You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

On the note of Hillary and trust, this is a very good long post in defense of Hillary, and it looks into why Hillary is hated. And yes, it's because of sexism. In short, Hillary's poll numbers go up when she's not running for an office, but go down while she is running for any higher office because people punish her for being a woman with ambition. But the article's great and goes into a lot of detail, so just read it:

Oh, and as for trust? The first mention of "Hillary as liar" that the author found was an editorial written in 1996 by right-winger William Safire. None of his claims were in any way true, but the Republicans loved it and immediately started repeating that lie, and 20 years of that Republican repetition have convinced even some liberals that she has a truth problem that does not exist in reality. This shows the power of the right-wing PR machine!

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/1...-ever-seen

Anyway, Bernie has come out and said he's voting for Clinton. He wasn't giving his resounding support for her, but rather saying basically "don't let Trump win". I suppose next you'll be saying you're mad at Bernie for not fawning over Clinton and singing her praises to the masses like he's supposed to.

It's a step, but he still has not conceded or endorsed her, so it's kind of a half step forward, without doing all of what's needed. Better than nothing though, sure.

The issue is one of conflicting interests. It's a matter of trust. Yes, she may not actually be doing anything for these groups giving her money, but I'm less inclined to trust someone taking money from these groups than I am someone who is not taking that money.

By now, you should be aware enough to realize money doesn't change hands like that for no reason. It's suspect, and worth doubting. Try applying that sort of blind trust in the face of suspicious activity to other authorities. Republicans are taking money from gun rights lobbyists. Are you going to tell me "sure, but there's no proof that they are basing their policies on those funds"? No, of course not. It's a conflict of interest. It's the same reason judges can't accept "gifts" from people who's cases they are or might preside over. Yes, you COULD say "this gift will have no effect on my ruling", but you know very well that's naive. If Clinton decides NOT to favor these major companies with policies they like, if she goes against them, she won't be getting their money in her second term election. She "owes" them, in a way Bernie does not. It doesn't matter that no concrete deal was made, the seeds have been sown.

This is holding Hillary to a standard that no major Presidential candidate has ever been held to before. Surely you can see the gender-based double standard in that fact! (See link above also.)

Collecting money from people is not in and of itself suspicious, it's trying to win an election! There is only one way to win in this country: raise a lot of money. A LOT of money. In 2012 at least a billion dollars were spent for example, between both sides. You cannot pay all of those bills from $27 donations from average people. And yes, sometimes this leads to corruption, to people doing things for their donors that they shouldn't, but blaming all for the actions of some is wrong, and without MASSIVE campaign finance reform it is the only way to run political campaigns in this country. I'd love to see that reform, money in politics is one of the biggest problems in hour democracy this side of gerrymandering, but for now, all we can do is take money from those who want to help defeat the worse party. And as I pointed out last time donors do not always get what they want, as you see with Obama taking lots of money from people in banks, and then passing decently good new banking regulations. Just because you take money from people does not mean you're obligated to support them, and politicians often do things some of their donors oppose. Yes, the powerful do have influence and there is no way to entirely negate that (money talks; the concept of all people having equal influence on politicians seems impossible), but crying corruption with ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF is wrong! And there isn't just no proof, there is the opposite, such as that Politifact determined that Hillary was the most truthful candidate running for president this cycle. You're making impossible demands solely to tear down Hillary, and political parties in general. (And no, I do not thing Bernie is some innocent, somehow unchanged by his over 25 years as an elected representative and senator in Washington. Yeah, right.)

If Clinton decides NOT to favor these major companies with policies they like, if she goes against them, she won't be getting their money in her second term election.

This is not true. When deciding to give money, the thought process is similar to when you choose how to vote -- you look at the candidates, and support the best one. Liberal bankers who dislike some strict new banking rule would almost certainly still financially support the Democratic candidate because the Republicans would be far, far worse.

Or at the article I linked earlier in this post says it:

3) Money — OK let’s talk about her money. Hillary has a lot of it. And she has earned most of it through well-paid speaking fees. And the idea of getting paid $200,000 or more for a single speech seems so ludicrous to many people that they assume that it simply must be some form of bribery. But the truth is that there is a large, well-established and extremely lucrative industry for speaking and appearance fees. And within that industry many celebrities, sports stars, business leaders and former politicians get paid very well. At her most popular for example, Paris Hilton was being paid as much as $750,000 just to make an appearance. Kylie Jenner was once paid over $100,000 to go to her own birthday party, and to this day Vanilla Ice gets $15,000 simply to show up with his hat turned sideways.

