Clinton Foundation slushfund

Why Trump Winning the Republican Nomination is Good for American Democracy

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While it might sound strange, a coronation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will mark the end of the party as we know it. There’s been a lot written about the “Sanders surge,” with much of it revolving around Hillary Clinton’s extreme personal weakness as a candidate. While this is indisputable, it’s also a convenient way for the status quo to exempt itself from fault and discount genuine grassroots anger. I’m of the view that Sanders’ support is more about people liking him than them disliking Hillary, particularly when it comes to registered Democrats. He’s not merely seen as the “least bad choice.” People really do like him.

The Sanders appeal is twofold. He is seen as unusually honest and consistent for someone who’s held elected office for much of his life, plus he advocates a refreshingly anti-establishment view on core issues that matter to an increasing number of Americans. These include militarism, Wall Street bailouts, a two-tiered justice system, the prohibitive cost of college education, healthcare insecurity and a “rigged economy.” While Hillary is being forced to pay lip service to these issues, everybody knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. She means it less than Obama meant it in 2008, and Obama really didn’t mean it.

– From the post: It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have done America a great deal of good. By running from the political fringes, they have shattered status quo taboos and exposed the two party political system for the monumental sham it is.

Whether you like either one of them is irrelevant. The truth about how undemocratic our elections actually are, and the disturbing overlap when it comes to establishment Republicans and Democrats needed exposing, and that’s exactly what’s happened this election season. Personally, I wanted to see Trump vs. Sanders in the general election. I think the public deserved two non-mainstream choices for President for once in their lives, and such a match up would have provided two distinct non status quo visions for the future. That said, Trump vs. Clinton is the second best option.

The process of awakening that’s been happening across the electorate this campaign season is in large part due to the presence of Trump and Sanders, and this awakening is far more important than who wins in November. As Edward Snowden was quoted saying in yesterday’s piece, A Whistleblower Manifesto:

Fundamentally, in an open society, change has to flow from the bottom to the top.

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Who’s the Real Progressive? A Side by Side Comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s Lifetime Donors

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This morning, I came across a tweet that exemplified more than anything else the incredible chasm between genuine progressive Bernie Sanders and the oligarch-coddling, unimaginably corrupt status quo crony, Hillary Clinton. Here’s the tweet:

Now here are the same images in a larger size. Note, these are the career donor figures for these two individuals.

First Hillary:

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“We Came, We Saw, He Died” – Revisiting the Incredible Disaster That Is Libya

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In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately after taking power, the rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings, in addition to torturing, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of suspected Qaddafi supporters. The rebels also expelled 30,000 mostly black residents from the town of Tawergha and burned or looted their homes and shops, on the grounds that some of them supposedly had been mercenaries. Six months after the war, Human Rights Watch declared that the abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.”


As a consequence of such pervasive violence, the UN estimates that roughly 400,000 Libyans have fled their homes, a quarter of whom have left the country altogether. 


– From the post: The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya

Shortly after the NATO-led war which ousted Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ebulliently boasted with a characteristic sociopathic giddiness, the following on network television:

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