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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
March 8, 2016
Actually, someone did.
That Maiaer guy from Fox tee vee during the Michigan town hall.
BAIER: Thank you very much. Last thing very quickly, your senior aide said you might be offered if you weren't the nominee, the VP slot. would you take it?
SANDERS: We are -- we're talking about running this campaign to win to become president of the United States.
SANDERS: Not talking about vice president.
BAIER: Senator Sanders, thank you very much.
SANDERS: Thank you, Bret. Thank you all.
-- http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/07/transcript-fox-news-democratic-presidential-town-hall.html
SANDERS: We are -- we're talking about running this campaign to win to become president of the United States.
SANDERS: Not talking about vice president.
BAIER: Senator Sanders, thank you very much.
SANDERS: Thank you, Bret. Thank you all.
-- http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/07/transcript-fox-news-democratic-presidential-town-hall.html
March 8, 2016
BAIER: At the time you and your staff deleted nearly 32,000 emails, about half of the total volume, were you aware that the server was going to be sought as evidence by federal authorities?
CLINTON: No, but let me clarify this, because, you know, there's much misinformation going on around here. And let me just start with the basic facts. I have said it wasn't the best choice to use a personal email. It was a mistake. However, I am not alone in that. Many people in the government, past and current, have on occasion or as a practice done the same.
Nothing I sent was marked classified or that I received was marked classified. And specifically, with respect to your question, every government official, and this is a legal theory -- not just a theory, it's a legal rule, gets to choose what is personal and what is it official. What we turned over were more than 30,000 emails that I assumed were already in the government system, Bret, because they were sent to state.gov addresses.
BAIER: Sure, but there were some that were just recently discovered and turned over...
CLINTON: No, that was in the State Department, not in me. I've turned over everything.
BAIER: Let me just clarify, the State Department has redacted and declared 2,101 of your work emails classified, at least at the confidential level, 44 classified as secret, 22 classified as top secret. So you said at a March press conference in 2015: ``I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.'' So can we say definitively that that statement is not accurate?
CLINTON: No, you can't. Here's what happened, the State Department has a process for determining what is or isn't classified. If they determine it is, they mark it as classified.
BAIER: Well, who decides...
CLINTON: The State Department decides.
BAIER: But what about you when you're typing an email?
CLINTON: No, the State Department decides what is -- and let me go a step further here, I will reiterate, because it's a fact, nothing I sent or received was marked classified. Now, what happens when you ask or when you are asked to make information public is that it's reviewed and different agencies come in with their opinions.
As you know, just recently, Colin Powell's emails were retroactively classified from more than 10 years ago. As he said, that was an absurdity. I could not agree more.
BAIER: So your contention now is the 2,101 emails contained information that shouldn't be classified at any time, they should be -- now or then, you're just saying it shouldn't have been classified?
CLINTON: Well, what I'm saying is, it wasn't at the time. Now if you -- let's take Mary Smith who has some information in the government. And she is FOIAed, Freedom of Information Act, give us your information, your memos, your emails, whatever it might have been. That then goes through a process. So even though the agency she works in has none of this is classified, others start to have a chance to weigh-in.
So others might say, you know, that wasn't at the time, but now with circumstances, we don't want to release it, so, therefore, we have to classify it.
I've asked, and I echo Colin Powell in this, release it, and once the American people see it, they will know how absurd this is. So Colin Powell and I are exactly on the same page.
SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/07/transcript-fox-news-democratic-presidential-town-hall.html
A very nuanced answer, to be charitable.
Hillary on the State Department email Thing
Sec. Clinton was asked about this in Michigan's Town Hall, the one she said she originally wasn't going to attend before finding out it would be broadcast over FOX anyway and then found she could find time to attend Town Hall:
BAIER: At the time you and your staff deleted nearly 32,000 emails, about half of the total volume, were you aware that the server was going to be sought as evidence by federal authorities?
CLINTON: No, but let me clarify this, because, you know, there's much misinformation going on around here. And let me just start with the basic facts. I have said it wasn't the best choice to use a personal email. It was a mistake. However, I am not alone in that. Many people in the government, past and current, have on occasion or as a practice done the same.
Nothing I sent was marked classified or that I received was marked classified. And specifically, with respect to your question, every government official, and this is a legal theory -- not just a theory, it's a legal rule, gets to choose what is personal and what is it official. What we turned over were more than 30,000 emails that I assumed were already in the government system, Bret, because they were sent to state.gov addresses.
BAIER: Sure, but there were some that were just recently discovered and turned over...
CLINTON: No, that was in the State Department, not in me. I've turned over everything.
BAIER: Let me just clarify, the State Department has redacted and declared 2,101 of your work emails classified, at least at the confidential level, 44 classified as secret, 22 classified as top secret. So you said at a March press conference in 2015: ``I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.'' So can we say definitively that that statement is not accurate?
CLINTON: No, you can't. Here's what happened, the State Department has a process for determining what is or isn't classified. If they determine it is, they mark it as classified.
