When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

I want to try to express my heartburn about this election. Please bear with me a moment.

Bernie Sanders has my support when the NC primary happens, and I will make a case to anyone who needs to hear it for why he is the true candidate of conscience for anyone who cares about liberal values both socially and fiscally. I HOPE we live in a world that could birth a Sanders presidency. Bernie’s pitch is that he will meet the morass of obstructionism and corruption with an invigorated uprising of people willing to work for a new kind of government. He has been playing the same tune for at least 30 years. I hope that there is a big enough number of people in the general electorate that can ignore the “74-year-old Jewish Socialist” label just as well as they ignored the “inexperienced community organizer”, “radical anti-colonialist” and etc. labels they stuck on Obama.

I hope Bernie supplies people like me with more substance than platitudes as time goes on. I hope Bernie Sanders can be president. I am surprised by how well he has done so far, and I am reminded that I doubted Obama at this stage in 2008.

But if Bernie doesn’t overcome the Clinton machine and Hillary gets the nomination, I will be in her corner. I am and always have been ja little wary of Clinton’s ultimate motivations. I have always believed that her and her husband love the power at LEAST as much as they love to serve a greater purpose. It troubles me that Clinton has her husband’s facility with telling convenient untruths. I cringe when I see Hillary try too hard to convince people she’s genuine.

But I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton has the wherewithal and intention to continue and expand the gains made under Obama. I think she has a better chance of success in this political climate. I believe if Bernie loses the nomination he would give his all to backing Clinton. I believe if Clinton loses she will wholeheartedly back Bernie. It troubles me to no end that there are so many Democratic voters who do not see those two scenarios as the ONLY sane courses of action. I call them the scorched earthers.

Across the aisle, who is trying to gain the white house? ******* madmen who are endorsed by KKK, white nationalists and Aryan Nation; who are backed by a bloody NRA and corporate donors with bottomless pockets. The three in the lead: A power hungry huckster whose name is synonymous with excess and tabloid entertainment. A religious fanatic who oozes smarmy ambition and evil intent. A feckless reluctant Senator whose claim to fame is being young and good looking with all the depth of a kiddie pool.


When I tell the scorched earthers that, by advocating withdrawal of support if Hillary is the nominee, they condemn us all to life in this country under a madman’s regime… in a maniacal nightmare… in a hell of regression and oppression and intolerance, when I tell them that they say they don’t care. They say they’ve been hurt, and won’t be hurt again. They say if Bernie doesn’t win, it doesn’t matter who does.

I don’t know a lot, but I know they are wrong about that. I know, if past Republican presidencies in the modern era are fair evidence, that it will become quickly evident how badly it matters.

If Elizabeth Warren endorses Bernie, that may in itself be enough to push him to the election. If that happens, I will be worried, but I will support him. And I will pray REAL HARD that he can get in there and be a strong and reasonable and effective president who can find a way to give life to his lofty ideals.

I tell ya, this election worries me.

You just spoke for me, Snood, thank you.

I am going to assume it was an honest oversight. If we correct George's error and judge each president by his entire presidency, the Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis shows us the data. Here are the GDP figures (in constant dollars) in each president's first and last quarters (as far as the Fed has them --- their latest data point is Q3 2015).

GDP in trillion dollars (inflation-adjusted):
Q1 2001: 12,643,3
Q1 2009: 14,375,0 (+ 1.7% / year since Q1 2001)
Q3 2015: 16,414,0 (+ 2.2% / year since Q1 2009)

To be sure, 2.2% a year isn't great. But it is okay. Obama, the economic failure, is at this point a conservative fantasy. Reality-driven analysis has nothing to do with it.

Couldn't say it better myself.

That's a really good post, snood. Along with Osso and Thomas, there's little or nothing there I take issue with.

*I tried to watch the debate last night. I made it through about 15 minutes and just couldn't continue. The Fox Business venue just made it a full on propaganda presentation facilitating falsehoods, half-truths, and the continuation of complete lunacies. Add to that the coloration of reality-TV standards and it all became, for me, like some exercise where I was trying to find beauty or spiritual enhancement in watching cows take a ****.

*I put this elsewhere but thought I'd add it here as well.

The fallout was immediate and at Defcon 11.

For the obvious reason - I was comparing economic growth in the recovery periods immediately following recessions.

And also obviously ignoring in your analysis the fact that George W. Bush walked into a situation where the GDP per capita was improving and Full Time jobs were being added, and Barack Obama walked into a situation where the GDP per capita was plummeting and 2.6 Million Full Time jobs were lost the previous quarter before he took office.

I think that's a reasonable position. Indeed the stakes may be even greater than you indicate. This remains a year of surprises and unlikely events in both parties, but I still have a very hard time seeing Bernie Sanders winning the presidency under any circumstances. The enthusiasm he has generated so far among some has already defied conventional expectations (I suspect the Clintons had expected no threat at all from his candidacy), but I still doubt that he could mobilize the whole potential democrat electorate in a hotly contested election.

