Neoconservatives

It Is Time For Other Democrats To Start Presidential Campaigns!

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It has been a foregone conclusion to many political observers that former First Lady, former New York Senator, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going to announce for President, and based on polls, is a runaway winner of the nomination, and likely to be our first woman President, and to be our 45th President of the United States!

It has never been a good omen that other Democrats have been reluctant to challenge Hillary Clinton, and are, seemingly, afraid to “test the waters” and announce their own candidacies.

Never in American history, except often when a sitting President or sitting Vice President is running for President, have we seen so many potential party challengers in either party simply stay on the sidelines, and of course, there have been challenges to sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents that make them sharper and insure they are better candidates. Such cases as Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, George H. W. Bush in 1988, and Al Gore in 2000 have run better races because of challengers. Presidents such as Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush have had to work harder to gain a nomination for the next term, and they all failed to be elected, but this was part of the political game.

So why anyone, including Hillary Clinton, should expect to have no rivals, is outlandish, and not good for the Democratic Party or democracy.

And frankly, after Hillary Clinton’s poor, unacceptable explanation on her emails on Tuesday, refusing to hand over the server of her email, eliminating thousands of emails by her own decision claiming privacy rights, and basically taking a hard stand on the whole matter, there is a clear cut reason for challengers to her nomination for President. Hillary Clinton has opened up a major wound in her candidacy, and it will not go away, and now it seems highly likely she is a flawed candidate in a major way, and is not anywhere near insured that she could carry enough states and electoral votes to become our 45th President.

The Democratic Party and the nation NEED challengers, instead of putting all their “eggs in one basket”, gambling that Hillary Clinton will be able to overcome the old Clinton image of the 1990s, of cover ups, of deceptions, of victimization claims, of stalling tactics, of creating legal issues, that so soured many people about the Bill Clinton Presidency.

Yes, Hillary is brilliant, and qualified, and talented, and intelligent, but she is not the only man or woman who is such, but to put the future of the Democratic Party in her hands is a tremendous gamble, and the country needs a Democratic President more than they need Hillary Clinton herself!

Added to her stubbornness and secrecy about the emails is her stated refusal to return contributions to the Clinton Foundation from leaders and citizens of nations, many in the Middle East, who abuse women and deny them equal rights, a subject Hillary Clinton is well known for advocating since her time as First Lady, attending the conference in Beijing, China in 1995, and speaking up for equality and fairness for women around the globe. But now, suddenly, that issue is on the back burner, and the millions in contributions are more important, and that shows that, having become wealthy, and having tons of money in the foundation as well, that Hillary Clinton has lost her sense of values and principles, and just wants to be President, because she wants to be President, as Ted Kennedy wanted to be President in 1980, when he challenged President Jimmy Carter, but had no real agenda other than wanting to occupy the Oval Office!

Hillary Clinton is not entitled to be President, any more than any other candidate, but for the good future of the party and the American people, it is time for other Democrats to come out of the woodwork and declare their candidacies, and fight hard for the nomination, and save the American people from a horrific set of alternatives for President in the Republican Party.

At this point, Hillary Clinton could take down the Democratic Party and the nation, crashing in defeat, and as a result, leading to a GOP Supreme Court that would last for the next 30 years; and a repeal of much of the good programs of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society, and beyond!

We could see the good work done in domestic affairs by Presidents of both parties, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, destroyed by a right wing Congress, a right wing President, and a right wing Supreme Court.

We could also see the “neoncons” being triumphant, and taking us into more foreign wars, particularly in the Middle East, and leading to the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of American men and women, sent to fight by a burgeoning defense industry that would make record war profits!

And we might see the end of any sense of what is right and wrong about women’s rights, minority group rights, gay rights, labor rights, and environmental rights.

The nation’s future is more important than what happens to Hillary Clinton, as she has had a stellar career in so many ways, but that does not mean that she is automatically entitled to become our next Commander in Chief!

And if the next President is not a woman, so what? That will come in time, but should not be the crucial factor in selecting the next President of the United States!

So, Democratic Presidential “wannabes”, come out of the shadow, show courage, and announce for the Presidency, as time is afleeting!

The Inevitability Of Hillary Clinton Is No Longer Active! Doubts Are Rising!

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It has been pointed out that any candidate for President who is ahead in public opinion polls in the second year of a Presidential term has never been elected President, since the age of polling became active after World War II.

If it was, Thomas E. Dewey, Robert Taft, George Romney, Edmund Muskie, Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton would have served in the Presidency after elections in 1948, 1952, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1992, 2000, and 2008.

Instead, we had Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama!

So now it is clear that the inevitability of Hillary Clinton as our 45th President is far from certain, due to various factors!

Hillary Clinton is seen as too close to Wall Street billionaires and millionaires, and too close friendships with major corporations, while mouthing the support of overcoming income inequities.