And let’s talk about the more cerebral cousin of the appearance agreement, which is the speaking engagement. Is $200k really that unusual? In fact “All American Speakers”, the agency that represents Clinton, currently represents 135 people whose MINIMUM speaking fee is $200,000. Some of the luminaries that get paid this much include: Guy Fieri, Ang Lee, Carla Delevingne, Chelsea Handler, Elon Musk, Mehmet Oz, Michael Phelps, Nate Berkus, and “Larry the Cable Guy”. And no that last one is not a joke. And if you drop the speaking fee to $100k, the number of people they represent jumps to over 500. At $50,000 the number jumps to over 1,200. And All American Speakers are obviously not the only agency that represents speakers. So there are in fact thousands of people getting paid this kind of money to give a speech.

For millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills, the very idea that someone can make $100,000 or more for just giving a speech or hanging out at a Vegas nightclub is obscene. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Hillary didn’t invent the speaking engagement industry, and she isn’t anywhere near the first person to make a lot of money from it. And while her fees are in the upper range of what speakers make, neither they nor the total amount of money she has made are unusual. It’s just unusual FOR A WOMAN.

And yes, I’m back on that, because I feel compelled to point out that before he ran for President in 2007, Rudy Giuliani was making about $700,000 a month in speaking fees with an average of $270k per speech. It’s estimated that in the 5 years before his run he earned as much as $40 million in speaking fees. Nobody cared, no accusations of impropriety were made, and there was almost no media interest. So why did Giuliani get a pass, while Hillary stands accused of inherent corruption for making less money doing the same thing?

And speaking of corruption, after leaving the Florida governor’s office Jeb Bush made millions of dollars in paid speeches. This includes large sums he collected from a South Korean metals company that reaped over a BILLION dollars in contracts from his brother’s presidential administration. Speaking to an Indian newspaper about this type of thing Bush said, “This is the life of being the brother of the president.” Do you remember reading all about that while Jeb was running for President? I didn’t think so. Jeb got a pass too.

So if this discussion is really about money in politics that’s fine. But I’m going to need someone to explain to me why we only seem to focus on it when the person making the money has a vagina.

4) Wall Street — First things first. No, the majority of the money Clinton has made from speaking fees did not come from Wall Street. In fact it’s not even close. She has given nearly 100 paid speeches since leaving the State Dept., and only 8 were to “Wall Street” banks. Nearly all of her speeches were to organizations like American Camping Association, Ebay, Cisco, Xerox, Cardiovascular Research Foundation, United Fresh Produce Association, International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association, California Medial Association, A&E Television Networks, Massachusetts Conference for Women, U.S. Green Building Council, National Association of Realtors, American Society of Travel Agents, Gap, National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, etc.

Corporations and Associations pay large fees for important speakers all of the time. And Hillary got booked fairly often because she is interesting and popular, and because there’s a great deal of status attached to having her speak at an event. Ignoring all of this however, a large contingent of anti-Hillary people continue to insist that all speaker’s fees from Wall Street banks were bribes, and that because of this they “own” her. But by that logic shouldn’t we all be asking what the fuck the American Camping Association is up to?

Also, with the possible exception of one speech given to Deutsche Bank, all of Hillary’s 8 speeches to Wall Street were for a speaking fee of $225,000. That does not even break the top 20 of her highest paid speeches. For example she received over $275,000 each in three speeches she gave to The Vancouver Board of Trade, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and Canada 2020. So apparently Canadians also “own” her. And I don’t know what those nefarious Canadians are up to, but it probably has something to do with goddamn poutine. Which would really piss me off except I just remembered that I kind of like poutine so never mind.

Listen, does Wall Street have influence with Hillary? Grow up, of course they do. Wall Street is one of the key engines of the American economy, and as such has enormous influence with everyone. EVERYONE. Don’t kid yourself on that point. And aside from anything else, she was a 2-term Senator of New York, and this made Wall Street an important corporate member of her constituency. The issue is not influence. The issue is whether or not paid speeches and campaign donations alone are proof of corruption. And they’re not. And the last time I checked there was an important difference between association and guilt, between proof and slander.

And again: why is Hillary being held to a standard that never appears to be applied to her male counterparts? Am I not supposed to notice that a media frenzy has been aimed at Hillary Clinton for accepting speaking fees of $225,000 while Donald Trump has been paid $1.5 MILLION on numerous occasions with hardly a word said about it? Am I supposed to not notice that we are now in an election season in which Donald Trump, a proud scam artist whose involvement in “Trump University” alone is being defined by the New York Attorney General as “straight-up fraud”, is regularly calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and getting away with it?

What the actual fuck is going on here? What’s going on is what we all know, but mostly don’t want to admit: presidential campaigns favor men, and the men who campaign in them are rewarded for those traits perceived as being “manly” - physical size, charisma, forceful personality, assertiveness, boldness and volume. Women who evince those same traits however are usually punished rather than rewarded, and a lot of the negativity aimed at Hillary over the years, especially when she is seeking office, has been due to these underlying biases. There is simply no question that Hillary has for years been on the business end of an unrelenting double standard. And her battle with societal sexism isn’t going to stop because of her success anymore than Obama’s battle with racism stopped once he was elected. These are generational issues, and we are who we are.