Hillary on Rachel Maddow Tonight

By dianeravitch

September 15, 2017 //

105

She was wonderful.

She reminded us what it was like to hear an intelligent discussion by a well informed person in government.

She reminded us what grace, dignity, intellect, and leadership looks like.

Watch it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNg3OuWGy9s

Categories Education Reform

105 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Jennifer Hall Lee says:

September 15, 2017 at 12:27 am

She is amazing. Human rights and democratic values are imperative to our country. Putin hated her.
She’s great.

LikeLike

Reply
- dienne77 says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 7:48 am
  
  You can ask people in Iraq, Libya, Honduras and Haiti about that record of democratic values and human rights.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 3:32 pm
    
    Some day you might ask yourself WHY the Republicans suffered so much from Hillary-derangement syndrome. Why do you think the right wing Republicans hated her so much that they held endless Benghazi hearings and endless FBI investigations to tarnish her? The right-wing’s pure and unadulterated hatred for Hillary Clinton surpasses anything that they felt for Sen. Sanders or Warren.
    
    You think that their hatred of Hillary – funded by the most hateful right wing billionaires — was because they thought she was going to do the bidding of the right? You think they were upset because they felt she sold out the people in Iraq and Libya?
    
    The reason that billionaires were willing to spend any amount of money — hold endless hearings — was because they believed Hillary Clinton was one of the most DANGEROUS politicians in history.
    
    They knew that she was like LBJ, and she knew how to get things done even if that meant sometimes compromising. And they knew what Hillary wanted to get done was a complete anathema to the right wing agenda!!
    
    Hillary Clinton TERRIFIED the right wing. If she was the sell-out you keep insisting she was, they wouldn’t have spent the last 10 years (actually, more like 24 years) trying to destroy her.
    
    If she was the nasty woman you keep insisting she was, they would have LOVED to have her doing their bidding.
    
    LikeLike
Joe says:

September 15, 2017 at 1:00 am

If we had President HRC, there would be no Gorsuch on the Scotus and she would not be loading the lower courts with right wingers. However, the electoral college has spoken and burdened us with a mendacious doofus.

LikeLike

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 9:00 am
  
  The downside is that if she had been elected, the Republicans would have started impeachment proceedings on Day One. Just because.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:27 am
    
    So I would ask, where are the Democratic Senators who are calling out for impeachment can you name one . Lets go to the Moyers list of connections, is it at all conceivable that that this President should not be hanging from a tree. Except for the fact that we are technically not at war with Russia , so treason does not apply. This is not collusion subverting the most fundamental part of Democracy free and fair elections with a foreign power, has another name TREASON.
    
    Glad I missed her I was on Broadway my kids got me tickets for my birthday to see “The Terms of My Surrender” Michael Moore
    
    So where are the Democrats ,Nancy and Chuck are breaking bread with the fascist scumbag . Legitimizing him. Making him presidential giving him a win a badly need win.
    Now surprisingly many in the audience didn’t know that Obama went to Flint Michigan to drink a glass of water instead of locking up the governor for a federal civil rights violation , MURDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    But what I learned was the glass of water he drank came off of air-force one.
    
    If I never see either one again it will be a good thing.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:02 pm
    
    Really, Joel??
    
    Maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to attack them Schumer and Pelosi if you were one the DACA families or you were a low-income family who desperately needed some relief from the hurricane devastation.
    
    Schemer weren’t doing this to make Trump look good. They were doing it because they saw a chance to get something for some very vulnerable people.
    
    Look, I’m not a fan of Schumer’s pro-Wall Street views and please criticize them all you want. But it takes a certain position of privilege to be able to say that Dems who have a chance to do some good shouldn’t grab it. I don’t think this legitimized Trump at all. Did beloved Bernie criticize them for making this deal? Do you criticize Bernie for sitting on a stage next to Andrew Cuomo, PRAISING him, and giving him legitimacy for offering up a meager version of Bernie’s college for all plan? Thus giving Cuomo nice cover as he decimates NYC public education for the benefit of his biggest donors?
    
    LikeLike
  - Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 10:05 am
    
    NYC public school parent.
    
    “if you were one the DACA families or you were a low-income family who desperately needed some relief from the hurricane devastation. ”
    
    So those people in Texas and Florida were going be abandoned by a Republican Congress . I would have loved to see that .
    
    I would also like to see an Alien ship land on the White House lawn both were equally likely .
    
    And I don’t think DACA was far behind. Trumps willingness to talk compromise already, a sign of the pressure that was to come.
    
    That would have been some great news reel footage perhaps enough to wake up the 30% of Hispanics who voted for Trump. Just in time for the mid terms .
    Remember what Johnson told King about that news reel footage. Something about a farmer in Iowa????????????????
    
    Like that landing on the White House Lawn you were not going to see the repeal of DOCA and deportations of those that had applied for its
    protection .
    
    Lets see, you are upset about charters in NY but you completely ignored the led poisoned children in Flint . As did Obama . I did not hear Hillary shout “lock Snyder up”
    
    Not only are Democrats spineless and corrupt (in bed with corporate donors ) “they do not know how to use language” .
    
    Want to defeat the right .
    
    “When they go low, we go lower”
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 11:58 am
    
    Mr. Trump will never get another vote from any sane Hispanic American.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 3:24 pm
    
    According to Joel, the Democrats blew it by trying to make a deal with Trump to save DACA. How dare they!
    
    Somehow we are supposed to believe that “the 30% of Hispanics who voted for Trump” because they weren’t bothered at all about his comments about Mexican rapists and his insistence that we “build a wall” to keep them out would have abandoned him if only the Democrats were willing to remain silent and let Trump do whatever he wanted instead of working with him to try to save DACA.
    
    Talk about a truly cynical view of politics. Not to mention one that is not based in reality.
    
    LikeLike
Dienne says:

September 15, 2017 at 7:47 am

What?! She answered a bunch of softball questions from her bestie who’s never once challenged her on her disastrous record of militarism, corporatism, privatization and support for Wall Street. She was interviewed about a book that answers the question of “What Happened” with everything other than the correct answer: Hillary happened. Never once has Hillary been willing to look in the mirror and tried to understand how her own record and her own words (“Superpredators”; “We came, we saw, he died, ha ha ha”, “Deplorables”, etc.) have harmed her (and the nation). She can go the hell away. She’s the reason we have Trump.

LikeLike

Reply
- Joe says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 8:23 am
  
  She’s the reason we have Trump?!? Wrong. Before Trump even ran against Hillary there was the long drawn out process of Trump running against his fellow GOPers, even a well endowed (money) Bush for pity’s sake. I blame the GOP first and foremost and of course the Electrocution Collegians. Hillary made gaffes but Trump made mistakes the size of Mount Rushmore. Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million. Don’t forget, there was also a large element of misogyny playing out in this election. The Hillary haters will not admit this.
  Again, I voted for Bernie in the primary but he lost in NJ by a huge margin.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:36 am
    
    “Hillary made gaffes but Trump made mistakes the size of Mount Rushmore.”
    
    And yet Trump won. How does that happen? How does such a “highly qualified”, “competent”, “statesmanlike” candidate like Hillary lose to the Odious Orange One? How does she even come close? My dog could have beaten Trump. It takes work to lose an election like that.
    
