Hillary and Bill earned every penny they have.

[woo me with science]

124. You say, "fair point," yet your next sentence accuses me of "hurling personal insults at Democrats."

It's a baseless accusation that reflects on your own conduct here rather than mine. You are the only one in this conversation who has repeatedly tried to make it personal, and you continue to do so. It is revelatory as to your lack of argument.

Your comments about Haiti here are similarly nonresponsive. More to the point, they are weirdly and dishonestly avoidant of the longstanding and continuing history of US corporate and military domination and exploitation of Haiti. You opine about poverty in Haiti "even before the earthquake," as though the earthquake, rather than decades of military and political manipulation, prevention of any development of independence through denial of sovereignty, installation of corporate goals rather than goals for Haitians, and coup/installation of government to enable theft and stripping by corporations of the country's own resources were not at fault. You ignore the more recent massive privatization forced on Haiti by the US and its allies after the 2004 coup and the neoliberal "restructuring programs" that have deepened poverty for Haitians through familiar Shock Doctrine measures like making IMF loans conditional on the implementation of vicious neoliberal wage and social policies.

In short, you deal with the accusation of US corporate exploitation of Haiti by utterly ignoring it and adding baseless personal attacks to distract from the fact you are ignoring it.

Corporate exploitation of Haiti, resulting in the deaths of countless Haitians and unfathomable misery over the decades, has been and remains a national shame for the US. More importantly, it serves as a deadly warning of what happens to countries and human beings when governments are subverted for corporate interests rather than human interests.

Decades and decades ago, the US took control of Haiti by force and changed its Constitution to allow corporations to seize the land of the Haitian people. Now we're facing relentless attempts by corporate-bought politicians to dismantle our own Constitutional protections and grow the power of corporations over our lives through predatory "trade agreements" that will overrule the will of the people on issues ranging from environmental regulation to worker protections.

Americans have largely been insulated from the effects of US corporate policy all over the world. We mostly grew up believing that hunger and privation just happen, usually over there somewhere, to people who don't look like us and for reasons that are never quite clear. But there are reasons. Corporations don't operate on morality. For them, there is no currency in a government, "of, by, and for the people." The only consideration is profit.

The global corporatists are just getting started here. But they have already impoverished and killed masses of human beings all over the world, for profit. We are not special to them.

We cannot afford four more years of allowing corporatists to grow their power in Washington. We can't afford continued assaults on our Constitutional protections and the growth of this surveillance state. We can't afford more austerity and privatization and protection of banks over people. And we can't afford Hillary's TPP.