Enough with the hyperbole attacking Trump, let's talk about how Hillary is the single most corrupt politician EVER in the history of stuff & things.

How many other politicians have been personally paid million (not campaign contributions, direct payments) in the two years before taking office, entirely from industries that would profit tremendously from favorable executive branch policy?

The "speech" money and the Clinton Foundation's shady dealings and their relation to Hillary's State Dept. would be completely disqualifying to anyone not named Clinton. The conflicts of interest here are off the charts.

We should be in full-on panic mode that someone like Hillary is this close to the presidency. But nevermind that, look at the funny buffoon and his ridiculous hair! lol!

So actually make the case for Hillary's corruption, Crackersmack. Show us where she sold out the American people for Wall Street interests, and demonstrate that doing so is how she typically conducts business.

I have no doubt that businesses expect to get something for their contributions; their hope is to get as much influence as possible. Here is what it most likely gets them:

1) Politicians will return their calls. Did you ever try to talk to a Congressperson as a private citizen? You're likely to be ignored. Big donors will get the chance to talk to the politician and plead their case.

2) In weighing the pros and cons of policy, big donors will be a factor the politician considers. The impact of a given bill on truck drivers, for example, might not factor in to the decision-making process at all except for that donation from the Teamsters, or from Ford for that matter. The politician will at least have to think about the impact on donors and what it will mean next election cycle.

Neither of those is ideal but they aren't exactly the sort of corruption Bernie insinuates, where people hand Hillary a big sack of money with a dollar sign on it and she does their bidding.

The case for Hillary's corruption is made by the unprecedented amount of cash she has taken recently, from industries that will financially benefit from favorable policy from her administration.

Are we going to find "smoking gun" level quid pro quo? Probably not because Hillary Clinton isn't stupid. But the conflicts of interest are severe enough and there is definitely a ery strong appearance of impropriety if nothing else. And that's usually enough to disqualify someone from holding public office.

But if you want examples of Hillary Clinton changing positions based on campaign contributions (or other personal payments) there are plenty out there. The first example off the top of my head is Elizabeth Warren's own words in her famous 2004 interview with Bill Moyers. The video is out there, I'm sure you've seen it.

Second would be the approval of arms deals to Saudi Arabia by the State Dept. after donations were made to the Clinton Foundation by the arms manufacturers and the Saudi government. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clinton-founda tion-state-arms-deals

Third would be the Swiss bank UBS having Sec. of State Hillary intervene on their behalf to squash a serious legal problem with the IRS, then donating money to the Clinton Foundation and paying Bill .5m for speeches. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/hillary-helps- a-bankand-then-it-pays-bill-15-million-in-speaking-fees/400067/

Fourth would be Clinton Foundation itself, which seems to be a slush fund of dubious legitimacy, designed to enrich the Clintons and their friends. It's a closet full of skeletons waiting to fall out once the Dems are committed to HRC. https://harpers.org/blog/2015/11/shaky-foundations/

We could do this all day. There are dozens of examples like this, and that's just what we know about.

As I understand it your argument boils down to "sure there is a whole lot of smoke but you can't prove that there is a fire" and maybe that's true. But holy shit is it a lot of smoke. It's a forest fire sized plume of smoke streaming into the sky. Betting the whole farm on "it's not a fire" is fucking insane.

But whatever, Trump is Hitler, the sky will fall if Hillary loses, better to have competent and corrupt than incompetent and buffoonish. No thanks.

There's not even smoke, all you're pointing out is the existence of wood and a lighter.

Ok, I am pointing out wood, a lighter, and an arsonist holding the lighter that has been directly paid tens of millions of dollars by people that want a fire to happen. And you're saying that the arsonist won't start the fire.

You've decided she's an arsonist and you don't have any proof to present nor do you feel you need any. But based on this you've decided that Trump would be as good a president as the one the Democrats will be running.

You'd better have Sarandon-grade tits.

I've given you multiple examples of her being financially rewarded by private industry (and foreign governments) for policy decisions while she was in a position of power, cited sources, and there are dozens more that are easily available to you via google. I'm not sure what kind of evidence you want.

