birther” stuff. That’s straw man stuff, fringe, not mainstream.

No, the main Repub arguments against him were quite true:
-That he supports abortion on demand. (Admitted by him)
-That he did not want a status of forces agreement in Iraq, and just wanted the troops out. (Admitted by him on national TV. Also admitted by his own CIA chief and others.)
-That his Iraq pull out led to the present debacle there. (Admitted by his own CIA chief)
-That he has run huge deficits. (Not admitted, but the numbers tell it)
-That he is responsible for Obamacare (partly true. He really wanted full government healthcare, but settled for Obamacare because he couldn’t get enough Dems in the Senate to support full socialized medicine)
-That he supported the ouster of Mubarak and the accession of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving modern arms to the latter. (Admitted)
-That he opposed the takeover by Al-Sisi in Egypt. (Admitted by Obama and Kerry)
-That he went to war against Libya, which resulted in most of it being taken over by terrorist groups. (Beyond denial)
-That he threatened a “red line” in Syria, then abandoned it when they crossed it.(Obvious)
-That his administration is oppressive to some religious groups. (The Supreme Court slapped him down in the Hosanna Tabor case, though, and the case he brought against the Little Sisters and others is pending.)
-That he abandoned the fight for the Defense of Marriage Act and took the other side. (Admitted)
-That the HHS Mandate was a purely executive decision and measure. (That’s what regulations are)
-That he declared war on coal and put a lot of people out of work. (Admitted by him)
-That he intends to make utility bills “skyrocket” (His own statement, supported by his actions since then. In my state, the cost of the war on coal is thought to be $1500/year/household)

Not being a Republican myself, I don’t know all of them, but I expect a Repub could supplement them. Those are just some of the more prominent ones I have heard or read.

I had forgotten that you voted for Obama, but I remember that now.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

No, the source provided several dead straw men that they shot. And, of course, the article is old, so the deficit citation is outdated. Repubs, generally, didn’t buy into the “Muslim” or the “birther” stuff. That’s straw man stuff, fringe, not mainstream.

No, the main Repub arguments against him were quite true:
-That he supports abortion on demand. (Admitted by him)
-That he did not want a status of forces agreement in Iraq, and just wanted the troops out. (Admitted by him on national TV. Also admitted by his own CIA chief and others.)
-That his Iraq pull out led to the present debacle there. (Admitted by his own CIA chief)
-That he has run huge deficits. (Not admitted, but the numbers tell it)
-That he is responsible for Obamacare (partly true. He really wanted full government healthcare, but settled for Obamacare because he couldn’t get enough Dems in the Senate to support full socialized medicine)
-That he supported the ouster of Mubarak and the accession of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving modern arms to the latter. (Admitted)
-That he opposed the takeover by Al-Sisi in Egypt. (Admitted by Obama and Kerry)
-That he went to war against Libya, which resulted in most of it being taken over by terrorist groups. (Beyond denial)
-That he threatened a “red line” in Syria, then abandoned it when they crossed it.(Obvious)
-That his administration is oppressive to some religious groups. (The Supreme Court slapped him down in the Hosanna Tabor case, though, and the case he brought against the Little Sisters and others is pending.)
-That he abandoned the fight for the Defense of Marriage Act and took the other side. (Admitted)
-That the HHS Mandate was a purely executive decision and measure. (That’s what regulations are)
-That he declared war on coal and put a lot of people out of work. (Admitted by him)
-That he intends to make utility bills “skyrocket” (His own statement, supported by his actions since then. In my state, the cost of the war on coal is thought to be $1500/year/household)

Not being a Republican myself, I don’t know all of them, but I expect a Repub could supplement them. Those are just some of the more prominent ones I have heard or read.

I had forgotten that you voted for Obama, but I remember that now.

Okay, thank you! That’s certainly a good start!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Okay, thank you! That’s certainly a good start!

I don’t purport to speak for the Repubs, and am not one myself. But those are things I have heard or read.

But truly, other than the “outlier” or “fringe” criticisms like the “birther” thing or the “Muslim” thing, I don’t know what demonstrably false complaints mainstream Repubs have had of Obama.

Well, I’ll take that back, at least tenatively. I do know some have said he has acted unconstitutionally. I’m not a constitutional scholar, so I don’t know whether all of those complaints have merit or whether some are hyperbole. I do know the Supreme Court said Obama acted contrary to the First Amendment in the Hosanna Tabor case, and I’m inclined to agree with that conclusion, both in my own mind and because even his own appointees ruled against him on that one. That’s the one where he argued that the government, not the Lutheran Church, could determine who Lutheran “ministers” are or are not. That was a 9-0 decision against Obama.

