NYC_SKP
NYC_SKP's JournalPlease put this in your journal and/or create a new OP.
Hillary Clinton Faces Test of Record as Women’s Advocate
Source: New York Times
MIAMI — It was supposed to be a carefully planned anniversary to mark one of the most important and widely praised moments in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career — and to remind the country, ahead of a likely 2016 presidential campaign, about her long record as a champion for the rights of women and girls.
Instead, as Mrs. Clinton commemorates her 1995 women’s rights speech in Beijing in back-to-back events in New York, she finds herself under attack for her family foundation’s acceptance of millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms.
This was not how she intended to reintroduce herself to American voters.
Mrs. Clinton’s glide path to a likely April announcement that she will seek the presidency was built around women’s issues. Advancing women has been her central life’s work, as she and her admirers say proudly; she made it a priority as secretary of state and focused on it as a philanthropist. But that focus also allowed Mrs. Clinton, who played down her gender in 2008, to frame her second attempt at the White House in what could be one way to make it special and new: as a shot at history for her and for all women.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-faces-test-of-record-aiding-women.html?_r=0
Well, it's hard to argue with someone speaking out for womens' rights without sounding very cynical, but this seems like pretty "low hanging fruit" and not the kind of work that takes very much courage.
Add to that the very real problem of perceptions and the disconnect between SOS Clinton's rhetoric and her record and some cracks begin to appear, and widen.
I'm known to be a Clinton detractor around her, I'm more of a Jerry Brown Liz Warren kind of Progressive, but I feel that the former SOS is calculatingly exploiting womens and childrens' issues to political ends. If she becomes president, I don't doubt that she'll follow through on a lot of promises related to these issues.
But what would really take courage and really lift all of us up would be to take on the corporate interests that have kept us down.
And I just don't see that happening, ever, with her.
"Fought against electric rate cut" "Yes: criminalize flag burning" "Yes to wiretapping"
From your reply:
Co-sponsored bill to criminalize flag-burning. (Jan 2010)
Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
OpEd: Disagrees with progressives on corporatism & military. (Dec 2014)
Supports “Three Strikes” and more prison. (Aug 1994)
to name a few problems
Why not just elect a moderate Republican?
Yup! Hey, have you ever seen this: World Religions Tree? Giant graphic.
http://silenced.co/2014/10/world-religions-tree/Click on the image for the gigantic graphic, shows origins and concentric rings show time.
Thanks for your reply which made me go do a search for world religions, I was looking for a pie chart and found this.
Small version:
Well, the WSJ and NY Times have great new stories, too!
A giant global initiative, favors to corporations as Secretary of State, and a run for POTUS, it all stinks.
Family charities collected donations from companies she promoted as secretary of state
By James V. Grimaldi andRebecca Ballhaus
Feb. 19, 2015 10:30 p.m. ET
Among recent secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton was one of the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies, pushing governments to sign deals and change policies to the advantage of corporate giants such as General Electric Co. , Exxon Mobil Corp. , Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.
At the same time, those companies were among the many that gave to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public and foundation disclosures.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the presidency, she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American politics—ties forged both as secretary of state and by her family’s charitable interests. Those relationships are emerging as an issue for Mrs. Clinton’s expected presidential campaign as income disparity and other populist themes gain early attention.
Indeed, Clinton Foundation money-raising already is drawing attention. “To a lot of progressive Democrats, Clinton’s ties to corporate America are disturbing,” says Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College who once worked for congressional Republicans. Mrs. Clinton’s connections to companies, he says, “are a bonanza for opposition researchers because they enable her critics to suggest the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
more at http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clintons-complex-corporate-ties-1424403002
and
Hillary Clinton Should Ban Foreign Donors to the Clinton Global Initiative
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD FEB. 20, 2015
The Clinton Foundation has become one of the world’s major generators of charity, mobilizing global efforts to confront issues like health, climate change, economic development and equality for women and girls.