Hillary Clinton is seen as a “hawk” in foreign policy, even a neoconservative to many, having backed the Iraq War and coming across as much more hardline than many Democrats on recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Hillary Clinton has supported the Patriot Act and National Security Agency surveillance and spying.

Hillary Clinton has not been a strong supporter on environmental issues, particularly in supporting fracking.

Hillary Clinton has come across as secretive, and now has the new scandal of having all emails being private, rather than on government emails while Secretary of State for four years.

Hillary Clinton has also allowed foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, including Arab countries in the Middle East, not a wise or thoughtful idea.

Hillary Clinton has the history of earlier questioning of her ethics, both as First Lady and as Senator and Secretary of State, and many see her marriage to Bill Clinton as a sham, designed to promote her insatiable desire to be the first woman President of the United States.

Senator Elizabeth Warren And Senator Rand Paul Gaining Attention In 2016 Presidential Race!

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Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul are gaining a lot of attention for the 2016 Presidential race with their recent speeches and campaigning.

Warren, a freshman Senator, who gained fame from her campaign for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has stirred the imagination of left wing Democrats, who are unhappy with the comparatively centrist campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Warren has made issues of unemployment compensation, raising the minimum wage, attacking Wall Street, and calling for revising the college student loan system, which has effectively enslaved millions of students in unending college loan debt, due to high interest rates.

She comes across as folksy, not bad for a former Harvard professor, and has gained large audiences in red states such as Kentucky and West Virginia, where she has campaigned for candidates Alison Lungergan Grimes and Natalie Tennant for Senate seats. Remember, however, that she was born and lived for years in Oklahoma.

She is a new face, in the sense of national exposure, but only two years younger than Hillary Clinton.

Paul, the son of former Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, has gained attention by his attack on Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have both called for returning troops to Iraq. Paul makes it clear that America should not return to involvement in Iraq, and he seems to have the American people on his side, based on public opinion polls. He comes across as principled, while neocons attack him as isolationist, which he denies.

It is still hard to imagine either Warren or Paul gaining the nominations of their parties for 2016, but anything is possible, and they are certainly adding a lot of interest into the race!

Cocky, Arrogant, Smug, Smirker Bill Kristol Gets Comeuppance On THIS WEEK On ABC News!

Ronald 1 Comment

Bill Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard, one of the leading conservative journals of opinion, and a leading Neoconservative, who advocated intervention in Iraq a decade ago, is always willing to promote US military intervention all over the world, as long as he does not, himself, have skin in the game.

A true “chicken hawk,” Kristol is one of the most obnoxious of all necons, being extremely cocky, arrogant, smug, and a smirker with an attitude that he knows it all. Watching him makes one wish he could wipe the smirk off his face!

On ABC’s THIS WEEK on Sunday, Kristol finally got his comeuppance, when Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the publisher of The Nation,which is one of the leading progressive-liberal journals of opinion, and Matthew Dowd, who was an aide to President George W. Bush, both went on the attack against Kristol and other necons, and effectively shut him up, although it is clear Kristol does not wish to listen or to learn, as he has all the answers, with his intellectual snobbery!

Vanden Heuvel suggested that if Kristol really believed in further military intervention in the Middle East, that he enlist in the military, and put his own skin in the game, to which Kristol had no answer.

It is amazing how many necons, including the most infamous, former Vice President Dick Cheney, never served in the military, but are only too willing to send the sons and daughters of others to war!

Foreign Policy And The Republican Party: Time For Jon Huntsman, NOT Rand Paul Nor Dick Cheney Viewpoint!

Ronald 1 Comment

Foreign policy is tearing the Republican Party into factions, nothing really new, as the same situation arose in the time of World War II and the Cold War.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is calling for a return to military options in the Iraq mess, with much of the nation being take over by Sunni Muslims, establishing Sharia Law and slaughtering Shiite Muslims, and also endangering Iraq’s neighbors, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and alarming Shiite Iran.

This whole mess was caused by the US intervention in Iraq in 2003, based on false premises promoted by Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives, who want a similar intervention now to overcome ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), a group even rejected by Al Qaeda as too violent and extremist!

This is a nightmare in the making, and also threatens Israel, and is bound to lead to a wider war in the Middle East very soon, as it is believed ISIS is not content to gain control of Iraq.

So along comes Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, often called an isolationist, who is against any intervention in the Middle East, and blames the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney administration for the present mess, rather than Barack Obama for having withdrawn all military forces at the end of 2011. But Rand Paul is seen by many as having no clue to foreign policy issues.

So one might wonder: Where can Republicans turn to for a rational, reasonable, intelligent foreign policy, not based on the advice of neoconservatives and Dick Cheney, but also not isolationist like Rand Paul?

