O’Malley Ain't No Obama

Martin O’Malley has "been in governance far longer, has accomplished more, is arguably just as liberal as [Elizabeth Warren]... and unlike Warren, he’s actually running for president. Why do some progressives tend to dismiss him as a mere technocrat who doesn’t inspire?" -- Michael Hirsh - POLITICO

Let me make this simple--it's over. The 2016 race, for President. Barring something unforeseen--an indictment, a disabling health issue, etc.--Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. We all know what happened in 2008--a young, charismatic Senator from the State of Illinois knocked the wheels off the Clinton juggernaut (disclosure: I was an Obama supporter)--but it won't happen this time. O'Malley ain't no Obama. Oh sure, there are going to be some rough patches along the way. Hillary and Bill don't expect to just waltz back into the White House, they've been around the political game long enough to know better. But sometime after November, 2016, I fully expect to see Hill and Bill packing up for the move back to Washington.

The Republicans don't have anyone with the "right stuff," except perhaps Rand Paul, but the best he will be able to do is lay the groundwork for a 2020 or 2024 run for the White House. In the end, the Democrats will all coalesce around their sure winner. The world is a mess. Even the U.S. is stumbling--economically, socially, globally, politically--and Washington, D.C., is a self-serving cesspool of money and ambition. But the Clintons have already taken money from everybody, so there is no issue, foreign or domestic, where both sides haven't already attempted to "grease the wheels." In addition, Hillary will probably be playing for the history books as the first woman President.

If nothing else, the state of the nation and the world (see above), will ensure a Clinton victory in 2016. Fear is a great motivator, and people are fearful--"Dude, what happened to my country?"--the old people will come out in droves to vote for Hillary. The last place you want to be standing on election day in November, 2016, is between a gray-haired person and a polling place. So the GOP can cross off Florida even if Rubio OR Bush is the Republican nominee--yes, the Republicans' chances to win the White House are that bad in 2016.

Remember, when most people over the age of 45 think of Hillary, they actually think of "Bill and Hillary." That's actually a very good thing for Hillary, which I am not sure her campaign advisers understand at this point. Nobody is without sin as they say, and even Barbara Bush is now a big fan of Bill Clinton. Most older Americans remember the Clinton administration (1993-2000), as the "good years"-- prosperous, peaceful--heck we even had a federal budget surplus in some of those years thanks to the Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress, yet Bill was also able to triangulate and "get things done."

Of course, the media will, at least publicly, maintain the race (at whatever point) is "close" and will make mountains out of molehills at every chance they get in order to try to create some ratings for their dinosaur media properties. If you're a political junkie, have a good time. As for the rest of us, life goes on.


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2016 And Why Jeb Bush Should Forget About Being President

Most people (even  some members of the Bush family) agree that Jeb Bush would have been a better President than his brother. But that doesn't mean Jeb will be, or should be, the next President. Time moves on. Opportunities lost are often, if not always, lost forever. That's the way it is in life, whether you are an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley or a politico Presidential wannabe.

We are hardly into the 2016 Presidential election cycle, and we are already witnessing the sad spectacle of Jeb trying to defend his brother's administration's disastrous foreign foray otherwise known as the Iraq War and other unwise policies--e.g., the Patriot Act.

Florida already has one candidate in the 2016 race--Marco Rubio, and some would say that even that is "one too many." The US appears to be in a "leadership vacuum." The Republicans don't have anyone, save for possibly Rand Paul, with real Presidential leadership potential and a chance to win in 2016. The Democrats seem to be stuck in Clintonialism and gender politics--"Hillary should be elected President because she is a woman and would have been elected in 2008 but for Barack Obama!" or "we need a woman President--the first in history!" However, despite the negatives and the baggage, Hillary will probably be the "safe choice" and elected in 2016. The celebration will seem subdued in comparison to the jubilation accompanying Barack Obama in 2008, but the nation will move on.

In the meantime, Jeb, for the sake of the nation, his party, his family, and his own personal integrity, should gracefully exit the race.


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I'm For Billary! Slogans That Hillary Clinton Will Never Use (video)

Slogans That Hillary Clinton Will Never Use -

"With All Due Respect" test-drives some potential bumper-sticker slogans for Hillary Clinton's impending campaign

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How Are American Families Doing? Horrible

First the Facts, and only the facts:

How Are American Families Doing? A Guided Tour of Our Financial Well-Being - NYTimes.com:

• Incomes Fell From 2010 to 2013 for Most
• Many groups, including both the youngest and oldest families and those without a college education, saw steep income declines even after an economic recovery had begun.
• Both young adult households (those headed by someone under 35) and those households headed by someone over 75 have seen steep income declines in that same period.
• This is the simplest yet most important fact to understand about the current economic recovery: It has not resulted in higher incomes for anyone other than those who were already doing well. And very large groups of Americans have experienced falling incomes.
• Wages have fallen as a proportion of income
• The gains in the stock market did not translate into greater wealth for most American families. The median American household was worth $81,200 in 2013, down from $82,800 in 2010 and way down from the $135,400 of 2007. (Those numbers are all inflation-adjusted, using 2013 dollars). While the wealthiest 25 percent receive a meaningful chunk of their income from capital gains, the bottom 75 percent receive a trivial amount.
• The survey’s breakdown of where household income is coming from helps explain why this is happening. Most Americans, particularly those in the middle- and lower-income brackets, derive most of their income from wages and salaries, not from investment income. In the wealthiest 25 percent of households, only 47 percent of their income comes from wages, compared with 70 to 80 percent for the lower three brackets.

