Tag: usap

“but what has Hillary ACCOMPLISHED?”

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

bicatperson:

Yeah, okay, I’m gonna do one more of these.

Because it’s an ugly sexist myth that Hillary Clinton has never gotten anything done, and Donald keeps saying it anyway, because he knows his supporters will never bother to look it up. (Also to distract from his own record of bankruptcies and lawsuits and not getting an Emmy.)

And even on the left, you get people saying “how can we trust Clinton, even if her positions sound good, how can we know if she’ll follow through?”

Gee, I dunno, maybe we can look at her forty-year track record and extrapolate from there.

(Buckle up, this one’s gonna get long.)

In fact, let’s go back farther, let’s look at Hillary Rodham the Wellesley undergrad, 1965-1969:

And then let’s talk about Hillary the law student, lawyer, and professor, with some First Lady of Arkansas thrown in:

Let’s talk about First Lady Clinton, 1993-2001:

HRC followed that by immediately getting elected Senator from New York, and then re-elected by an even wider margin, so she served from 2001-2009.

I’m just gonna focus on the 77 bills Senator Clinton sponsored or cosponsored that that became law (although she introduced more than 2000, so imagine what could’ve happened with a Democratic majority):

At this point she was also running for President, but in swept Barack Obama and charmed the hearts of America, so Clinton ended up serving as his Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

There’s no Big Flashy Showpiece you can point to from Secretary Clinton’s tenure. A lot of her diplomatic work was straight-up post-Bush-administration repair work and maintenance. A lot of it was, frankly, unsexy. No one writes breathless headlines about statistically-supported initiatives to distribute lifesaving low-pollution stoves.

Also, she didn’t singlehandedly bring peace to the Middle East. So, y’know, missed opportunity there.

But she was obviously doing something right, because Hillary Clinton had a 69% approval rating when she left the State Department in 2013.

A quick roundup of some things Secretary Clinton pulled off just fine:

People keep talking about how Clinton is, historically, one of the most unpopular presidential candidates. Those people usually don’t mention how, three years ago, she was the most popular politician in the United States.

And, look: no one is saying she’s only done good things. You can’t work this long in politics and expect to make only the right choices – follow only the strongest intelligence – back only the best policies. Reasonable people can find plenty to disagree with in her record. Plenty to criticize.

But when people try to claim she’s done nothing?

Or that she doesn’t have any consistent beliefs or principles – that her record doesn’t have constant themes that she’s been reliably standing for since the 1970s?

Hillary Clinton has made real, substantial progress for women’s rights.

Real, substantial progress for people with disabilities.

Real, substantial progress for the rights and protections of children.

Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you laugh in their faces and start listing things. I bet you anything they run out of patience before you run out of list.

❤ THIS ❤

THIS RIGHT HERE

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.

Obama’s full remarks at Howard University commencement ceremony – POLITICO (via apsies)

If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. 

(via sashayed)

We will never have another as good and smart as this man.

(via redshoesnblueskies)

tolkienteacher:

inquisitorhotpants:

politicalmachine:

americans: please learn from brexit. please realize that a “””protest vote””” could very easily lead to making PRESIDENT TRUMP a reality

There’s no such thing as a protest vote.

You don’t get to include an essay with your vote, explaining to some unknown Powers That Be why you voted – for Donald Douchebag, Dr. Anti-Vax, or Governor What’sAleppo. Your reasoning for your “protest” doesn’t matter – it’s a simple count, read as “supporting this candidate”.

American politics has three choices: A, B, or “I defer to the judgement of my fellow citizens”. If you want to change that, it has to be a ground-up change, not a top-down.

inthroughthesunroof:

I predict that the walking toupee will refuse to concede the election, say he should have won, and then refer to himself as President Trump in his new media empire. It’ll be a theme. He’ll refer to his office as the oval office and so on. No-one will be entirely sure how seriously he means it.

(I’m writing this the day after the third debate, Oct. 20. Thanks Tumblr for giving us no easy way to date posts.)