    Honestly, until the Democrats, including and especially Hillary, start taking a long, hard look in the mirror rather than casting blame on anything that will stick, we will continue to get Trump and Trump clones. Until the Democrats start offering policies that will actually help average Americans rather than telling us that such policies are hopelessly idealistic, “pie in the sky” unicorn fantasies, we will continue to get Trump and his ilk.
    
    You can weep and wail and gnash your teeth and deny the truth of what I’m saying all you want. I hope you enjoy the next 7+ years.
    
    LikeLike
  - Joel Herman says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:11 am
    
    Joe explaine that vote in Jersey?
    It is a myth that Trump beat all these Republicans. He won a minority of the vote against a large field . A different dynamic applied in the Democratic primaries that also yielded the weaker candidate
    
    LikeLike
  - Joe says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:44 am
    
    Joel: HRC was very popular in NJ, I saw many more HRC signs, and bumper stickers than Bernie or Trump ones (in the central Jersey area, Mercer, Middlesex counties). She beat Bernie by 63%. Nobody stopped me from voting for Bernie, I had no trouble voting. Of course Trump beat all the other GOP contenders unless you think it’s a myth that he’s president. “He won a minority of the vote against a large field .” Gee, no kidding, that’s how the system works. But he WON, your word and that’s what counts. HRC was the weaker candidate to you but obviously she was not weaker in NJ unless you are a conspiracy theorist and think the primary election was rigged for HRC.
    Thanks for doing the right thing and voting for HRC in the general election. You performed your civic duty.
    
    LikeLike
  - Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 3:17 pm
    
    Joe
    
    I only wish this was I was suffering from delusion and he was not President .
    
    Are you saying that Trump would have been able to beat the candidates in a narrow field from the start of the primaries , I doubt that . You had three relative moderates by Republican standards and Trump . I would take that bet any day . By the time he had accumulated a large pool of delegates and the status as front runner ,it did not matter that the pool was smaller .
    
    I suppose you would see many more Hillary signs . I am not one of the kids who say that she stole the election . Although there is probably some truth to the complaints out of Brooklyn about voter rolls being messed up in Sanders districts. . But that did not cost the election here in NY .
    
    Hillary Clinton sat on top of a machine in the Democratic party that would have made Boss Tweed jealous. As such every surrogate that the party had from local Democratic organizations was supporting her . They had better if they knew what was good for for them. Their carriers depended on it . This was particularly true in the Southern Black community where votes for Hillary were 85 and 90 % . Go ahead explain that one . David Duke could do better than that. That is a block vote that would have made labor in the 50s and 60s jealous. They did not vote on policy which most voters don’t take the time to understand anyway.
    
    Sanders was blacked out of media coverage by the “establishment media ” better known as corporate America’s lap dogs . When he started drawing the attention of huge crowds and could not be ignored, it looked like feeding the Christians to the lions . The WAPO running 22 negative stories in a day. Then their was the Mathews interview with him and Clinton laughing it up in a knee slapping jam .
    A few weeks later Mathews does a town hall with Sanders. I was tempted to call 911 to get a paramedic down there for Mathews his head almost took off like a rocket. . Then that daily news interview when Sanders transcript was handed over to the Clinton team for a critique before the editorial board issued their endorsement. And lets not forget Donna Brazile at CNN handing at least one debate question to Clinton. .
    
    So if Martin Omally were running against Tim Kaine do you think any of the above would have happened . They weren’t paying for the prose
    and they knew what she was going to deliver.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:13 pm
    
    I have one word to say: WISCONSIN
    
    Russ Feingold was winning big in Wisconsin. Until a last minute Koch-funded campaign convinced gullible voters that he was a hypocritical and dishonest candidate.
    
    But if I were looking to blame Feingold the way the Hillary-haters love to blame her, I would say it is all Feingopld’s fault for letting himself be characterized as corrupt and hypocritical. After all, he should have had a better message. Or worked harder. Let’s not really examine why these supposedly Bernie-loving Wisconsin voters decided that it was better to vote for the known quantity right wing pro-business, anti-socialist Ron Johnson instead of Feingold. Let’s not try to figure out how to address the attacks that are working so well against a good progressive candidate.
    
    Instead, let’s just tell Feingold he should shut up because it is his own fault for being the lousiest candidate in the world and it is his fault that 70,000 MORE Wisconsin voters loved right winger Ron Johnson than loved Trump! After all, some smart Wisconsin voters knew Trump was a con, but far more of them knew that Feingold’s ideas or character or just plain hypocrisy meant that Ron Johnson was a far better choice. And all we need to do is blame Feingold for being lousy and I’m sure we’ll start winning.
    
    And thus do progressives and democrats keep losing. Because we love to say “it’s all their fault for doing XXXXX and that’s why voters embraced the racist right wing pro-business Republican over them.”
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:31 pm
    
    ^^Also, when you cite that Donna Brazile debate question you are guilty of falling for Russian propaganda.
    
    “Tad Devine @taddevine
    @donnabrazile reached out to me and the Bernie camp consistently during the primaries. She was fair and square with us.
    9:22 AM – Oct 12, 2016 · Rhode Island, USA
    
    No doubt you are certain that Tad Devine lied because he is co-opted, too.
    
    Look it up. Brazile “leaked” that a woman during the Michigan debate would ask about the water supply. (The notion that this would need to be leaked is absurd.)
    
    But the actual question was about an obscure regulation that Hillary knew nothing about and Bernie Sanders did seem to know far more. A real “leak” would have made sure that Hillary was prepared to know about that regulation. Not that a general question about water in Flint would come up
    
    The entire point of Hillary Clinton’s book is that THIS was the kind of nastiness that happened to convince voters that she was too corrupt and dishonest to run this country. And it could not have worked without people on the left actively helping to promote the meme that Hillary Clinton and her entire campaign were corrupt.
    
    If you don’t think this is going to be tried on Bernie and Liz Warren then you are naive. The only question is whether the voters who supported their primary opponents jump on the bandwagon to help defeat them. I hope that the supporters of whoever loses the next Democratic primary are not fools enough to help promote the right wing character attacks like they did against Hillary. Because they helped assassinate her character. And it is remarks like this that made it happen.
    
    Turn every minor misstep into a sign of huge corruption. That’s what the Republicans always try to do. They will do it to Bernie and Warren and whoever candidate is anointed by the progressives. And that candidate is guaranteed to lose if there are Democrats out there helping to promote the smear and blaming the candidate for every misstep as if it was a sign of huge corruption.
    
    LikeLike
- Laura H. Chapman says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 8:46 am
  
  Sounds like you would like to join those shouting “Lock her up.”
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - Dienne says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:22 am
    
    You aren’t usually one for putting words in other people’s mouths. Disappointing.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:38 pm
    
    What is disappointing to me is that you attacked Hillary Clinton with that “deplorables” remark. You accept the right wing characterization of it as gospel.
    
    If you had read the entire statement, you would see that Hillary Clinton was distinguishing the people drawn to Trump for his racist and hateful attacks — the “deplorables” — from the OTHER Trump supporters who she very rightly pointed out had been abandoned by both parties. In fact, you actually agree with her on that issue and so do I. The Democrats did abandon those working class voters and Hillary was telling their biggest donors that she didn’t plan to continue to abandon them. She wanted to HELP them.
    