I am also inclined to think the HHS Mandate violates religious freedom as well, because it does not fit the usual test applied by the Court. I do not see the compelling state interest in the mandate, nor do I think it is the only way the government had in order to provide contraceptives and abortifacients.

Some of the others, I don’t remember, and probably couldn’t comment on if I did.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

I don’t purport to speak for the Repubs, and am not one myself. But those are things I have heard or read.

But truly, other than the “outlier” or “fringe” criticisms like the “birther” thing or the “Muslim” thing, I don’t know what demonstrably false complaints mainstream Repubs have had of Obama.

Well, I’ll take that back, at least tenatively. I do know some have said he has acted unconstitutionally. I’m not a constitutional scholar, so I don’t know whether all of those complaints have merit or whether some are hyperbole. I do know the Supreme Court said Obama acted contrary to the First Amendment in the Hosanna Tabor case, and I’m inclined to agree with that conclusion, both in my own mind and because even his own appointees ruled against him on that one. That’s the one where he argued that the government, not the Lutheran Church, could determine who Lutheran “ministers” are or are not. That was a 9-0 decision against Obama.

I am also inclined to think the HHS Mandate violates religious freedom as well, because it does not fit the usual test applied by the Court. I do not see the compelling state interest in the mandate, nor do I think it is the only way the government had in order to provide contraceptives and abortifacients.

Some of the others, I don’t remember, and probably couldn’t comment on if I did.

Okay, thank you. I am far from a constitutional law scholar myself, so I’m not really qualified to comment. I will just say that I agree with the SC in the Lutheran minister case.

 

[Crossbones]

As Kasich points out, the near-balance and (arguable) balanced budget during the Clinton administration was due to the Repubs in Congress, particularly Kasich and Gingrich. Clinton fought them tooth and nail, but then caved in and (among other things) claimed credit for changing welfare “as we know it”, as well as for the near-balanced budget.

Well, I think the balanced budget had more to do with Ross Perot winning 18% of the vote on the single issue of a balanced budget. That pretty much told both parties to get in line on the issue.

The problem with Repubs during the Obama years is not so much that they didn’t try to improve the economic situation as it is that it did no good to pass laws or budgets designed to do it. They were, of course, afraid to be blamed for a “government shutdown” if Harry Reid and Obama wouldn’t move on any of their legislation. Maybe they should have risked it, and maybe not, but in any event, they didn’t.

But it’s true that attacking Obama during the last eight years served little purpose for the Repubs for the most part. Who cares, after all, about his attempt to define “ministers” for the Lutheran Church? Who cares that he crunches down on the Little Sisters of the Poor? Who, outside West Virginia, Ky and Wyoming care about bankrupting coal companies? Who, in the cities, care whether the army is now in charge of every farm pond?

But with Obamacare, people do care, because it is job-killing and expensive. And someday, when they reopen the coal mines out of necessity and the government decides religious persecution is not really a government function, Obama will be remembered for Obamacare, and probably not much more.

I agree that Obama will be remembered for Obamacare, but I think it’ll be considered a positive. As far as the attacks, I’ll be remembering birth certificates, ebola, not calling ISIL Islamic, being a bad, bad boy for not continuing the Republican wars of aggression, stopping torture, and such.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Well, I think the balanced budget had more to do with Ross Perot winning 18% of the vote on the single issue of a balanced budget. That pretty much told both parties to get in line on the issue.

I agree that Obama will be remembered for Obamacare, but I think it’ll be considered a positive. As far as the attacks, I’ll be remembering birth certificates, ebola, not calling ISIL Islamic, being a bad, bad boy for not continuing the Republican wars of aggression, stopping torture, and such.

Perot might or might not have had anything to do with it, be he was forgotten before the “contract with America”.

Obama didn’t want Obamacare himself. He wanted full socialized medicine. Obamacare was intended to fail, and it will fail. Everybody knows it.

“Birthers” were a tiny fringe; the “occupy wall streeters” of the right, (and some on the left) but less numerous.

Ebola? What about Ebola? Surely Obama isn’t blaming Repubs for Ebola, is he?

If ISIS isn’t Islamic, then what is it? Something that calls itself the “Islamic state” can reasonably be believed to be Islamic. Does Obama think using an acronym for it instead of its name, will somehow make Muslims feel better about it?

Obama is still in Afghanistan, started a war with Libya without even telling Congress, let alone consulting it, supports competing groups in Syria and supports Iranian led troops with the USAF. He did leave a country after a war had been won, guaranteeing further war, just as his own Joint Chiefs, the Sunni, the Kurds and the Sistani Shia, as well as his own CIA chief predicted. He even claimed “victory” for himself in Iraq on national TV, until it went bad, of course.