I do have to admit that I am very amused that people (presumably) on the left have adopted the right-wing SCOTUS majority opinion that it's not corruption unless you have smoking gun evidence of straight-up quid pro quo. Because Clinton.

Proof is not necessary in an election year. Anyone who apposes your favorite politician is literally the devil.

You can't reason with the Democratic Party and you can't reason with hard line democrats. I applaud these sanders kids who think they can change that by getting him elected, and maybe this time it works because he seems to be an honest social democrat, but I think sooner or later they'll turn into bitter third party socialists like me and then you'll have a problem just due to how the game is rigged against anyone not right of center just by ballot access restrictions and the ongoing shenanigans of the Democratic Party against a real leftist.

"Collaborator! You'll see what happens next!"

I love that line.

Crackersmack, let's assume you're right that the money is unambiguously favor money (I'm inclined to think some is some isn't), it's a lot but it's not actually as unprecedented as you think. What's unique isn't the amount of money she's being given for favors (whether or not she delivers) it's that, because of her brand recognition, she's being paid in advance. The typical procedure is that a candidate agrees implicitly or explicitly to do favors for whatever powerful interests they've got ties with, and then AFTER THEY LEAVE OFFICE having done the favors, they are paid in the form of high paying, usually no-work "advisory" type positions and consulting fees and such.

She's not even the most corrupt politician in this comment section.

I'd say the same about Hillary voters. They are fine with going another eight years without meaningful action on income inequality, healthcare access, or retirement. That takes a certain level of economic privilege too.

Look, Congress has never been more hostile to single payer than they are today -- both chambers controlled by Republicans who take pride in obstruction -- so President Sanders wouldn't be able to give you single payer, much less a minimum wage increase or anything else.

I get that you like Bernie because he makes promises he can't possibly keep, but if he's going there, why can't he make bigger and better promises? What about jet packs, Mars colonies, spider powers, or auxiliary genitalia? Bernie may be making promises he can't possibly keep, but worse than that, he's got no imagination about it.

Bernie supporters are aware of the reality of Congress. We've spent the last eight years hearing about how Republican obstructionism is the reason that nothing can be done.

What some of us find unacceptable is the Democratic Partyin 2016 deciding right off the bat that universal healthcare is not a goal anymore, that a living minimum wage is not a goal, that you need "skin in the game" to go to college, and that we need to be more aggressive militarily in the ME.

Fuck that shit. If you are asking me to vote for that then you're shit out of luck, and no amount of "OMG Hitler" is going to convince me. But go ahead and keep up the disingenuous "unicorns and ponies" nonsense, it's not like there is any chance of the party unifying for the general election after Hillary swings hard right after the convention anyway. We're gonna have another 2000 election.

Deciding that Universal Healthcare is not a goal anymore is NOT the same as realizing that it's a waste of time, money, and effort to accomplish that goal against the current congress.

Perhaps it would be more productive to focus on things that can happen, and work toward changing the composition of congress so that Universal Healthcare (and living wages, etc.) are achievable goals.

"Bernie supporters are aware of the reality of Congress."

If you were, you would have abandoned Bernie long ago.

You know why most Democrats aren't talking about single payer? Because there is no way to get there any more than there is the rest of the Unicorns And Ponies noise Bernie makes. Provide a willing Congress first and the Democrats will base their plans on what is achievable. Too grown-up for you? That's on you.

Bullshit.

Hillary Clinton is not saying that we need to get Congress back before we can have universal healthcare or a living minimum wage. She's saying that these are not our goals. an hour is too much. A tax increase to fund universal healthcare is a non-starter because tax increases are always bad.

In her own words, single payer will "never, ever happen". That doesn't sound like someone that would push for it if we got Congress back. Pelosi said "we have made a decision about where we're going on healthcare".

The Democratic Party establishment, personified by Hillary Clinton, does not think that universal healthcare or a living wage are worthy goals. If we got both houses of Congress back these issues would still not be pursued by President Clinton.

Also I'm sure that her opposition to universal healthcare has nothing to do with the million she was personally paid for speeches to for-profit healthcare companies.