    This is why Hillary’s book is so important. The right wing played the American people. Hillary pointed out an absolute truth that I suspect you agree with. And certainly her characterization of the “deplorables” among Trump voters was also spot on. We have all seen it. But instead of telling the truth – that she was distinguishing them from the others — the right wing successfully promoted the meme that Hillary was saying that ALL Trump voters were deplorable.
    
    And people on the left helped them do it.
    
    LikeLike
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  September 16, 2017 at 12:20 pm
  
  As the renowned historian Diane Ravitch (you may have heard of her) can explain to us all in detail, one of the reasons why the left never gained much traction in the United States is that people on the left were always severely factionalized. They were smarter than their opponents but spent their gifts attacking one another. This, certainly, they learned from Karl Marx, who would never have gotten anything done if it weren’t for Engels kicking his tushy. So, I appreciate, very much, the spirited but civil tone of this discourse.
  
  Dienne is right that the Democratic [sic] Party has lessons to learn. I am not holding my breath.
  
  However, I look at the young people coming up behind us, and I have great hope. We are in a phase transition, like a pot of water just at the point of boiling. And when that happens, we shall awaken from our long Dempublican nightmare.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 12:39 pm
    
    Thanks, Bob.
    
    The best portrayal of left factionalism is in the Monty Python film “The Life of Brian,” one of the best movies ever.
    
    Watch the fabulous scene where anti-Roman factions fight over who is the real resistance.
    
    I could also tell tales about the 1930s, when the the Trotskyites, the Cannonites, the Schachtmanites, the Mensheviks, and other leftwing factions fought each other with vigor.
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 12:55 pm
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 1:06 pm
    
    Bob, that’s it!
    
    Thank you!
    
    I have many favorite scenes in that movie. Like the one where the Pythons are at the back of the crowd, listening to Jesus give “The Sermon on the Mount,” and they can barely hear him. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and the Python says, “the cheesemakers? what’s so good about the cheesemakers?” And the unforgettable scene when Brian opens his window, stark naked, to welcome the morning, and thousands of people outside are cheering and calling him the Messiah.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 2:14 pm
    
    Just for the record, one of those Schactmanites – always known as among the most devious of Left sectarians, as historian Maurice Isserman’s book “If I Had a Hammer” demonstrates – was a young man named Albert Shanker, whose early years in the teachers union (years before the formation and legal recognition of the UFT) were spent pursuing a phantom Red Menace and supporting McCarthyism in the NYC schools.
    
    Max Schactman’s wife, Yetta, was Al Shanker’s long-time secretary. Shanker never gave up on the Cold War neo-conservatism that Schactman devolved into, which is one reason why he supported the Vietnam War to the very end.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 3:11 pm
    
    Michael,
    
    You are right about Schachtman, Shanker, and Yetta. I knew them all. Met Schachtman only once. An imposing man with piercing eyes. Around The New Leader, a democratic socialist magazine where I got my first job, people spoke with awe about his four-hour debate with…Earl Browder? Cant recall.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 3:29 pm
    
    Schachtman debated many other leftists but I think this was the famous debate:
    
    https://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1950/03/russia.htm
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 6:22 pm
    
    Fascinating, Michael. I knew none of this backstory.
    
    LikeLike
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 18, 2017 at 10:50 am
    
    Yes, you are correct, Diane: one of the things Schactman was famous for (among the tiny subcultures that knew of him) was his destroying (former) head of the US Communist Party Earl Browder during a 1950’s debate.
    
    Supposedly, referring to Browder’s slavish support for Stalin’s practice of eliminating all potential rivals (and many supporters), he pointed at an ashen-faced Browder and said, “There, but for an accident of geography, sits a corpse.”
    
    Though virtually unknown today, Schactman is an important figure in the rise of neo-conservatism among Democrats from the 1960’s onward. He was also an amoral, pathological sectarian who almost single-handedly destroyed the Socialist Party in the 1930’s.
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 18, 2017 at 11:43 am
    
    Thank you, Michael. Again, all this is fascinating. Warm regards.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 18, 2017 at 12:05 pm
    
    I worked for a small magazine founded by Mensheviks, The New Leader. It was anti-Stalinist, pro-democratic socialism. I wrote an essay for its final issue saying that I got my Master’s Degree at the New Leader. As I get older, I am more and more impressed by the philosophy of democratic socialism.
    
    LikeLike
dienne77 says:

September 15, 2017 at 7:56 am

I know you’re no fan of Glenn Greenwald, but he makes a vital point: why does Clinton get to get away with not having to discuss her foreign policy record? This article is about an Ezra Klein interview, but it applies equally well to this interview: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/13/the-clinton-book-tour-is-largely-ignoring-the-vital-role-of-endless-war-in-the-2016-election-result/

LikeLike

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 8:55 am
  
  Does Glenn Greenwald still believe that Putin did not interfere in our election?
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:25 am
    
    I’m pretty sure he’s never said that specifically. You can show me if I’m wrong. What he has said is (a) we need to see evidence; a bunch of suspect intelligence agencies saying “trust us” is not evidence; and (b) to whatever extent Putin did interfere, was that really enough to sway the election, or were things like the economy, endless war, and Hillary herself more important factors?
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:37 am
    
    Ask Mark Zuckerberg
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:40 am
    
    I’ll admit I’m baffled by your answer, Diane. Am I missing something? What does Zuckerberg have to with Russia? And since when did we start trusting Zuckerberg anyway?
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:52 am
    
    You seem to be the last person who refuses to believe that the Russian government manipulated our election.
    
    Facebook announced a few days ago that hundreds of Russians accounts placed thousands ofadsinsupport of Trump, carefully targeted to certain receptive others. That is the specialty of Cambridge Analytics, owned by Robert Mercer, rightwing billionaire zealot who also funds Bannon.
    
    How many members of Trumps in we circle met with Russians during the campaign?
    
    We will have to wait for Mueller.
    
    70,000 votes in three states turned the election over to Putin’s puppet.
    
    I don’t like that.
    
    A foreign adversary chose our President. A fool. An ignoramus. aN international embarrassment
    
    LikeLike
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:50 am
    
    I’m surprised to see you engage in “whataboutism,” Diane.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:54 am
    
    I am not doing whataboutism. I’m lamenting the death of my own belief in progress.
    
    We have a fake president. A liar. A man who is a malignant narcissist. A man who selected the worst cabinet in history.
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:02 am
    
    Me? I thought we were talking about Glenn Greenwald here.
    
    LikeLike
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:18 am
    
    Dienne referred us to a worthwhile article by Glenn Greenwald, based on empirical research, and you instantly brought up Putin.
    
    Sorry, but that’s textbook “whataboutism,” aka a red herring, and a logical fallacy.
    
    It doesn’t undermine Trumpismo, it inoculates it.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:44 am
    
    Dienne wanted to change the subject to Greenwald. I am on a fishing boat in the middle of Long Island Sound. Sorry, no time to read GG.
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:52 am
    
    Oh good heavens, no, Diane. Posting an article written by Greenwald is in no way making the conversation about Greenwald. (I could argue that you made this “about” Rachel Maddow by posting an interview with her.) Greenwald raises a very valid point about why Hillary’s foreign policy record is off limits. That’s a very important point to address, regardless of who raises it.
    
    You’re the one who made it about Greenwald by pivoting to whether or not he believes Putin stole the election for Trump. That has nothing to do with the point at hand and was, in fact, a smear.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 12:46 pm
    
    I will read Greenwald when I get off the fishing boat
    
    Nothing he writes can convince me that Trump is preferable to Hillary.
    