But you’re right that Obama stopped waterboarding (if that’s torture by agreed definition). So now, we take no prisoners and kill people indiscriminately with hellfire missiles. As between being waterboarded and being fried by a fiery explosion, I think I would take the former. Only three of the worst people on earth were waterboarded, and Obama has killed a lot more than that with bombs. So let’s not accuse him of humanitarianism.

 

[Crossbones]

Perot might or might not have had anything to do with it, be he was forgotten before the “contract with America”.

The contract with America was a direct response to Ross Perot. Brilliant move, mind you and generally positive effect on the politics of the time.

Obama didn’t want Obamacare himself. He wanted full socialized medicine. Obamacare was intended to fail, and it will fail. Everybody knows it.

Sure seems like he could have gotten closer to socialized medicine if he wanted that. I do think it will considered a positive impact.

“Birthers” were a tiny fringe; the “occupy wall streeters” of the right, (and some on the left) but less numerous.

Tiny, eh? Well, I guess #1 birther being the likely Republican nominee for President might cause me to disagree with you.

Ebola? What about Ebola? Surely Obama isn’t blaming Repubs for Ebola, is he?

No, I just remember when the outbreak happen the Republicans going on for a month how stupid Obama was and how he was putting the country at risk. Didn’t quite happen that way, so it gets blotted out from the history.

If ISIS isn’t Islamic, then what is it? Something that calls itself the “Islamic state” can reasonably be believed to be Islamic. Does Obama think using an acronym for it instead of its name, will somehow make Muslims feel better about it?

Like toilets in North Carolina, it’s a big ‘who cares’. Except for Republicans who went on endlessly about it and came across as ridiculous in the process.

Obama is still in Afghanistan, started a war with Libya without even telling Congress, let alone consulting it, supports competing groups in Syria and supports Iranian led troops with the USAF. He did leave a country after a war had been won, guaranteeing further war, just as his own Joint Chiefs, the Sunni, the Kurds and the Sistani Shia, as well as his own CIA chief predicted. He even claimed “victory” for himself in Iraq on national TV, until it went bad, of course.

Didn’t say Afghanistan, though I do think we should be out by now. Personally, I don’t like everything Obama has done (and some of your criticism here and below is fair), but he is a vast improvement over his predecessor.

But you’re right that Obama stopped waterboarding (if that’s torture by agreed definition). So now, we take no prisoners and kill people indiscriminately with hellfire missiles. As between being waterboarded and being fried by a fiery explosion, I think I would take the former. Only three of the worst people on earth were waterboarded, and Obama has killed a lot more than that with bombs. So let’s not accuse him of humanitarianism.

Waterboarding is torture, but you are right that the use of missiles is not good and I don’t like it at all. I think Obama has been a massive improvement on Bush, but I would have liked to seen more and better out of him.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sure seems like he could have gotten closer to socialized medicine if he wanted that. I do think it will considered a positive impact.

No, I just remember when the outbreak happen the Republicans going on for a month how stupid Obama was and how he was putting the country at risk. Didn’t quite happen that way, so it gets blotted out from the history.

Didn’t say Afghanistan, though I do think we should be out by now. Personally, I don’t like everything Obama has done (and some of your criticism here and below is fair), but he is a vast improvement over his predecessor.

Waterboarding is torture, but you are right that the use of missiles is not good and I don’t like it at all. I think Obama has been a massive improvement on Bush, but I would have liked to seen more and better out of him.

Obama couldn’t have gotten closer to socialized medicine because not enough Democrats in the Senate supported it, and no Republicans did. That’s a fact. But he wanted socialized medicine. Nancy Pelosi got single payer through in the House, but it failed in the Senate even with an overwhelming Democrat majority there. Anyway, Obamacare will fail because it was intended to fail.

Some people here did catch Ebola notwithstanding the absolute uttermost care of the victims, and one even caught it in a very high-end hospital. Repubs wanted to quarantine air passengers in their countries of departure to ensure that people with infectious Ebola didn’t come here. Obama wanted to take the risk. Had more come, we couldn’t have handled it, and everybody knew that too because there weren’t sufficient facilities for more than a handful.

How is attacking a state that was cooperating in the war on Islamic terrorism without consulting Congress and turning it over to terrorists (Libya) better than getting Congressional approval and winning? (Iraq) Just because Obama threw the latter away (claiming victory for himself as he did it) it doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful.

In various threads I have asked if anyone could come up with a bright line test for what is torture and what isn’t. Nobody ever did, though I asked for it repeatedly. Three people were waterboarded involuntarily and thousands have gone through it voluntarily. Without some criteria for making the distinction, making it is just subjective judgment.