We had 68 Democrats in the Senate when Medicare was passed, and almost half the Republicans supported it too. We'd need comparably favorable conditions for single payer. Please tell me when you expect them, or how to get there without fixing Congress first.

In the meantime, I'm perfectly content to consider single payer an impossible goal, because there is currently no path from here to there. Also, single payer failed in Bernie's own state, and when someone or other starts hammering on that -- Hillary has been too kind to go there, but Trump wouldn't be -- Bernie's going down, hard. Turns out single payer is hella expensive so long as medical costs remain high; who knew?

Vermont has like 600k residents, so I'm not sure that a failure of single payer there proves anything other than that single payer can't work in a medium sized city all by itself. And the Vermont story is more complicated than that anyway, but I'm sure you already knew that.

And I'm not asking for single payer, I'm asking for universal healthcare. There are a whole bunch of ways to get to that goal but all of them make insurance companies less profitable. We have to be OK with that. I am, a lot of people are, but Hillary and other corporate Democrats are not. That's the real problem.

Again, Hillary IS NOT saying that she will push for universal healthcare if we had control of Congress. She could come out and say "give me 60 votes in the Senate and control of the House and we'll make it happen."

But she's not saying that. She's saying that it will never happen. The Party is saying that we have already made our decision about how far we will pursue this.

Stop trying to frame it as her just being realistic because that's straight-up dishonest. Own it. Hillary thinks that you shouldn't have access to many necessary aspects of healthcare unless you can spend X number of dollars. She thinks that an hour is too much for the poorest Americans to expect.

Just own it. Be honest about what you support.

Fuck you, Bort, you disingenuous cretin.

You know for a fact single payer went down in Vermont because the Democrat governor and the DNC itself pushed the effort to kill it because they were asked to by their campaign contributors in the insurance industry, big pharma, and the private health care lobby.

But that's ok, go on ignoring the fact of the level of financial security and privilege it'll take to survive four years of Clinton.

Priviledge!

^ I would just like to point out what was the impassible highlight of this page: someone suggesting in all seriousness that Bort has more money than Susan Sarandon.

To be fair, I never bothered to have my tits appraised, so I could be right up there.

The thing I don't understand is why so many people are s confident that Hillary, quite probably the most demonized and hated by the right of any US politician today, who some in congress genuinely believe has personally ordered at least one politically motivated murder (not saying there's any truth to it, but there are people in office now who believe that) has a chance in hell of getting anything through congress. The only contender who's got a chance at getting along with congress is Cruz.

And the only ones whose bases are engaged enough to have much chance of changing the political landscape of congress in the next four years are Trump and Sanders.

Ok, so a population of 600k people can't support a single payer healthcare system. Point taken.

What does that have to do with a national healthcare system? You know that we could finance it with public debt, right? There would be no need to raise taxes to fund it if we didn't want to. That's a big part of what makes Hillary's argument against it so dishonest.

Oh, so you don't consider SOLVENCY a crucial element in what you want to be the only method for paying hospitals and doctors to treat people.

Ladies and gentlemen, a Sanders supporter. One who probably isn't worth million like Susan Sarandon.

How things go down in Vermont is a terrible guideline of what can or can't happen at a national level much less anywhere else. We're a pretty bizarre state, politically, economically and socially.

Jesus Bort, it appears that you don't even have a 9th grade level of understanding of how the US economy functions. How do you think that government pays for shit like the defense budget? Are we "insolvent" right now?

Personally, I think the government pays for things right now by being massively in debt to countries like China, through the sale of treasury bonds, and juggling the debt so that we don't have to pay it off all at once. The thought behind being in debt -- when anyone but Republicans are in power -- is that it should be a temporary condition, and eventually we are obligated to pay off the debt, presumably by resolving whatever crises drove us into debt in the first place and then collecting enough taxes to make up the difference.

But that's not the plan you proposed. Single payer is too expensive ... ? Just put it on the national credit card. Why even figure out why it's so expensive or what it would take to actually afford it, we can keep overspending forever and it will never ever become a problem.

OMFG

China is like our 17th biggest creditor. Most US debt is owed to US citizens in the form of bonds held by local governments and pension funds, etc., so paying interest on that isn't the worst thing in the world. Almost all of it goes right back into our own economy.

