Democratic Elector in Washington State Claims He May Not Vote For Clinton in Electoral College

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Well this is interesting.

The Hill reports:

A Democratic elector in Washington says that if his party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, wins the state, he may shirk his duty to cast his vote for her in the Electoral College.

“How can I say and do and be who I am and then cast a vote for somebody that’s the same as [GOP nominee Donald] Trump?” Robert Satiacum Jr. asked Politico in an interview published Wednesday.

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Obama Administration Delays Release of Hillary Clinton TPP Emails Until After the Election

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And with Singapore and a growing list of other countries on both sides of the Pacific, we are making progress toward finalizing a far-reaching new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The so-called TPP will lower barriers, raise standards, and drive long-term growth across the region. It will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and establish strong protections for workers and the environment. Better jobs with higher wages and safer working conditions, including for women, migrant workers and others too often in the past excluded from the formal economy will help build Asia’s middle class and rebalance the global economy. Canada and Mexico have already joined the original TPP partners. We continue to consult with Japan. And we are offering to assist with capacity building, so that every country in ASEAN can eventually join. We welcome the interest of any nation willing to meet 21st century standards as embodied in the TPP, including China.

– Hillary Clinton, November 2012

You’d think the American pubic deserves to have access to this information before the election.

Barack Obama disagrees.

From the International Business Times:

Trade is a hot issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. But correspondence from Hillary Clinton and her top State Department aides about a controversial 12-nation trade deal will not be available for public review — at least not until after the election. The Obama administration abruptly blocked the release of Clinton’s State Department correspondence about the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), after first saying it expected to produce the emails this spring.

If you want your TPP-related emails, you can have your TPP-related emails.

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Weapons Headed to Libya – Hillary Clinton’s Interventionist Disaster Continues to Spiral Out of Control

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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

Earlier today, The Guardian published an article detailing how foreign leaders were gathering in Vienna to discuss how to address the humanitarian disaster/ISIS haven they themselves created in Libya. As usual, the key agenda item revolved around whether the U.S. and its allies should ship weapons into the arena to inspire, you know, freedom and democracy.

Reading the piece leaves you with a clear sense of what a quagmire it really is. For example:

Leading foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East are to meet in Vienna on Monday under the joint chairmanship of the US and Italy to discuss how to bolster support for the UN-backed Libyan government in the face of deepening splits in the country over political legitimacy, oil resources and Islamic State.

Special forces from the US, UK, France and Italy are operating in various parts of Libya, sometimes backing different military forces and hindering efforts to reunite Libyan politics behind the UN government of Fayez al-Sarraj.

Remember this paragraph for later.

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Blast From the Past – Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders on Panama

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Unlike most politicians, Bernie Sanders becomes increasingly impressive the more you learn about him. Forget for a moment whether you think the tax dodging strategies popularized by the Panama Papers are ethical or not, it’s important to note that Bernie Sanders publicly warned about an expansion in such behavior all the way back in 2011. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pushed for legislation that made such controversial strategies easier, under the guise of “free trade” with Panama.

First, here’s what Senator Sanders had to say on the matter in 2011:

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