Now, I’ll help you criticize George Bush. After 911, he should have gone into Afghanistan, disrupted the Taliban government, destroyed a lot of their infrastructure and killed as many Taliban as possible, then left promising to come back and do worse if we were attacked from there again. Instead, he tried to turn a country with one foot in the 7th century A.D. and one in the 7th Century B.C. into a parliamentary democracy; a country whose economy is subsistence farming, smuggling, opium growing and banditry. He shouldn’t have tried.

Iraq, on the other hand, was a relatively educated country with schools, universities, a literate population and actual infrastructure. Al Quaeda actually gave up after the surge. The Sunni tribal leaders, the Sistani Shia and the Kurds all begged us to stay and guard the peace awhile longer.

But Obama’s election position was that Af/Pak was the “good” war, and Iraq was the “bad” war, so he opted for the worst of the two and abandoned the one that actually had prospects, and all for political reasons.

Afghanistan will remain Afghanistan no matter how many soldiers Obama sends there (he even increased them over Bush’s level). I have no doubt he would like to leave his “good” war. It’s just hard to do, so he’ll leave that to his successor.

 

[Crossbones]

Obama couldn’t have gotten closer to socialized medicine because not enough Democrats in the Senate supported it, and no Republicans did. That’s a fact. But he wanted socialized medicine. Nancy Pelosi got single payer through in the House, but it failed in the Senate even with an overwhelming Democrat majority there. Anyway, Obamacare will fail because it was intended to fail.

I think if he wanted it, we would have gotten at least a public option.

Some people here did catch Ebola notwithstanding the absolute uttermost care of the victims, and one even caught it in a very high-end hospital. Repubs wanted to quarantine air passengers in their countries of departure to ensure that people with infectious Ebola didn’t come here. Obama wanted to take the risk. Had more come, we couldn’t have handled it, and everybody knew that too because there weren’t sufficient facilities for more than a handful.

So, Obama was right and the Republicans were wrong.

How is attacking a state that was cooperating in the war on Islamic terrorism without consulting Congress and turning it over to terrorists (Libya) better than getting Congressional approval and winning? (Iraq) Just because Obama threw the latter away (claiming victory for himself as he did it) it doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful.

In the previous thread, I said that I didn’t agree with some of his policies, but I can’t follow your thinking at all here.

In various threads I have asked if anyone could come up with a bright line test for what is torture and what isn’t. Nobody ever did, though I asked for it repeatedly. Three people were waterboarded involuntarily and thousands have gone through it voluntarily. Without some criteria for making the distinction, making it is just subjective judgment.

I’ll point you to catholic.com/blog/michelle-arnold/waterboarding-reconsidered where the apologist suggests that those that disagree that waterboarding is torture should be prepared to answer to Christ.

Now, I’ll help you criticize George Bush. After 911, he should have gone into Afghanistan, disrupted the Taliban government, destroyed a lot of their infrastructure and killed as many Taliban as possible, then left promising to come back and do worse if we were attacked from there again. Instead, he tried to turn a country with one foot in the 7th century A.D. and one in the 7th Century B.C. into a parliamentary democracy; a country whose economy is subsistence farming, smuggling, opium growing and banditry. He shouldn’t have tried.

Iraq, on the other hand, was a relatively educated country with schools, universities, a literate population and actual infrastructure. Al Quaeda actually gave up after the surge. The Sunni tribal leaders, the Sistani Shia and the Kurds all begged us to stay and guard the peace awhile longer.

But Obama’s election position was that Af/Pak was the “good” war, and Iraq was the “bad” war, so he opted for the worst of the two and abandoned the one that actually had prospects, and all for political reasons.

Afghanistan will remain Afghanistan no matter how many soldiers Obama sends there (he even increased them over Bush’s level). I have no doubt he would like to leave his “good” war. It’s just hard to do, so he’ll leave that to his successor.

Well, I guess President Bush shouldn’t have agreed to pull out of Iraq and the Iraqi leaders should have offered immunity to our soldiers. But I guess we should have stayed in Iraq and had our soldiers subject to Sharia Law.

 

[Tomdstone]

I guess we should have stayed in Iraq and had our soldiers subject to Sharia Law.

Sharia Law mandates that non-Muslims pay jizyah tax for protection. People have had their heads cut off if they don’t pay the tax.

 

[Sy_Noe]

Obama didn’t want Obamacare himself. He wanted full socialized medicine.

“Birthers” were a tiny fringe; the “occupy wall streeters” of the right, (and some on the left) but less numerous.