Recent Poll data suggests that Sanders may well take either or even both of the pending New Hampshire & Iowa primaries, and that could well give Hillary yet another close moment in this campaign. I believe she will likely recover from it just as she has survived several so far. However, there is a chance that, weakened by each one and threatened by the possibility of continuing FBI investigations or even an indictment, things could turn against here in the final election. This remains a turbulent year politically and there are also equivalent uncertainties on the Republican side.

Objectively speaking there are very few detectable gains for the country from the Obama presidency worth preserving, however the real issue here comes down to the retention of political power. Despite all the missteps and controversy, Hillary is still the Democrat's best bet to retain the presidency. Given the still ongoing wave of Republican wins in Congress and state governments, that is likely a vital interest to them.

One could also argue that was the result of actions of the Republican Congress in the 2nd half of his presiodency. Do you remember his declaration that "the era of big government is over".

In any event I was addressing only a comparison of the vigor of sequential post recession recoveries. There are endless possibilities for excuses and rationalizations for those, such as yourself, who don't like the results, and you have merely done that.

No George, what you obviously have done is try to ignore the extreme difference in the severity of recession Barack Obama faced and the slow-but-positive economy that George W. Bush faced when taking office. Such childish maneuvers as trying to equate a situation where Bush faced 1.2% annualized increase in the GDP per capita and a 0.3 Million increase in Full Time jobs the previous quarter before taking office and a situation where Barack Obama faced a -9.1% drop in annualized GDP per capita and horrible loss of 2.6 Million Full Time jobs in the quarter before taking office is just nonsense on your part. Nobody will believe you.

I am wondering if we are going to get any Bernie supporters (I like Bernie Sanders, I just find some of the supporters to be a bit abrasive and obsessive) will find themselves now believing the Benghazi Myths. There is going to be an upcoming conservative film called "13 hours" apparently just filled with every conspiracy which has been obsessed by Fox News and congressional hearings.

Review: Michael Bay's 13 Hours Is A Coded Message To Benghazi Conspiracy Theorists

Are they really myths?? Our consulate in Bengazi really was torched on the anniversary of 9/11 by an al Quaeda affiliated group and our Ambassador and others killed in the event. There really had been numerous prior requests for added security by our Libya Embassy staff, and the Ambassador personally, that were ignored or rejected by the State Department. The Obama Administration really did make a concerted effort immediately after the event, which occurred just weeks before the Presidential election, to publicly assign the blame on a video that few had ever seen, even though their contemporaneous internal communications confirmed the real origin of the attack. Hillary really did reaffirm this fabricated line to the families of the victims at an event at Dover AFB when the caskets with the victims remains were delivered there - I've seen the news clip of her announcing that we "would spare no effort in holding those who made the infamous video that caused this disaster" to the assembled crowd there.

Hillary famously asked "What difference does in make now?" during her Congressional testimony. The answer is obvious to anyone considering her qualifications for the office she seeks.

Sure glad Hillary supporters are not abrasive.
We don't need no stinking Benghazi to vote Bernie.

So you decide to trot out several of those myths here.

1. They asked for more security at the embassy in Tripoli. Benghazi was 600 miles away. The Sec of State doesn't personally get involved in security and funding issues for individual embassies or missions so any attempt to lay the blame directly with Clinton is rather ridiculous.

2. The CIA were the first to present the video was to blame based on their evidence. The WH passed that along. Congressional investigations have found as much. The person arrested for leading the attack told reporters the reason was it was a response to the video. Accusing Clinton of pushing this story is not warranted by any facts. There were various emails with different reasons but the official line from the CIA at first was the video.

3. Hillary's response was to a much different question then you are accusing her of answering. Go look at the testimony instead of repeating this myth that she didn't care about those killed.

So, the answer is yes, they are myths and you believe in those myths.

If you dont waste hrs. arguing with lash about her hatred of the Clintons and the slanted articles she posts she thinks she is being ignored.

You have a remarkable inclination to find fine distinctions on which to base tenuous or flatly false assertions.

The ignored requests for added security involved both Tripoli and the auxilaary forces in Bengazi. The Secretary of State and the chiefs of all Federal agencies are responsible for all the actions their agencies take - that's what accountability means in government. I doubt that you have any real knowledge of what Secretaries of State do or don't do in response to requests from Ambassadors in volatile, troubled areas such as Libya was then. Subsequent correspondence has confirmed Clinton's knowledge of the real origin of the attack even before she repeated the video canard. The DOD and CIA had confirmed the al Quaeda link to the assault within a day of the attack - all that is on the record.

Quote rabel22:


It would appear so. I never knew the ignored poster got notifications that someone had put them on that status. Seems counterproductive. At any rate I didn't.

Quote Lash to McGentrix:


Quote Blickers to Lash:


Quote Lash:


Well, Lash, probably because your post to McGentrix was in response to a post he made about the subject I was talking about. Most people of the male persuasion would naturally therefore assume they were the "he" you were claiming was spamming the thread. In the future, if you are going to make nasty claims about somebody who put you on Ignore-which is their perfect right-at least make it clear who you are unjustifiably complaining about.