    LikeLike
  - Ken Watanabe says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:59 am
    
    Suspicion over Russian collusion doesn’t seem to be hearsay anymore. As of September 13, the US Department of Homeland Security made an announcement that they would ban Kaspersky’s Lab, a prominent Russian computer software company selling state-of-the-art anti-virus software. The DHS believed that the company have ties with Kremlin and/or Russian hackers. They requested all federal employees to remove Kaspersky’s products from federal facilities. A founder Eugene Kaspersky dismissed the allegation. He agreed to testify at the US Congress on September 27.
    
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to-ban-use-of-kaspersky-software-in-federal-agencies-amid-concerns-of-russian-espionage/2017/09/13/36b717d0-989e-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html?utm_term=.32f3075f0e59
    
    It’s strange since Kaspersky’s Lab actually served for the crackdown of some hackers and criminals within Russia and Europe. They also became the target of Putin regime. Last year, security manager working at the lab got arrested by the Russian authorities and charged for treason.
    
    The allegation doesn’t go beyond political speculation, since it was based on the concerns addressed by some US Senates from both Democrats and Republicans. No evidence is provided for the Lab’s connection with Putin, Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, or Trump Jr. so far. Seems like Trump administration’s desperate attempt to shake off cloud of his suspicion by hunting down a subject that is yet to be proven ‘guilty.’
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 1:31 pm
    
    “Nothing he writes can convince me that Trump is preferable to Hillary.”
    
    You know that’s beneath you, Diane. Nowhere has Greenwald ever said any such thing and you know it. Greenwald is, in fact, very careful to say (repeatedly) that Trump is an odious embarrassment to the nation.
    
    The point, which apparently needs to keep getting made over and over and over and over, is that we will keep getting Trump and his ilk until the Democrats offer something better. “I’m not Trump” is not convincing when the neoliberals have done so much damage to the country and the world. The Democrats can’t laugh in the faces of people who propose policies like universal single payer healthcare or breaking up big banks and then turn around and expect the people to vote for them. You can’t call people “superpredators” or “deplorables” and expect to get their votes. You can’t laugh about war atrocities and expect people to vote for you (well, unless you’re a Republican, but the Republican already have their own candidates to vote for). You can’t support the private prison industry, the fossil fuel industry, Big Pharma and Big Ag at the expense of the people and expect people to vote for you. Until and unless Hillary and the Democrats understand that, we’re going to keep getting Trump, no matter how odious he is.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:52 pm
    
    “superpredators” — something said in 1996, 20 years before the 2016 campaign. For which she apologized. For which the African-American community forgave her not because they are complete idiots as the white Bernie Bros like to imply but because the entirety of how she spent the next 20 years demonstrated that she was not trying to enact racist policies.
    
    “deplorables”: Let’s look at the ENTIRETY of the remarks instead of the ones the left helped the right wing attack dogs promote to destroy Hillary: (I am using all caps to show what was ignored)
    
    “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
    The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. BUT THE OTHER BASKET — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people ARE PEOPLE WHO FEEL THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS LET THEM DOWN, THE ECONOMY HAS LET THEM DOWN, NOBODY CARES ABOUT THEM, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
    
    Dienne, I am shocked that you don’t agree with what Hillary said here. There were deplorables among Trump supporters — surely you aren’t blinded to that — AND there were people who were let down. Hillary recognized that. But got smeared with help from the left. Saying that she needs to parse every word because you never know when the right wing will get help from the left to help take her words out of context is a recipe for the progressives to keep losing and losing.
    
    A recipe for winning is for progressives and Democrats NOT to help the right wing do their dirty work just because their chosen candidate didn’t win a primary.
    
    We had a chance to elect a politician who made that statement above. I would have loved to see what she would have done for the non-deplorable who voted for Trump. Wouldn’t you?
    
    LikeLike
- Ken Watanabe says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 12:38 pm
  
  Well, I agree with Glenn Greenwald on his critique of Hillary on foreign policy, but you seem to miss the most focal point here. Is one man’s critique compelling enough for people to shatter who she was/is on/off political scene and her overall accomplishment and put it under the rug?? I doubt it.
  
  I agree she could have done better in handling NAFTA and foreign policy, but expecting her opponent to behave differently on these issues is nothing more than wishful thinking. The 45th shows he is way more militant than Clinton by calling for militarization of police enforcement(to crack down non-white suspects and immigrants) and building a wall(and asking Mexico to pay for that), and making it criminal to protest to BDS(Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). And he is now threatening to wage war against North Korea.
  
  It is her book. She can pick and choose whatever memories she wants to share–just like anyone who wants to sell her/his story, if you like it or not.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 12:48 pm
    
    I think you missed Greenwald’s point. Not sure why that happens so much when he takes such great pains to make his points so clearly.
    
    It’s not that he expected Trump to behave any differently. Greenwald knew upfront who Trump was and what he would do – it was obvious that his alleged non-aggression was just a ruse. The point is that Hillary’s and the Democrat’s insistence on constant militarism and violence abroad left open a loophole that Trump drove an eighteen wheeler through. It was literally impossible to be more militant and hawkish than Hillary/the Dems, so Trump played the dove and won.
    
    And, yes, sure, Hillary can write any book she wants, I suppose. But the book she actually wrote should have been labelled fiction. If she wants to write a book that will actually do her and/or her party any good, that book needs to do a whole lot of internal soul-searching on how she could honestly lose to such a repulsive opponent.
    
    Incidentally, it’s not just “one man’s critique”, it’s a statement of fact. Hillary has routinely been let off the hook on matters of foreign policy. The question remains, why? Journalists are supposed to be oppositional to those they interview, etc., especially those in power. Why the softball interviews?
    
    LikeLike
  - Ken Watanabe says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 1:14 pm
    
    I don’t think Greenwald attributes Hillary/Dems’ ‘failing job to move away from militancy” to normalizing view of Trump’s reckless behavior in the public. Militant behavior is not peculiar to Clinton/Dem, since US remains almost unchanged in her attitude on war/foreign policy throughout history, no matter who the president is. Trump is supposed to be different. Turns out he is no exception at all.
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 1:32 pm
    
    “Trump is supposed to be different. Turns out he is no exception at all.”
    
    Yes, that was exactly Greenwald’s point. Trump was supposed to be different – that’s why a lot of people voted for him. The fact that he turned out to be exactly the same (or worse), does not change the fact that people voted against the status quo represented by Hillary.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:05 pm
    
    Right. People “voted against the status quo represented by Hillary” and at the EXACT SAME TIME pulled the lever FAR MORE FREQUENTLY for Ron Johnson the right wing Wisconsin Senator who defeated Russ Feingold, running against the status quo.
    
    They sure preferred the “status quo” when it was a right wing anti-gay pro-business white guy who was running to continue the same policies he had done for the last 6 years. Promoting the right wing agenda.
    
    I’m sorry, but it bothers me when people claim things that there is absolutely no evidence are true. And the reason it bothers me is that it is a recipe for defeat. If you want the public to keep saying things that aren’t true and think that is going to lead to victory, then what a sad comment on democracy.
    
    The way to win SHOULD be by having an honesty discussion of the issues. Not throwing out the lying right wing tropes that have been repeated here by progressives who really should know better.
    