The answer is former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who has the ONLY extensive foreign policy experience of any potential GOP nominee for President in 2016. No one is paying attention, because Huntsman is seen as not conservative enough, not Tea Party backed, not sufficiently anti Obama.

The only hope for the Republicans in 2016, however, is for them to overcome their divisions, and unite around Jon Huntsman as the only legitimate nominee, who is sensible, sane, and also able to deal with “real world” situations in the world, without the extreme reaction of the neoconservatives and Dick Cheney, or the isolationism of Rand Paul!

But will the GOP be smart enough to realize this? The betting odds are, sadly for them, and for the nation, NO!

The Contrast Of Dick Cheney And Joe Biden

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The last two Vice Presidents of the United States are a study in massive contrasts!

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden were qualified to become a heartbeat away from the Presidency when they took office.

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden displayed basic competency in their roles as Vice President. They were not Dan Quayle, for instance, or a similar situation if Sarah Palin had ever become Vice President!

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden are highly intelligent and, in many ways, were more ready to become President, based on their experience, than their “bosses”, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

But that is the extent of how Dick Cheney and Joe Biden are to be compared positively!

Dick Cheney has proved to be the most controversial former Vice President in modern history, far surpassing the outspokenness of John C. Calhoun, after serving under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s, and Henry A. Wallace, after serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early 1940s!

Neither Calhoun nor Wallace nor any other former Vice President has ever continued to be the subject of so much attention, all of it showing Cheney constantly on the attack against President Obama, and using the psychological idea of “transference” to blame Obama for all of the faults of the Bush-Cheney Administration over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Cheney and his daughter Liz are clearly out to destroy Barack Obama’s ability to govern, and Cheney’s neoconservative viewpoint is being repudiated by the American people, but the Cheneys are tone deaf!

The fact that Cheney was a “chicken hawk”, who avoided military service in the 1960s, but is only too willing to use military force everywhere in the world without limits, and that he has enriched himself through his connections with Halliburton, one of the major war profits corporations, and does not apologize one iota for it, is both hypocritical and infuriating, as Cheney has no shame!

The man is seen by many as a war criminal, who was totally wrong in his assessment of the Iraq War, but will not apologize for it, and refuses to go into the woodwork. He is defiant in every way possible, and sees no contradictions in his statements and the truth, as even Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel pointed out to him this week, as Cheney advocates a military intervention back into Iraq!

One would think that Cheney would go off into the sunset and shut his mouth, but just the opposite is occurring, and his daughter Liz is determined, despite her withdrawal from the Wyoming Senate race this year, to be a factor, and an inheritor of her father’s ideas and principles, whatever they might seem to be to others!

Dick Cheney also comes across as forbidding in personality, unpleasant, arrogant, harsh, and in fact so much so, that even his “boss”, George W. Bush, started to back away from contact with him in the second term.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been very supportive of Barack Obama all the way, and has shown his winning personality and his sincerity and genuine nature, and is now being shown to have been correct in his assessment years ago that the best solution for the Iraq mess is a division into three nations, each based on ethnic lines, not all that different than the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 1990s into separate nations.

Joe Biden has been, in so many ways, a positive force in the Vice Presidency, while Dick Cheney will, in the long run, as well as already in the short run, be seen as a negative force!

The “Man Up!” Attack Against Barack Obama In Foreign Policy Totally Outrageous!

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The Republican Party and conservatives will stop at nothing to attack Barack Obama in every way possible, including the accusation that he is weak in foreign policy, and that he needs to “man up!”, in relation to Vladamir Putin and the Ukraine Crisis; and also the problems with the Syrian Civil War and the Iran Nuclear negotiations.

If you left it up to “neocons”, neoconservatives who took us into the wrong headed Iraq War, we would be going to war against Russia, sending ground troops in Syria, and bombing Iran! Meanwhile, most of this group have never been in the military, have never fought under war conditions, but are very willing to send young men and women into harm’s way, and have little concern about what happens to them when they come home from war, physically or psychologically harmed, and cannot gain adequate services from the Department of Veterans Affairs!

This is total insanity, that a President who took out Osama Bin Laden, and has been steadfast in his willingness to use whatever means necessary to fight terrorism and Al Qaeda, is accused of being weak, refusing to get us involved in more ground wars that cannot be won in realistic terms!

Why is it that we never heard “Man Up!” toward the following Presidents and foreign policy crises:

Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Czechoslovakian Crisis of 1968
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Pueblo Crisis with North Korea in 1968
Ronald Reagan and the Withdrawal of Marines from Lebanon after the Beirut Marine Barrack Bombing in 1983
George W. Bush and the Georgian Crisis of 2008

Why is it that things are different now, when all Presidents have challenges similar to what Obama faces, but are treated with more respect and deference? I think the answer is simple, and needs not to be said, but understood to be reality!