Since its inception in 2001, it has raised nearly $2 billion in cash and pledges with millions more flowing in from an impressive array of donors, including foreign governments, financial chieftains and domestic donors, many of the latter political heavyweights.
All of which underlines the need for Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her all but certified role as a Democratic presidential candidate, to reinstate the foundation’s ban against foreign contributors, who might have matters of concern to bring before a future Clinton administration. This was a restriction Mrs. Clinton worked out with the Obama administration to allay concerns of potential conflict of interest when she became secretary of state in 2009.
According to a report this week in The Wall Street Journal, the ban was dropped after Mrs. Clinton left the administration in 2013, leading to a resumption of donations from foreign governments and agencies to the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, which sponsors conferences of world leaders from government, industry and philanthropy. Donors have included the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Oman and a Canadian government agency reported to be involved in promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.
more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/hillary-clinton-should-ban-foreign-donors-to-the-clinton-global-initiative.html
And then this little spin-off is just creepy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Women_in_Hedge_Funds
.
Madison: Federalist No. 46, on the makeup of the militia:
(crossposted in Gun Control & RKBA)
This post is in response to a recent post in a protected group and serves to provide more detail and context, and is open to all members for discussion:
The inspiring post makes reference to James Madison Federalist No. 46 and is titled: Why Second Amendment absolutists are crazy wrong in which the OP notes:
"From this it seems pretty clear that the militia envisioned by Hamilton was a truly well regulated, full time, finely trained group of soldiers."
For context, here is the full text of essay (in italics), preceded by an introductory clause provide at wikipedia:
Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms.
This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men.
To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it.
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.
But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._46
It seems very unlikely that Madison refers here to half a million "truly well regulated, full time, finely trained group of soldiers" as suggested by the OP.
No, I submit that he refers to regular folks who are otherwise engaged full-time in ordinary careers and are enjoying their Second Amendment rights.
It's a great essay, filled with great lines that I would like to have highlighted, but then almost all of it would have been highlighted.
>>>> Self defense is a civil right, even in California, according to it's state constitution. It's right there in the first clause of the first article.
ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have
inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and
liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing
and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.
http://leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_1
I just gave my first heart to MiddleFingerMom.
Oh, the smiles and laughs he brought to us all....
MFM: 
And thank you, Kali, for posting on his behalf a final post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018545576
No, in some peoples' worlds they don't. Sucks to be them.
There are mysteries and there are wonders, for atheists and believers and scientists and scholars, and these sometimes have "scientific" explanations.
But these explanations often are developed to satisfy some urgent need to "explain", as if the unexplainable is uncomfortable for them.
So, they pour hours and hours writing treatises about how observable evidence exists to explain every phenomenon that can be named.
Now am I talking about science, or could it be something else?
What is it with people that everything needs an explanation?
"Religious fundamentalism... ...eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext
I've come to that same conclusion. These events, this fundamentalism, under careful scrutiny, are cases of evildoers appropriating religion to serve as cover for their despicable agenda.
As such, it's not the fault of that religion.
In fact, the religion is a victim of the misappropriation.
Peace.
"Religious fundamentalism, even before it eliminates human beings by perpetrating horrendous killings, eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext," he said.
Francis also denounced the "abominable" kidnapping and enslavement of young girls by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria and the slaughter of "unspeakable brutality" of more than 100 children by the Taliban in Pakistan.
Deeper than that, they were all puppets, unwitting tools, Hebdo and the shooters.
The most acceptable, comprehensible storyline, brave journalists killed by religion crazed extremist, belies the truths of the matter.
This wasn't about being insulted and then reacting with violence.
The killers were doing the bidding of powers not representative of Islam, and the journalists were unwitting victims in a global war of ideology and politics, with religion a side note, though elevated to a perceived central role by the media and a gullible public.
The killers and the killed were all puppets, really, and in that sense they were victims in a brutal global pissing match.
The evil folks in all of this remain nameless with the exception of those shown in the photograph below, who have found a way to exploit this tragedy.
Funny how that happens.
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