Items once provided to prisoners, such as shoes, extra blankets and toilet paper, now often must be bought from the prison commissary, run by corporations such as Keefe Supply Co. These commissaries are, in effect, company stores where prices are exorbitant and the buyers are hostage. Companies such as GTL force prisoners to pay phone rates five or six times higher than those on the outside. JPay, a money transfer service for prisoners, imposes fees as high as 25 percent. The incarcerated are increasingly being charged for electricity and room and board. This bleeds the prisoners and their families of the little income they possess. Those who run out of money are forced to take out prison loans to buy medications, cover legal and medical fees and purchase commissary items such as soap and deodorant. Debt peonage is as common among prisoners as it is among the wider public. And when prisoners are released they often owe the state thousands of dollars in debt they incurred while locked up. When they can’t pay it back they are tossed back into prison. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 75 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within five years. This keeps the perpetual cycle of neoslavery lubricated.

The New Slave Revolt (via azspot)

sonneillonv:

inquisitorhotpants:

brutereason:

I cannot bring myself to be in any way upset or angered by Hillary’s statement about having “both a public and a private position” on things. This is basic pragmatism. This is code-switching. It’s uncomfortable to hear, and it leads many (especially straight white male Americans) to feel that they’re being lied to, but it’s how our social fabric is woven.

As a woman, as a queer person, as a feminist, and as a first-generation immigrant from a multicultural family that spans three continents, I absolutely have both public and private positions on many things, political issues included. Brains are complicated and any intellectually-aware person is able to hold some slightly contradictory viewpoints–not because one is “authentic” or “genuine” and the other isn’t, but because shit is complex. There are things that go on in my brain that would horrify you, and things that go on in my brain that would horrify my family, and things that go on in my brain that would horrify my clients and coworkers. I’m allowed to choose whether or not to horrify any particular person at any particular time, and which one of my many equally-“authentic” sides to express in any given situation.

Furthermore, effective politics is in part about persuading and compromising with a variety of people with diverse viewpoints, and the language that’s most effective for one person may not be the most effective for another. The language I would use to convince a Libertarian to support a basic income is not the language I would use to convince a socialist to support a basic income. The language I use to discuss race with my parents isn’t the language I use to discuss race with my Facebook friends. Sometimes different language = slightly different nuances of opinion.

Hillary gets this better than most people, which makes her a terrifyingly effective politician. People are uncomfortable with that. That’s fine. Be uncomfortable with it. Realize that that’s how laws get passed, treaties get negotiated, and international crises get resolved.

You don’t *want* a President who seems like a cool fun chill person who says what’s on their mind all the time. Maybe that’s who you want in a friend. But I don’t, because I wear enough different hats to really understand the value of being intentional about what you express to whom and in what terms.

You don’t *want* a President who seems like a cool fun chill person who says what’s on their mind all the time. Maybe that’s who you want in a friend. But I don’t, because I wear enough different hats to really understand the value of being intentional about what you express to whom and in what terms.

Yeah, that… that line did not bother me at all.  “You can have a public opinion and a private opinion” Like DUH, that is absolutely what being a politician IS.  You have a conscience and an opinion but you serve the people.

anexperimentallife:

So if the Democrats take the Senate, Bernie Sanders becomes head of the Senate Budget Committee? Which would make him the fourth most powerful individual in the United States.

Imagine how much we could get done with a Sanders-led Senate Budget Committee under a Democratic president who has already been forced to adopt most of his domestic policy in exchange for his endorsement.

If you really want to see the change we got behind Bernie for, get Clinton into the White House, and get Democrats into the House and Senate.

(Also keep in mind that this next president gets to decide what’s constitutional and unconstitutional for the next 30-50 years, as they will most likely get to appoint at least four Supreme Court Justices.)

gypsyqueen1966:

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Remarks to the Fourth Women’s Confer.ence 1995

Michelle Obama’s speech yesterday was for Millennials what this speech by then First Lady Hillary Clinton was for late Boomers and early Gen-Xers. 

 This is the entire of Hillary’s  famous speech “Women’s Rights are Human  Rights”-  that I doubt anyone under 35 has heard. This speech by Hillary had a enormous worldwide impact that continues to this day. Young women around the world that heard this speech were inspired to fight for women’s equality in their countries. 

Yet the male Democratic party advisers who accompanied her to the conference had urged her not to say that famous quote that has given the speech it’s title, telling her it was “too extreme”. 

 This shows the progressive evolution of the Democratic party, Michelle Obama gave her speech yesterday free from any advisers telling her it was too extreme.  And Hillary gave a inspiring acceptance speech as the presidential nominee at the DNC this summer. I’ll post that too. The misogynist corporate owned news media pretty much ignored Hillary’s speech so I doubt if that many of you on here heard it.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)