BAIER: Well, who decides...
CLINTON: The State Department decides.
BAIER: But what about you when you're typing an email?
CLINTON: No, the State Department decides what is -- and let me go a step further here, I will reiterate, because it's a fact, nothing I sent or received was marked classified. Now, what happens when you ask or when you are asked to make information public is that it's reviewed and different agencies come in with their opinions.
As you know, just recently, Colin Powell's emails were retroactively classified from more than 10 years ago. As he said, that was an absurdity. I could not agree more.
BAIER: So your contention now is the 2,101 emails contained information that shouldn't be classified at any time, they should be -- now or then, you're just saying it shouldn't have been classified?
CLINTON: Well, what I'm saying is, it wasn't at the time. Now if you -- let's take Mary Smith who has some information in the government. And she is FOIAed, Freedom of Information Act, give us your information, your memos, your emails, whatever it might have been. That then goes through a process. So even though the agency she works in has none of this is classified, others start to have a chance to weigh-in.
So others might say, you know, that wasn't at the time, but now with circumstances, we don't want to release it, so, therefore, we have to classify it.
I've asked, and I echo Colin Powell in this, release it, and once the American people see it, they will know how absurd this is. So Colin Powell and I are exactly on the same page.
SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/07/transcript-fox-news-democratic-presidential-town-hall.html
A very nuanced answer, to be charitable.
March 8, 2016
Came Through
Narrator: It wasn’t long ago. The auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Major American companies about to be liquidated. Millions of jobs were at risk. Michigan's economy was teetering. America’s auto companies asked for help. And President Obama came though. Now …in Sunday’s debate …we learn only one candidate for president supported him. Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton: When it came down to it, you were either for saving the auto industry or you were against it. I voted to save the auto industry.
Narrator: And she was right. Today the auto industry is thriving and millions of people have jobs who could have lost them, jobs in manufacturing, technology, jobs up and down the supply chain. On Tuesday, March 8th, vote for the one candidate who stood up for the auto industry……and came through for Michigan …when it really mattered. Hillary Clinton.
SOURCE: http://blog.4president.org/2016/2016/03/new-hillary-clinton-2016-radio-ad-came-through.html
It was a low shot...a torpedo aimed below the waterline...with no mention of the UNAUDITED and FORGIVING FOUL BANKSTER BAILOUT.
Hillary's Big Lie about Bernie: ''Came Through'' in Michigan
Heard this commercial at least ten times Monday while driving around Michigan:
Came Through
Narrator: It wasn’t long ago. The auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Major American companies about to be liquidated. Millions of jobs were at risk. Michigan's economy was teetering. America’s auto companies asked for help. And President Obama came though. Now …in Sunday’s debate …we learn only one candidate for president supported him. Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton: When it came down to it, you were either for saving the auto industry or you were against it. I voted to save the auto industry.
Narrator: And she was right. Today the auto industry is thriving and millions of people have jobs who could have lost them, jobs in manufacturing, technology, jobs up and down the supply chain. On Tuesday, March 8th, vote for the one candidate who stood up for the auto industry……and came through for Michigan …when it really mattered. Hillary Clinton.
SOURCE: http://blog.4president.org/2016/2016/03/new-hillary-clinton-2016-radio-ad-came-through.html
It was a low shot...a torpedo aimed below the waterline...with no mention of the UNAUDITED and FORGIVING FOUL BANKSTER BAILOUT.
March 8, 2016
The ad's called 'Came Through'
It was a low shot...a torpedo aimed below the waterline.
"Came Through" http://blog.4president.org/2016/2016/03/new-hillary-clinton-2016-radio-ad-came-through.html
March 8, 2016
The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow
By Michelle Alexander
EXCERPT...
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades—they are currently at historical lows—but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.
The drug war has been brutal—complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods—but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.
That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.
This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That’s why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it’s all about violent crime.
Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “(T)he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”
A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.
The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes—sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.
CONTINUED...
http://reimaginerpe.org/20years/alexander
''A War on the Blacks.'' - Richard Milhous Nixon, BFEE
The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow
By Michelle Alexander
EXCERPT...
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades—they are currently at historical lows—but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.
The drug war has been brutal—complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods—but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.
That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.
This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That’s why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it’s all about violent crime.
Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “(T)he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”
A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.
The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes—sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.
CONTINUED...
http://reimaginerpe.org/20years/alexander
March 8, 2016
Bernie Sanders was AGAINST the WAR on Iraq and Bailing Out the BANKSTERS.
In fact, he wanted to hold the lying bastards who caused these disasters responsible.
No wonder there's a media blackout.
March 7, 2016
I thought he did an outstanding job representing his ideas and leadership.
For instance: "No, I do not support fracking. No, I do not take money from the fossil fuel industry."
The greedheads who own and operate Big Oil have played a big role in getting the planet and Democracy to the point of collapse.
Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
March 7, 2016
You don't know what you're talking about, Steven Leser.
Ford didn't take a penny of bailout money.
March 7, 2016
I heard her say the auto bailout was $350 Billion.
It was about $79 Billion, $70 Billion repaid, meaning cost to taxpayers of $9 Billion.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/12/30/auto-bailout-tarp-gm-chrysler/21061251/
March 6, 2016
Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup
"A coup anywhere in Latin America is a very big deal.”
By Alvaro Valle
Harvard Political Review, April 13, 2015
SNIP...
The U.S. Response
Latin American governments immediately denounced Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup. The United States was not quite as decisive in its diction, with the initial statement from the Obama administration merely calling on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms.” Obama did go on to denounce the coup in the following days, but Frank noted that Obama’s characterization of the government change was very important. “He very clearly failed to call it a military coup. If he had called it a military coup, the United States would have had to immediately suspend all police and military aid,” Frank explained. “Eventually some money sent was suspended, but the vast majority was not.”
Following the coup, President Obama called many times for the reinstatement of Zelaya. In contrast, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks that were far more equivocal. When asked if the United States had any plans to alter aid to the coup government, , “Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome.” Clinton seemed to prioritize having a stable regime over preserving democratic ideals.
As further evidence, Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices, “In the subsequent days [after the coup] … we strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot,” revealing that even as the administration publicly advocated for Zelaya’s return, Clinton was not working to ensure that it would happen.
Pastor added that Clinton had personal connections with supporters of the coup government that may have led her to soften her stance. For instance, Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton’s former personal lawyer and a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, lobbied in Washington for the Honduran coup government, Honduran elites, the Business Council of Latin America, and the American companies that took issue with Zelaya’s reforms. Bennett Ratcliff, another top Democratic campaigner with close ties to the Clintons, also worked for the Honduran coup government as a lobbyist in Washington. These personal connections to advocates for the coup government raise troubling concerns that political ties influenced Clinton’s stance.
In Clinton’s defense, these personal connections were not the only political forces supporting the coup. Levitsky noted that initial opposition to the coup in the United States may have given way because “Republicans held a couple of major U.S.-Latin America appointments: the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassador to Brazil. They held these positions hostage to a softening of U.S. policy toward the coup government.”
CONTINUED w/ links sources etc....
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/us-honduran-coup/
Of course, it's plausible that all this just happened to favor Empire at the expense of Democracy. Then, it would be mere coincidence that today many if not most of the progressive -- socialist -- regimes in South America and Central America have been replaced by rightist regimes. Kind of reminds me of another time in history when the State Department/CIA made an end-around directives from the Oval Office.
Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup
Originally, President Obama backed ousted Honduran president (supporters shown in civilian clothes below).
Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup
"A coup anywhere in Latin America is a very big deal.”
By Alvaro Valle
Harvard Political Review, April 13, 2015
SNIP...
The U.S. Response
Latin American governments immediately denounced Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup. The United States was not quite as decisive in its diction, with the initial statement from the Obama administration merely calling on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms.” Obama did go on to denounce the coup in the following days, but Frank noted that Obama’s characterization of the government change was very important. “He very clearly failed to call it a military coup. If he had called it a military coup, the United States would have had to immediately suspend all police and military aid,” Frank explained. “Eventually some money sent was suspended, but the vast majority was not.”
Following the coup, President Obama called many times for the reinstatement of Zelaya. In contrast, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks that were far more equivocal. When asked if the United States had any plans to alter aid to the coup government, , “Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome.” Clinton seemed to prioritize having a stable regime over preserving democratic ideals.
As further evidence, Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices, “In the subsequent days [after the coup] … we strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot,” revealing that even as the administration publicly advocated for Zelaya’s return, Clinton was not working to ensure that it would happen.
Pastor added that Clinton had personal connections with supporters of the coup government that may have led her to soften her stance. For instance, Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton’s former personal lawyer and a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, lobbied in Washington for the Honduran coup government, Honduran elites, the Business Council of Latin America, and the American companies that took issue with Zelaya’s reforms. Bennett Ratcliff, another top Democratic campaigner with close ties to the Clintons, also worked for the Honduran coup government as a lobbyist in Washington. These personal connections to advocates for the coup government raise troubling concerns that political ties influenced Clinton’s stance.
In Clinton’s defense, these personal connections were not the only political forces supporting the coup. Levitsky noted that initial opposition to the coup in the United States may have given way because “Republicans held a couple of major U.S.-Latin America appointments: the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassador to Brazil. They held these positions hostage to a softening of U.S. policy toward the coup government.”
CONTINUED w/ links sources etc....
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/us-honduran-coup/
Of course, it's plausible that all this just happened to favor Empire at the expense of Democracy. Then, it would be mere coincidence that today many if not most of the progressive -- socialist -- regimes in South America and Central America have been replaced by rightist regimes. Kind of reminds me of another time in history when the State Department/CIA made an end-around directives from the Oval Office.
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