And that's besides the point; if debt is a big concern of yours you are in the wrong fucking political party.

If you can't be bothered to spend 15 minutes on Wikipedia so you can learn why the dollar is the world's reserve currency (and why that means that yes, we can actually print more money to pay for important shit like healthcare) then you should be a Republican. That's where that stupid-as-fuck "put it on the national credit card" idiot gibberish comes from anyway. You don't know what you're talking about.

So your position is that debt isn't a problem. Tell me, if it was fucking lunacy for Cheney to hold that position, how isn't it for you to?

What? I don't give a fuck about Cheney or his positions.

Explain why I should care about the debt. Tell me how the national debt affects your life.

Christ almighty, Bort! How can you expect to understand any of these things from your lofty privilege perch? Try slumming it like Ms Sarandon here and then maybe you'll gain some real world understanding!

B...b..but both parties are the same! Right of center, privilege, corruption, log cabin, chicken in every pot!

Oh no, that sounds ominous! I bet he'll build a wall too!

I saw a picture of crazy people at his rally, he's just like Hitler! He's the same as Hitler! OMFG Nazis everywhere! Fascism! The sky is falling! We're super-serious here everybody!

You all realize that you are doing the exact same thing that teabaggers do when they call Obama a Muslim communist from Kenya, right? Same fucking thing.

Except I trade in facts, idiot:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11333472/trump-abortions-punishme nt-women

Now granted, there would be significant legal hurdles for Trump to actually criminalize women who have abortions, but then again the pro-life game all these years has been to work incrementally by putting pro-lifers in power and let them accomplish what they can. Putting one in the Oval Office would be a very bad idea.

Wait, do you mean to say that Trump's promising ridiculous shit that is illegal/impossible? Well I'll be. Don't let that get in the way of a good freak out though. Nazis! Oh mah gerd!

Next thing you'll be telling me that if you look at Trumps actual, existing history of political activism and campaign contributions he's pretty much a mainstream conservative Democrat. That's not an argument in his favor by the way.

Honest answer: I've voted in every election, national and local, no matter how minor, and even attended meetings of my county Democratic Party for years so I could vote on precinct captains. I was an OFA volunteer in 2008 with over 80 hours logged, and a paid employee of a House campaign in 2014. I'm not some wild-eyed hippie.

Hillary wouldn't be worse than Trump. But Trump wouldn't be the end of the world either.

Strategically it makes some sense to throw this election and hope that we can rebuild in '18 and '20, because Hillary winning entrenches the Third Way and DLC factions permanently. The progressive wing of the party dies with Hillary's election because the party is not going to let an insurgent candidate come this close again. They will change the rules, add superdelegetes, etc. No more Bernie-style candidates coming out of left field and competing for major office.

Not to mention that we are going to hit a recession or depression in the next Presidential term and it's a lot better to let that bury the Repubs than us. And Hillary is 100% unquestionably corrupt.

Hmmm, what is Barney Frank's job right now? You might want to look that up before you hold him up as some example of what a Democrat should be or take him seriously when he talks economics.

Ah, Thomas Frank, the guy who doesn't believe racism has a single thing to do with Republican appeal; after all, if you ask Republicans, they tell you they're not racist!

The title of his more famous book ought to be: "What's the Matter with Kansas, No Seriously, Somebody Explain It to Me, I'm Too Much of a Fucking Idiot to Notice How Heavily the Republicans Lean on Racism to Win White Votes".

lol Bort didn't read "What's the Matter with Kansas" but I can tell that he has read an idiot's review of it and adopted it's opinion as his own.

Guess what: the book does talk about race. But there's more to the problems facing our society than just identity politics. I know that this can be extremely hard to accept for people that need to pretend that class isn't an issue.

I've read lots of Thomas Frank columns, and I've read reviews by actual socialists (not pretend ones like kingarthur might be). Dude talks populist economics because he feels he has a solution if that's where the problem lies; if the deeper problem is racism and how the Republicans can sell bad economic policy by slapping a black face on good policy, Thomas Frank has no answers.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/39/kansas.shtml

---

One of the more bizarre claims Frank makes is that of the "racial elements of modern conservatism"–playing on "white fears" by pressing "hotbutton issues like busing, welfare and integration"–"none…is an important factor" in the story of the Kansas backlash. Indeed, he claims, "If anything, the conservative movement in Kansas is conspicuous for its tolerance on racial issues."