America: Poorer, Less Affluent, In Decline.

What Happened?

Washington Sold Out America for Wall Street. Just look at Hillary Clinton and Eric Cantor (and they are just 2 of many, many examples). The pathology is systemic in both parties: Democrat and Republican.

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How Bill and Hillary Clinton Avoid Estate Tax (video)

How the Clintons Reduce Estate Tax Pinch... Legally: Video - Bloomberg:
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Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it. Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin and Al Hunt speak on Bloomberg Television's “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg June 17)

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Wealthy Bill and Hillary Clinton Use Trust to Avoid Tax They "Support" (video)

Wealthy Clintons Use Trust to Duck Tax They Support: Video - Bloomberg:
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Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it. Betty Liu reports on “Movers & Shakers,” on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg June 17)

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Glenn Greenwald on Hillary Clinton for President

Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden and His New Book, No Place to Hide:
How do you feel about the early presidential jockeying?

Glenn Greenwald: "Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion. I mean, she's been around forever, the Clinton circle. She's a f__king hawk and like a neocon, practically. She's surrounded by all these sleazy money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she's going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It's going to be this completely symbolic messaging that's going to overshadow the fact that she'll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power. They'll probably have a gay person after Hillary who's just going to do the same thing. I hope this happens so badly, because I think it'll be so instructive in that regard. It'll prove the point. Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn't get affected by election choices and that isn't in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own."

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Elizabeth Warren 2016

Democrats (and Americans) should have 2 Democratic Party choices for President in 2016--the dinosaur epoch Hillary-Billary show from the 1990s with all baggage intact, or a fresh new face--energetic, hip, female, US Senator from Massachusetts (born and grew up in Oklahoma!), whose political positioning is more mainstream Democratic Party 2016--US Senator Elizabeth Warren. As things are going now, by 2016, the public is going to be way past being tired of the Washington dysfunction, the old conventional inside the beltway politics, K Street, the empty rhetoric and now obvious incompetence of the Obamaman who always blames someone else because he can't seem to figure out how to lead or manage as Chief Executive of the USA. Republicans are going to serve up either Christie, Cruz, or Paul--and any of those three means BIG CHANGE in Washington--the winning theme for 2016. Democrats are going to serve up either Clinton or Warren. Clinton represents the past--from her own healthcare fiasco of the early 1990s to Whitewater  to Monicagate to Benghazi. Warren represents the future. Clinton wants to have a discussion about the NSA. Warren wants to kick ass (as does almost everyone else in the USA outside the political establishment). Really, who do you think the grassroots (and I am not talking about the big money of the DC-WallStreet axis of evil the Clintons have been courting for 20+ years) is going to support and get enthused about? Wall Street and the Clintons are big chums. Wall Street is terrified of Warren.

Oh, by the way, the New Republic has a good article on Senator Warren: Elizabeth Warren is Hillary Clinton's Nightmare | New Republic; as does Businessweek: Why Elizabeth Warren Should Run Against Hillary Clinton for President - Businessweek (yes, Businessweek!).

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Camille Paglia, Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, PR

Camille Paglia -- a woman who speaks her mind --

"As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win." -- Camille Paglia (source below)

Camille Paglia: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance” - Salon.com: "It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts. I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi. In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was."

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Hillary Clinton Disqualified by Benghazi

Forget about Whitewater, forget about her disastrous, failed attempt at health care reform (HillaryCare), her "front-runner to loser" campaign against Barack Obama 5 years ago--Hillary Clinton disqualified herself from ever being President of the United States with her despicable performance and failure of leadership, including, but not limited to, her lack of control of her political operatives in the State Department, during the Benghazi episode and its aftermath--

Clinton remains GOP focus as administration defends Benghazi talking points - NBC Politics: " . . . her response to the attacks should disqualify her from a presidential run.  “The evidence we had in January already suggested that Mrs. Clinton ignored repeated requests for more security in Benghazi,” he (Rand Paul) wrote in the Washington Times on Friday morning. “The new evidence we have today — and that continues to mount — suggests that at the very least, Mrs. Clinton should never hold high office again.”"

Rand Paul challenges Hillary Clinton in key Iowa speech - NBC Politics: "Hillary Clinton"--"It was inexcusable, it was a dereliction of duty, and it should preclude her from holding higher office," the Kentucky Republican added to loud applause."

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State Department Blamed for Benghazi Disaster not YouTube video

Contrary to the story concocted earlier by Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the reason the US ambassador to Libya and 3 other Americans were killed at Benghazi on September 11, 2012, was the failure of Clinton's State Department to provide proper "security"--and it had nothing to do with an obscure YouTube video (which obviously was a narrative developed by the Obama administration to provide a "smoke screen" and deflect attention from their own incompetence and ineptness)--

State Department Blamed for Libya Security Falling Short - Bloomberg: "The State Department had “grossly inadequate” security at a U.S. mission in Libya before a deadly attack by militants and must overhaul procedures to correct “systemic failures,” an independent review panel said. . . . The findings in the report released yesterday raise questions about the State Department’s leadership under Clinton, who is preparing to depart the post as one of the most popular figures in President Barack Obama’s administration. The report criticized the performance of “senior levels within two bureaus” under Clinton without faulting her by name. . . . The report repeatedly faults the State Department for producing a “security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” according to an unclassified version of the report by the five-member review panel."

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