    Hillary’s loss wasn’t because of the status quo. It was because people DID NOT TRUST HER. And it took alot of help from the left to encourage those memes that led them to believe exactly that.
    
    Some of us DID trust her. We didn’t agree with every one of her policies. But we trusted her to be a decent President. In every campaign in history, trust was the operative word. People trusted Hillary Clinton UNTIL a combination of the Comey letter, non-stop attacks that she “stole” the primary, and taking words like “deplorables” out of context were used to destroy the trust of enough voters to tip a few states toward Trump. People in NY weren’t fooled. People in California weren’t fooled. We didn’t say “why didn’t Hillary campaign here so we could vote for her and since she never showed up here we are voting for Jill Stein. We didn’t need to see her in person to tell us that what she was offering was far better than what Trump was.
    
    But the left wanted so badly to punish Hillary and characterize her as you do. “deplorables” “predators”. You have thrown out every single code word that the right wing hoped you would. And you convinced enough voters in a few states to abandon her. Congratulations.
    
    LikeLike
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 5:59 pm
  
  Dienne, I finally got home after a long and mostly pleasant day of fishing on Long Island Sound,
  
  While I was with a group of a dozen people avidly fishing, I don’t fish. I can’t stand killing creatures. I had to suppress the desire to throw the fish back into the water that other people caught.
  
  I read Glenn Greenwald’s piece, once I got home. Like him, I loathe endless wars. However, I find it hard to believe that Trump was perceived as anti-war. I certainly didn’t see him that way. I saw him as a blustering fool who might get us into new wars because of his bellicose nature. I am astonished that GG thinks of him as an anti-war candidate.
  
  The American public reacts positively to presidents who are bellicose. Remember when Syria gassed its own citizens, and Trump dispatched the “mother of all bombs” to blast an empty airfield. His poll numbers shot up.
  
  Now he faces the Threat of nuclear war with North Korea, and he threatened to unleash fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen.
  
  In a week or two, he may cancel our nuclear deal with Iran and face yet another threat of nuclear war.
  
  In Afghanistan, instead of withdrawing troops, he plans to send more troops to fight a war that everyone agrees is unwinnable.
  
  Glenn Greenwald hates Hillary, like you. While I don’t like any of her education policies, I would have felt that our country was in the hands of a skilled diplomat, had she been elected.
  
  Right now, I think our Dear Leader is an ignorant, insecure bully. It is people like him who blunder into wars.
  
  No matter how many times GG claims that she is more bellicose than Trump, he is totally unpersuasive, based on Trump’s words and deeds. For the first time in my memory, we face a real threat of nuclear war, and we have a nut in control of the nuclear codes. Will he blow North Korea off the map? Will they wipe out South Korea and Japan before they are vaporized? With this fool in the White House, all of this is possible.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:09 pm
    
    Also, I have seen no evidence that people voted for Trump because they thought Hillary was a war-monger and Trump wasn’t. It’s almost irrelevant as to whether Hillary had the exact same positions as Donald Trump did or did not. That was NOT what the public was voting on.
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 7:15 pm
    
    As everyone knows, Trump got himself elected by appealing to those who believed, because of their economic circumstances, that “Washington” had failed them.
    
    His message during the campaign was not anti-war so much as it was isolationist. Again and again, in his semi-literate but effectively demagogic manner, he hammered home to poor and working-class whites that we had to turn our attention inward–to rebuild our infrastructure, to put people to work again, and, incidentally, to stop policing the world and spending trillions on foreign engagements like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All this was encapsulated in his campaign slogan: Make America Great Again. He ran as the great outsider, and his inauguration speech–the most isolationist in the history of our country–put the cap on this theme.
    
    Of course, at the same time that he was saying that we have to start caring about the needs of the country and its working people and not spending our treasure on foreign wars, he was also saying that the Democrats had allowed our military to become weak by not giving it the resources it needed. Toughness appeals to poor and working-class whites, and with Trump, it was never about the consistency or accuracy but always about the appeal–the classic carnival barker, professional wrestling schtick. Throw the bums out. Help out the average guy for a change. You need someone whose tough like me, who will drain the swamp, lock ‘er up, kick out those scary brown people. As Randy Newman put it in his wonderful song about Huey Long:
    
    “Everybody, gather ’round.
    Loosen up your suspenders.
    Hunker down on the ground.
    I’m a cracker. You are, too.
    I’m gonna take good care of you.”
    
    His message was that you and your wife both work, when you can, two crummy part-time jobs because the thieves in Washington and those scary brown people stole from you. [This candidate played the classic trump card of the populist demagogue–scapegoating.] But I have a deal for you. A trillion-dollar infrastructure package to rebuild this country and give you a real job again. A Yuuge wall. Step right up, for one thin dime. . . .
    
    That message resonated. The shock wave of Trump’s roar was so loud that the already deaf Dempublicans, who have been quite content to serve the lords of the New Feudal Order, seem to have lost what hearing they had left.
    
    Intellectuals of the United States, BTW, have totally failed working people by not learning to speak their language. This piece nails that:
    
    http://www.theonion.com/video/trump-voter-feels-betrayed-president-after-reading-56547
    
    LikeLike
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 7:17 pm
    
    cx: “you need somebody WHO’S tough like me”
    
    LikeLike
Margaret A. Price says:

September 15, 2017 at 8:49 am

She was brilliant. Her moments of personal and professional sadness and anger resonate with many of us. But her intellect and allegiance, belief, and loyalty about and to this country are undeniable. She is a patriot. I adore her stamina. Resilience, also.Good job by Rachel!

LikeLike

Reply
LeftCoastTeacher says:

September 15, 2017 at 8:50 am

Hillary Clinton supports charters and testing, merit pay and TFA. Her entire public life was funded by Eli Broad from the beginning. She worked for the Waltons of Walmart. If she had won the presidency for herself and her neoliberal, billionaire friends at Martha’s Vineyard, the Department of Education would likely be controlled by Bill Gates again, who doesn’t have an irrational fear of grizzlies but does have an irrational fear of experienced teachers and the sway of public persona to get us all fired over Common Core test scores. Michelle Rhee would be back. If Clinton hadn’t run for automaton president last year and every year before it, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would have been able to field a candidate to beat the reality TV buffoon who won everywhere except in the biggest cities. I wish she would crawl into a hole and disappear forever, and take Broad and all her hedge fund manager pals with her. People shouldn’t have to keep reliving their disastrous primary mistake of voting for her instead of Bernie Sanders, who might just run in 2020 and probably kick the runny nosed snot out neoliberal Corey Booker if the DNC gives democracy a try.

LikeLike

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 8:53 am
  
  Well, I guess we can be thankful we have an ignorant impulsive hateful racist xenophobic misogynistic instead of Hillary!
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - LeftCoastTeacher says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:17 am
    
    I am. Donald is a worldwide joke. He is incapable doing the damage to society a neolib can do.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:16 am
    
    LCT
    
    He controls the nuclear codes. An insecure braggart and bully
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:38 am
    
    Well said, LCT. “Competence” by itself is not necessarily a good trait. It depends on what one is competent at, and Hillary was incredibly competent at spreading neoliberalism. Trump can barely get his own party on board for policies that they claim they support.
    
    LikeLike
  - LeftCoastTeacher says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 5:32 pm
    
    Thank you, Dienne.
    