While I favor single payer and was disappointed Obama didn’t push for even a public option, no he didn’t want “full socialized medicine”.

"We debunked this falsehood when Sen. John McCain said it during the third presidential debate. McCain claimed that “as he said, his object is a single payer system.” But as a presidential candidate, Obama didn’t say that at all. And the plan he proposed wasn’t a single-payer system, one in which everyone is covered by health insurance through the government. As we said in our Oct. 16 article, Obama said at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque last summer that a single payer system would “probably” be his first choice “if” he were “designing a system from scratch.”

Obama: “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.”

“The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you’ve got this system that’s already in place. We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.”

factcheck.org/2009/06/campaigning-on-single-payer/

Sounds similar to what Hillary is saying.

And 64% of Republicans is not a “fringe”.

“The most popular of these conspiracy theories is the belief that President Obama is hiding
important information about his background and early life, which would include what’s often
referred to “birtherism.” Thirty-six percent of Americans think this is probably true, including 64% of Republicans”.

scribd.com/doc/120815791/Fairleigh-Dickinson-poll-on-conspiracy-theories

 

[Lily_Bernans]

It is beyond my comprehension how they think Obama is hiding something about his early life. He was born in Hawaii. He went to college in the US. His college days are an open book. He passed the Illinois bar, but did not have an active license when he was teaching constitutional law, which is the norm for lawyers if they are not practicing. When they do not keep their license active, they don’t have to pay the fees. He went into politics. He’s been president for the last eight years. His life is an open book to me.

 

[grotto]

That must be your personal copy!

 

[mary_bobo]

It is beyond my comprehension how they think Obama is hiding something about his early life. He was born in Hawaii. He went to college in the US. His college days are an open book. He passed the Illinois bar, but did not have an active license when he was teaching constitutional law, which is the norm for lawyers if they are not practicing. When they do not keep their license active, they don’t have to pay the fees. He went into politics. He’s been president for the last eight years. His life is an open book to me.

You are up early (or late). When do you sleep or work? I am beginning to understand some of your posts now. You are sleep deprived.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ll point you to catholic.com/blog/michelle-arnold/waterboarding-reconsidered where the apologist suggests that those that disagree that waterboarding is torture should be prepared to answer to Christ.

Well, I guess President Bush shouldn’t have agreed to pull out of Iraq and the Iraqi leaders should have offered immunity to our soldiers. But I guess we should have stayed in Iraq and had our soldiers subject to Sharia Law.

The Church has never defined waterboarding as “torture”. In fact, as far as I know, the Church doesn’t have a definition for it. No one on CAF has ever produced one, or his own definition, for that matter. Your blogster even said that he does not purport to speak for the Church. He did offer a snippet from the Catechism, which would apply equally well to simply putting the cuffs on a criminal in the course of arrest or subjecting him to prosecution.

So it remains unanswered, as I thought it would.

Bush didn’t agree to pull out of Iraq. Read up on it. The treaty was up for renewal. No treaty is forever. Maliki offered to renew it. Obama would not negotiate a renewal of the “immunity to our soldiers” (Status of Forces) agreement because he didn’t want one. He just wanted out of Iraq. He admitted that in the debate with Romney right on nationwide TV. His own CIA chief said it too, in his book.

Time is long past to put that Democrat myth to bed. Obama made a campaign pledge to get the U.S. out of Iraq and did. His own Joint Chiefs, the Sunni tribal leaders, the Sistani Shia, the Kurds, the DIA, the CIA all advised him against it, but he did it anyway.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

You are up early (or late). When do you sleep or work? I am beginning to understand some of your posts now. You are sleep deprived.

No, I’m not sleep deprived. It is a carry over from my days in the Carmelite cloister. I get up at two or three every morning so I can spend three hours in contemplation.

I usually go to sleep by nine, and five hours is plenty for me. I will sometimes post in the evening when I’m grading papers. I’ll take a break from one paper and post, then go back to my papers. I also don’t have classes all day every day, though that will change soon. I’m in the library now, though I do have a few classes this evening.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

That must be your personal copy!

Autographed and everything!

 

[Jeanne_S]

That must be your personal copy!

 

[Exiled_Child]

The Clintons are using 5 shell companies to save on taxes in Delaware

theweek.com/speedreads/617761/clintons-are-using-5-shell-companies-save-taxes-delaware

 

[sallybutler]

The Clintons are using 5 shell companies to save on taxes in Delaware

theweek.com/speedreads/617761/clintons-are-using-5-shell-companies-save-taxes-delaware

How dare Democrats use the tax code to benefit themselves. Everyone knows only Republicans are allowed to evade taxation.