Liz Cheney Vs. Rand Paul, And The Rachel Maddow “Connection” On Iraq War

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Fox News commentator Liz Cheney, formerly a Senate candidate from Wyoming, who withdrew from the race due to poor polling numbers, is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

She is as much a nightmare as her infamous father, who is the hawk of all hawks, the ultimate neoconservative, who manipulated us by lies to enter the war against Iraq, a losing war, that emboldened the more dangerous neighbor, Iran, over the past eleven years.

Liz Cheney defends her father while attacking Tea Party Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has denounced the Iraq War as an unwise and mistaken action.

But Liz Cheney has claimed that Rand Paul is mouthing the main talking points of MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, who has produced a documentary, already shown on that channel, denouncing the war, and showing how it was based on lies and deception at the cost of 4,400 American lies and over 30,000 wounded, many seriously, while Cheney enriched himself immensely through his Haliburton connections.

The idea that Rand Paul has, somehow, been working alongside Rachel Maddow is laughable, as she has been a major critic of his libertarianism and other views, and is no “friend” of Rand, or Ron Paul, his dad and the former Texas Congressman.

This is a sign of the splits developing in the GOP, not only the Cheneys and other neoconservatives (such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton) against Rand Paul, a likely frontrunner for the Presidential nomination in 2016; but also the hard line right wingers against former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his approach to the immigration issue, particularly undocumented immigrants.

Anyone who would deny the Rachel Maddow expose against Cheney and others who prosecuted the Iraq War on false pretenses is a fool, and the words to describe Liz Cheney are not printable here on this blog!

John McCain, Lindsey Graham, And NEOCON Hawks: Total Lunatics!

Ronald 4 Comments

Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seem ready to have America involved in another major war in Ukraine, as if we do not have enough loss of treasure and life in Iraq and Afghanistan already!

Thank goodness that McCain was not elected President in 2008, and with moron Sarah Palin by his side, a heartbeat away, as we would have been engaged with troops on the ground in Libya, Syria, and Iran, along with staying in Iraq and Afghanistan, under a man who thinks war solves issues, and that America has no limits on military spending!

Lindsey Graham is always at McCain’s side, ready to bomb and attack, while very willing to cut spending for the poor and the elderly, and it makes one wonder how he sleeps at night!

But this is the Neocons at work, destroying our budget and our unity, in their mad dash to impose America’s will, as if this is the Cold War all over again!

The fact is that they refuse to understand that Crimea is to Russia what Mexico is to us, a boundary line that we will defend at all costs. If Mexico became unreliable and a threat to America, we would intervene as Vladamir Putin has in Crimea.

It is not an issue of endorsement of Putin and Russia, but rather an issue of Crimea being their “back yard”, and there is no way that Russia will allow an unfriendly Crimea, where a majority are Russian ethnically, to be hostile to Russian interests.

This is nothing new in history, and considering the numerous examples of US intervention since World War II. some of them justified and many NOT justified, who are we to dictate to other nations on the safety of their borders?

So it is a question of reality, not morals and ethics!

Bush, Cheney, And The Iraq War: A Total Waste!

Ronald 2 Comments

The news that radical elements connected to Al Qaeda have seized and “liberated” Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities that so many of our Marines and other soldiers died for during the Iraq War, and that Iraq is back to the civil war that emerged after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, is enough to make one sick and disgusted, and to condemn the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, which took us into a war that was not ours to fight, and cost the loss of over 4,000 lives and over 30,000 wounded, many seriously!

This event, the return to instability of Iraq, in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, and the unrest in Lebanon, demonstrates that America has lost yet another war, after Vietnam, and is losing in Afghanistan.

Who benefits from this is the oil industry, and the defense industries, which enrich themselves on the corpses of dead Americans, as well as dead Iraqis and others in the Middle East.

It is clear that America cannot control what happens in the Middle East, and that the neoconservatives, who advocated engagement in Iraq, are the true traitors to the cause of what is best for America, and there is blood on their hands with the latest results of the failed war in Iraq!

And Dick Cheney is one of the biggest culprits, having enriched himself in the process, through his connections with Halliburton.

But now, thankfully, his disgraceful daughter, Liz Cheney, trying to be elected to the Senate from Wyoming, connected to the Tea Party Movement, and willing to throw her lesbian sister Mary Cheney under the bus, in her egotistical quest to become the female Dick Cheney, has bowed out of the race, well aware that she would be lucky to gain 25 percent of the vote in a primary against sitting Republican Senator Mike Enzi.

Good riddance to her and the theory of a Cheney dynasty, but so much damage has been done by Dick Cheney, who should be held accountable legally for his wrongdoings, but most certainly will avoid it, due to his massive connections to powerful interests!