    Y’know, Diane, I love teaching. And I adore my students and their families. They’re all so good toward me. But to be honest, sometimes, working for Eli Broad (A.K.A. Los Angeles Unified), I wish the Donald would just type in the nuclear codes and hit the button already. What’s he waiting for.
    
    LikeLike
- Joe says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 9:21 am
  
  All I know is that once the general election came down to Hillary or the racist, fascist soft on Nazis Trump, I had a duty to vote for Hillary. As Noam Chomsky, Robert Reich and Bernie himself had advised; Thomas Frank himself had the good sense to vote for Hillary in the general election.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:44 am
    
    For the little it’s worth, I voted for her also, albeit grudgingly. However, the basic truth is that, even assuming the worst about Russian hacking and so forth, there’s no way she should have lost to Trump, and that ultimately takes us back to her weakness as a candidate.
    
    It’s a curious situation. I’ve never been a fan of Hillary’s, and have always found her politics distasteful and disingenuous. That said, I’ve always sympathized with her on a personal level, since the vicious misogyny she’s been subjected to for decades is intrinsically disgusting, and unrelated to her actual shortcomings.
    
    I also feel a weird, perverse sympathy for her because, while Bill (who’s no better) could seemingly get away with anything, Hillary could never catch a break. She probably didn’t really deserve one, but the unfairness of that dynamic still bothers me.
    
    The paradox? Yes, there has been a right-wing conspiracy to bring her down, as she famously said, and yes, she’s awful.
    
    It’s sort of like the OJ case: yes, the LAPD has a long and infamous history of racism, frame-ups and false convictions. And yes, OJ is a murderer.
    
    However that may be, the political reality is that as a public figure, she’s passed her expiration date, and needs to remove herself from the shelf – highly unlikely – or be taken off by the Left wing of the Democratic Party, and be replaced by a fresher, more nutritious product.
    
    It’s far, far too late for the (really annoying) likes of Rachel Maddow to rehabilitate her in the public eye.
    
    LikeLike
  - Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 3:47 pm
    
    A little me-too-ism , to both of you . But I do not want to hear her anymore . Would she have won without Comey and the Russians ,absolutely . Should it ever have been even close ,never. Are 90% of Trump voters unaffected by economic issues, probably . The other 10% should have been a whopping win for Clinton.
    
    And you nailed it Mike the only thing you left out was Obama’s role.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 11:17 pm
    
    “There is no way she should have lost to Trump”.
    
    That’s ridiculous. Trump defeated every legitimate Republican contender. Even now he is still popular with a shockingly depressing number of Americans in a way any other Republican would not have been after the mess he made of his last 8 months. He is teflon. I’m sure the Bill Clinton haters were just as certain that it was all Bob Dole’s fault because an ant should be able to beat Bill Clinton.
    
    Not to mention, historically her chances were low as Democrats following 8 year Democrats tend to lose.
    
    Perhaps instead of your intense laser focus on how awful and terrible a candidate Hillary Clinton is, we start to ask ourselves WHY a racist demagogue like Trump could win. And it’s not because of Hillary. It’s because the left helped the right paint Hillary as exactly the kind of corrupt, hypocritical, nasty politician that the Koch brothers did to Russ Feingold. Money talks. Especially when angry Democrats whose candidate didn’t win repeat the lies ad nauseam instead of correcting them.
    
    LikeLike
- NYC public school parent says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 11:29 pm
  
  LeftCoastTeacher,
  
  These are the kind of smears that are unnecessary and helped defeat Hillary. Maybe she would have been as bad as you say on public education. But there is absolutely no reason to believe it any more than thinking she would have been a much better President than Bernie Sanders who loves this “public charter schools” so much and just gave Andrew Cuomo his personal stamp of approval as a true champion of education!
  
  She chose Tim Kaine for VP. Not one of the DFER candidates like the one Bernie just endorsed for Governor. Not one of the “I like public charters” Democrats. Tim Kaine. Who has stood up FOR public schools.
  
  Hillary Clinton also stated for the record that the “good” charters are pushing out high needs kids. It told me that she understood the issue. And I’d rather have a President who understands the issue than one like Obama and Sanders and even Warren who care so little about public schools that they can’t be bothered to even read up on the issues.
  
  I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary for OTHER issues. But I fully expect him to sell out public eduction as he has obviously done a number of times. So what. That doesn’t make Bernie evil. He just doesn’t care one bit about public schools. He’s probably appoint a DFER person just like the other guy Obama who didn’t care one whit about public schools. But I believe Hillary Clinton does care. Just like I believe Tim Kaine does care. I may not always agree with what they do, but at least I won’t be frustrated that they are doing it in ignorance. Because they just can’t be bothered to care.
  
  And yes, as a NYC public school voter it is rather annoying that Bernie Sanders gave Andrew Cuomo cover as a champion of education. I would be fine with it if he ALSO would take a stance on the NAACP’s moratorium on charter schools. Will I vote for him again? YES! Because unlike the Hillary haters, I don’t think that just because a person has a position that doesn’t exactly align with mine that makes him evil. I don’t believe just because Bernie is far more conservative on charters that he is doing it because some right wing billionaire is paying him to do it. It is OKAY for him to still love “public charters” that he thinks are so wonderful. I don’t love it but it is okay. He stands up for other things that are important.
  
  I’m just sick of progressives inventing their own selfish litmus tests for Democrats and deciding that abandoning public education doesn’t make you a tool of right wing billionaires but making a speech does.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
Chiara says:

September 15, 2017 at 9:06 am

I think she would have made a fine President. I’ve been a Democrat forever and always felt she was more liberal than Bill Clinton but she’s become such a caricature on both the Left and the Right we’ll never know. I’m always surprised when I hear her in real life because she is portrayed as some kind of evil, malicious person and she sounds so reasonable.

She’s right about Joe Biden too. His voting record is almost the same as hers but she was vilified for it and he got a complete pass.

LikeLike

Reply
Chiara says:

September 15, 2017 at 9:11 am

I liked Tim Kaine a lot. I guess I’m the only person in the country who was excited about him but he seemed like a passionate supporter of public education and that’s refreshing and rare. We have passionate supporters of charters and passionate supporters of vouchers. I want a real advocate in government. I don’t want an “agnostic”. I want someone who loves our schools the way ed reformers love charters and private schools. I think public school families deserve committed representation at the federal level for the schools our kids actually attend instead of the theoretical systems ed reformers seek to replace our schools with.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask. It should be the bare minimum.

LikeLike

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 11:14 am
  
  Chiara,
  
  I really like Tim Kaine too.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - Sara says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 12:22 pm
    
    Chiara,
    I like Tim Kaine a lot. Anyone who gets an A+ from Planned Parenthood and an F- from the NRA will always have my vote!
    I was impressed with his letter on why he and his wife sent their children to public schools.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 12:43 pm
    
    His wife’s father was governor
    
    He sent his children to desegregated public schools
    
    LikeLike
- NYC public school parent says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 11:49 pm
  
  Yes, the fact that Hillary Clinton chose Kaine made me believe that she would be so much better than Obama on public education.
  
  Kaine’s position on public education gets ignored but he is one of the true champions in the Senate. If Warren and Bernie were more like Kaine I would be thrilled.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 9:23 am
    
    Kaine is the best person in Congress on education issues.
    
    LikeLike
Chiara says:

September 15, 2017 at 9:20 am

The US Department of Education continues their annual “public schools suck!” campaign today.