His proof? Drawing on a historic tradition of Kansas abolitionism, Kansas conservatives accuse their opponents of being "bigots," or members of "hate groups"; Sam Brownback supports "open immigration policies"; and anti-abortionists delight in calling themselves "abolitionists." All and sundry conservative issues, he tells us, from anti-gay bigotry to fighting against a woman’s right to choose, are cloaked in the language of "civil rights." Here Frank is guilty of muddying the distinction between the appropriation and manipulation of the language of the Left and the civil rights movement by the conservative Right, and the reactionary positions they are harnessed to.

George Bush, in proposing to gut affirmative action, makes allusions to Martin Luther King and the traditions of the civil rights movement. Indeed, from the beginning the backlash against affirmative action presented itself as a movement fighting against "reverse discrimination." That hardly qualifies it as non-racist. This has been a conscious right-wing strategy to throw its opponents onto the defensive: Those who are against school prayer are for "suppressing free speech," proponents of vouchers are merely standing up for "school choice," and so on.

In attempting to argue that race in Kansas was not a factor in the backlash, Frank offers an extremely selective history. Abolitionism and populism may have a place in Kansas history, but so does ugly Jim Crow racism. On June 10, 1882, a white mob in Lawrence lynched three Black men who were suspected in the murder of a white man. In the 1920s, the Klan chapter in Wichita was bigger than the total population of Blacks in the city (6,000 to 5,600).

Though we can agree with Frank that Kansas was and is "not Alabama in the sixties," it imposed segregation in most public institutions, including elementary schools, theaters, restaurants, swimming pools, and high school sports teams, until a movement changed it. Indeed, the first successful student sit-ins at lunch counters took place not in Greensboro, NC, but at a drug store chain in Wichita in 1958.

As Frank admits, the backlash since its emergence in the seventies has always used coded language to disguise its racism–crime (young Black men), welfare (young Black mothers). It isn’t as though the Kansas conservative movements in their various guises over the years have been somehow hermetically sealed from the rest of the country or have somehow been open to the ideology of the Right but have heroically resisted its central racist props.

Just last September, Reverend Jerry Johnston’s First Family Church in Overland Park (he is a leader in the conservative’s anti gay crusade in the state) sponsored a meeting featuring the "iron-lady" of the right, Phyllis Schlafly, whose speech featured a pro-Buchanan rant against immigration. She was introduced by Kansas Republican Kris Kobach, a former aide to John Ashcroft who ran for Congress in Kansas’s 3rd District (he lost). He ran a campaign denouncing taxes, gay marriage, abortion rights, denying in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, and demanding 20,000 troops on the Mexican border. In the audience at that meeting were also seven members of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization that contributed the maximum amount permissible (,000) to Kobach’s congressional run. FAIR’S leader, John Tanton, once argued: "Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile?... As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?" Kobach also received campaign funds from Gun Owners of America, whose executive director is Larry Pratt, a man with known associations in white supremacist organizations.

I decided to search the etymology of "trump" to try and be clever, and wow did that pay off in spades. Trump does not mean what I thought it did historically.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=trump&allowed_in_fram e=0

"fabricate, devise," 1690s, from trump "deceive, cheat" (1510s), from Middle English trumpen (late 14c.), from Old French tromper "to deceive," of uncertain origin. Apparently from se tromper de "to mock," from Old French tromper "to blow a trumpet." Brachet explains this as "to play the horn, alluding to quacks and mountebanks, who attracted the public by blowing a horn, and then cheated them into buying ...." The Hindley Old French dictionary has baillier la trompe "blow the trumpet" as "act the fool," and Donkin connects it rather to trombe "waterspout," on the notion of turning (someone) around. Connection with triumph also has been proposed. Related: Trumped; trumping. Trumped up "false, concocted" first recorded 1728.

Just, wow.