That’s where they travel the country deliberately avoiding any interaction with public school families, because 90% of families don’t exist in edreformland.

I know they don’t hire public school graduates and they don’t send their children or grandchildren to public schools, but can you really say you’re earning your salary when you’re a public employee and you serve 10% of families and exclude the 90% who use the schools you have contempt for? Isn’t there a job description someone that would preclude that behavior?

LikeLike

Reply
Charles says:

September 15, 2017 at 12:20 pm

I am a conservative. Although I did not support HRC for president, I can admire her forthrightness. You always knew where she stood.

BTW- I also support the abolishment of the Electoral College system. In nearly all democratic nations, the person who gets the most votes, wins!

LikeLike

Reply
- Michael Fiorillo says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 2:13 pm
  
  Yes, indeed, Charles, we always knew where she stood on things like TPP, which she called “the Gold Standard” of trade deals, before she opposed it (under duress) during the campaign.
  
  Sort of like being for the war in Iraq before you were against it.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 12:15 am
    
    TPP was negotiated under Obama who attacked Hillary Clinton for being for NAFTA in 2008! It must be incredibly galling for Clinton to have lost to Obama due to his attacks on her support of NAFTA and then have to defend Obama’s own TPP!
    
    By the way, I’m glad you made the comment “sort of like being for the war in Iraq before you were against it”. It’s another perfect example of how the right wing gets progressives to help them do their dirty work.
    
    For the record, John Kerry was trying to explain a complex issue wherein Democrats authorized the use of force IF Bush found a need for it. It did not occur to anyone in those weeks after 9/11 that a US President would invent a reason for war. Americans were pulling together. When Kerry realized that Bush and Cheney were dishonest actors, he opposed it.
    
    But having help from progressives to turn that into the same kind of “Kerry is a dishonest liar” meme sure helped re-elect Bush and Cheney. Just like it helped elect Trump. We keep helping the right wing propaganda by promoting their lying memes to mischaracterize all Democrats as liars. And I have no doubt we will continue to do it until the cows come home.
    
    And yes, if Kerry had won I think this country would be better for not having another 4 years of Bush/Cheney.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 12:17 am
    
    ^^correction. It DID occur to some Democrats who didn’t trust Bush at all. But even I trusted Bush at that time. I didn’t have a problem with that vote because I understood where it came from. The fact that it turned out to be wrong doesn’t mean the person who voted that way was wrong to take that action.
    
    LikeLike
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 2:33 pm
    
    Your saying that the claims of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction “turned out to be wrong” is straight out wrong, and makes it sound like an honest mistake, which is as far from the truth as could be.
    
    The claim that Iraq had those weapons were propagandistic lies that were directed at a scared US populace, to coerce it to go along with policies developed years before to re-draw the map in that part of the world, and were disproven by Hans Blix and Valerie Plame months before the invasion.
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 3:41 pm
    
    Kerry and other Senators voted FOR the authorization of force BEFORE the information from Plame came.
    
    I NEVER said it was an honest mistake. It was a lie. But the lie was not Kerry’s. When more information was revealed, he changed his position.
    
    That’s why it was quite nasty of you to use that “I was for the war in Iraq before I was against it” meme that sure helped defeat Kerry and give us another 4 years of Bush/Cheney.
    
    Of course, you’d say that Kerry deserved to lose because he was a hypocritical liar like every other Democrat in history.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 4:57 pm
    
    Did Trump win because of anti-war vote, as Glenn Greenwald writes, in article cited by Dienne?
    
    MSNBC cited a poll of Trump voters this morning saying that 70% voted for him because he promised to end immigration. The WALL was their core issue. Deporting all those brown people. Now, they are furious because he may have made a deal with Chuck and Nancy to let The dreamers stay. Some Trump groups are publicly burning their MAGA caps. Ann Coulter says Trump should be impeached.
    
    None of these people confused him with a pacifist. They are counting on him to make America white again.
    
    LikeLike
  - GregB says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 6:00 pm
    
    The fact that anyone buys into the notion that Dear Leader was ever “anti-war” is a symptom of our short attention span culture. Thankfully, for those who care about accuracy in history, we have documentation as well as these new fangled things called YouTube videos:
    
    LikeLike
GregB says:

September 15, 2017 at 3:58 pm

Over the past few days, I’ve been casually monitoring the Amazon page for the Clinton book (I don’t intend to read it—too many books on my “to read” list—but have read the clips made public with interest). As of yesterday, the reviews were mostly split between 5 and 1 star reviews. It was obvious that virtually all the the 1 star reviewers had not read the book, as well as a few of the 5 star reviewers. When I checked today, Amazon changed the formula and listed only “verified purchase” reviews. As of my writing of this, 92% of those were positive (716 of 753) and 4% were negative.

What interesting to me—and reflects the kerfuffle we experienced on one of Diane’s posts last weekend—is the vitriol associated with the negative reviews. As most of you know, the featured reviews at the bottom of an Amazon page generally reflect the “most popular” reviews as measured by how many people “like” the review. All but one of the featured reviews are 1 star, the other is 2 star. The numbers of “likes” as I scroll down is 295, 599, 2,255, 1,903, 5,377 (which is a comment asking “what happened to the negative reviews? Looks like Amazon is censoring.”), 1,034, 431, and 1,218. Not a single review above 2 stars is featured although 92% of verified purchasers give it 5 stars.

It demonstrates a few things to me. The far right is cohesive and easily mobilized. They will attack with vigor to try to silence the opposition. No venue is out of bounds—again, remember our experience last week and compare it with this. And honest debate must be silenced by them through intimidation, whether it be virtual or real. I do truly miss the days of principled conservatism represented by figures like William Buckley (what would he say if he saw how vacuous his National Review has become?) and Jack Kemp. We still disagreed with them on most issues, but at least we could recognize their logical stream. Today, it is irrationalism and intolerance that is the glue that binds them (I won’t bore my friends with my rants on Joseph de Maistre yet again). If anything, a review of the Amazon page of the Clinton book makes that conclusion impossible to deny.

LikeLike

Reply
- GregB says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 4:04 pm
  
  Also, the comments under the 5,377 vote review is a treasure trove of conservative victimization syndrome, conspiracy theories, and frustrated anger. Not really worth reading unless you’re a glutton for hate or like to slow down your car to gawk at accident victims. I did it for a while, but was finally worn out by the commentators inability to recognize the irony of their viewpoints.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
- dienne77 says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 4:07 pm
  
  As you’re monitoring these reviews, are you taking note of how many 1 star reviews Amazon is deleting?
  
  Incidentally, “verified purchase” does not mean someone has read the book, nor does a lack of “verified purchase” means that someone has not read it. People who don’t like Clinton (and who aren’t likely to like her book) are not going to spend their own money to buy the book, but they may still get it from the library or from a friend just to see how bad it is. On the other hand, political organizations are notorious for buying books for their supporters specifically to up book sales to make it seem like the book is more popular than it is. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Democratic leadership has mobilized their base to buy the book, perhaps offering reimbursement and/or other incentives. Like standardized tests, Amazon is easy to game if you’re rich and well connected enough.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 4:11 pm
    
    Incidentally, love Amazon’s search algorithms. Simply type just a w in their search field, and “What Happened Hillary Clinton” is the first fill suggestion to come up. Similarly, type in “hi” and you get “Hillary Clinton” or “cli” gets you “Clinton” and “Clinton What Happened”. Nope, Amazon’s not trying to drive traffic or anything.
    
    LikeLike
  - FLERP! says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 5:55 pm
    
    I get “wireless mouse.” Possibly not coincidentally, I was recently doing a fair amount of searching on wireless mice. Maybe Amazon’s reading your mind?
    
    LikeLike
  - GregB says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 4:15 pm
    
    You should add your comments to the one I cite above. They would fit perfectly.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 4:55 pm
    
    Dienne,
    
    Your visceral hatred for Hillary is sad. I didn’t agree with the education people from CAP and Ed Trust, but I didn’t hate her.
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 7:25 pm
    
    Yeah, Diane, I do have a thing about people who are responsible for millions of deaths and untold suffering. I’m strange that way, I guess.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:41 pm
    
    Millions of deaths?
    
    Was Hillary responsible for the war in Iraq? The Holocaust?
    
    You think she is Beelzebub.
    
    LikeLike
  - Ken Watanabe says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 7:52 pm
    
    Well, your dislike of Hillary is one thing. NOTE: I am a big fan of her, either. But criticizing an interviewer of not impugning her character is quite another. I’m not expecting you to watch PBS right now(they are doing the interview at this time). If you are looking for some hardline interview on Clinton tale, perhaps you should wait until Charlie Rose invites her in his show. But I doubt if Rose would even go so far as to do so.
    
    LikeLike
  - dienne77 says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 8:32 pm
    
    “…criticizing an interviewer of not impugning her character….”
    
    Oh FFS, the way words get twisted around here. Sheesh. Where did I ever say anything like that? what I said, and what Greenwald said, is why is foreign policy off limits in Hillary interviews? Don’t you think presidential candidates should be called to answer for their policy decisions? The only way that can be construed as “impugning her character” is if you are admitting that her foreign policy was immoral.
    
    LikeLike
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 10:35 pm
    
    Which US president had a moral foreign policy?
    
    LikeLike
  - GregB says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 9:46 pm
    
    Oh FFFS (third F is for freakin’), no one is twisting your words. By writing that foreign policy is the ONLY criteria to judge Hillary Clinton, you are engaging in bad faith. To not claim that the foreign policy decisions made by the Obama administration and to judge them in a vacuum to not put them into context of the decisions made by previous administrations is pseudo-intellectual sophistry at best. Yes, in hindsight, mistakes were made in Libya. But Libya would not have happened without Iraq. Iraq was a monumentally wrong response to September 11. Now explain to me how, as President Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was “responsible for millions of death and suffering” or how it was “immoral.” And how do those mistakes compare to a candidate who has never been accountable for public decisions who now spews hate once he (or she) is in office who would and does exacerbate them?
    
    By your criteria, EVERY American administration, with the possible exceptions of Jimmy Carter, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington (and James Garfield and William Henry Harrison due to time constraints) is immoral and responsible for death and suffering. Just curious, when was the U.S. a paradise on earth?
    
    LikeLike
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    September 16, 2017 at 6:57 pm
    
    To be fair, shouldn’t we make a candidate responsible for when they DON’T take action.
    
    What happens when millions die because America decides we can’t be bothered to care whether Assad is using chemical weapons against his own people?
    
    What happens when millions die because the US can’t bother to care about the Jews and other “undesirables” being systemically exterminated?
    
    Is the US evil for not getting involved sooner? If the US evil for getting involved too soon? Is the US evil for not getting involved at all? Or should the US have stayed out of it completely so critics of FDR didn’t blame him for intentionally murdering so many Americans plus every person in Europe and Asia who were killed by American troops and bombs?
    
    Foreign policy is about making choices where every single choice is terrible.
    
    Despite many criticisms I have of Obama, I can’t really fault his foreign policy even when it went wrong. Because it was just as likely that his making the opposite choice would have gone wrong, too.
    
    Maybe you happen to know what the exact right thing to do in every international situation is, dienne. I don’t. All I know is that I want people who I trust who care about trying to do what causes the least harm. And yes, I believe Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Albright, Christopher, Carter, LBJ all tried to manage foreign policy with the best intentions. Even when it went terribly wrong.
    
    I don’t have that trust with Bush/Cheney. And I certainly don’t have that trust with Trump.
    
    I just don’t understand how a smart and caring person like you, dienne, cannot understand the difference.
    
    LikeLike
GregB says:

September 15, 2017 at 5:13 pm

OK, I played your game. When I type in cli in the All category I get, in order, cliff bars, clipboard, clipboard with storage, clip on fan, cliff builder protein bars, clif bars, clicker, and clippers. When I type in cli in the Movies & TV category I get clint eastwood movies, clint eastwood, clint eastwood movies dvd, cliffhanger dvd, cliff eastwood collection, cliff eastwood western collection, cliffhanger, cliffhanger blu ray, clifford and click. When I type in cli in Books I get clinton, clive cussler new releases 2017, clinton what happened, clifford the big red dog, clive cussler, click clack moo, clive cussler books, click clack moo cows that type, clifford the big red dog books, and climate of hope. When I type in hi into the Books category, I get hillary clinton book, hillbilly elegy, hillary clinton what happened, hillary clinton, hidden figures, hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, hilary clinton what happened, historical fiction best sellers, hillbilly elegy paperback, and his needs her needs. I am shocked that P.G. Wodehouse’s “The Clicking of Cuthbert” did not show up on the first page because it is a really funny collection of short stories. Guess the fix was in. Interestingly, when I type in k, the first thing that comes up is katy tur, not Hillary Clinton! Maybe that has something to do with what’s topping the bestseller lists, both in the case of Katy Tur and Hillary Clinton. I am, however, pleased that when I typed in cli in CDs & Vinyl that Clifford Brown came up first. He blew mean trumpet and his influence has long been underrated.

LikeLike

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 5:31 pm
  
  Greg,
  
  I went to Amazon, typed in “Hillary” and the first thing that popped up was a hate-Hilary book by rightwinger D’Nesh DeSouza https://www.amazon.com/Hillarys-America-Secret-History-Democratic/dp/1621573478?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - GregB says:
    
    September 15, 2017 at 5:48 pm
    
    I won’t get into detail, but the ratings and comments on that book (Yecch, I’ll never forgive you for leading me to it) support all the assertions I made above.
    
    LikeLike
Laura H. Chapman says:

September 15, 2017 at 5:29 pm

Dienne has this right about the here and now, and the mid-term elections.

“We will keep getting Trump and his ilk until the Democrats offer something better.

Nothing I get from the Democratic party in Ohio offers anything but an anti-Trump pitch. Not an ounce of discussion of public education is a state that is leading the race for the most corruption in the charter industry.

LikeLike

Reply
- GregB says:
  
  September 15, 2017 at 5:40 pm
  
  I’ll second that emotion on the Ohio Democratic Party. Never have I seen such a collection of stumbling, bumbling political inbreeding. They remind me of something I did in college. I was named the head of the College Republicans, which was weakly based on the fact that I worked for John Anderson and he was technically a Republican. I called no meetings, ignored local campaigns, and after it died, it took them years after I graduated to resurrect it. I’m wondering of the ODP studied my playbook.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
jscheidell says:

September 16, 2017 at 5:16 pm

Diane,

It was funny – the best part of the interview was when Maddow interrupted the session for a video of a baby panda sneezing.

LikeLike

Reply