I’ve finally come around, after seeing so many diaries on Daily Kos extolling her deserving qualities and virtues, to realizing that Hillary Clinton really is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known. Laugh all you want, but I can prove that she possesses each of those in abundance.
Kindness
She’s extraordinarily kind, for one thing.
“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. “So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”
Clinton said the main reason minors are coming is to escape violence in their home countries, predominantly Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Ah, yes, isn’t it sad so many parents feel they have no choice but to send their children away on a dangerous journey to the United States to escape violence in countries like Honduras. If only someone in a position of authority could have done something, anything to prevent the rise of this murderous, criminal regime which illegally ousted the democratically elected government, and replaced it with an ongoing horror show:
Honduras suffers from rampant crime and impunity for human rights abuses. The murder rate was again the highest in the world in 2014. The institutions responsible for providing public security continue to prove largely ineffective and remain marred by corruption and abuse, while efforts to reform them have made little progress.
If only someone in our government, rather than sending “$50 million in security aid” to these monsters from 2010-2014, had stood up to these gangsters and mass murderers and said this shall not pass! Alas, there was no one willing to fight for the poor people of Honduras.
A number of Clinton emails show how, starting shortly after the coup, HRC and her team shifted the deliberations on Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS) – where Zelaya could benefit from the strong support of left-wing allies throughout the region – to the San José negotiation process in Costa Rica. There, representatives of the coup regime were placed on an equal footing with representatives of Zelaya’s constitutional government, and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias (a close U.S. ally) as mediator. Unsurprisingly, the negotiation process only succeeded in one thing: keeping Zelaya out of office for the rest of his constitutional mandate.
Such a pity.
But I digress.
Bravery
I don’t want to just refer to Hillary Clinton’s self-acknowledged personal bravery under fire. That has been well documented. I’m talking about political courage to stand by what you truly believe even in the face of risking everything you care about most.
And then, of course, there is the issue of her moral courage, which she demonstrated in abundance when she defied the majority of Democratic members in Congress to grant President Bush the authority to go to war with Saddam Hussein’s cruel and evil regime in Iraq.
[A] sizable majority of Democrats in Congress voted against the authorization to invade Iraq the following year.
There were 21 Senate Democrats — along with one Republican, Lincoln Chafee, and one independent, Jim Jeffords — who voted against the war resolution, while 126 of 209 House Democrats also voted against it. Bernie Sanders, then an independent House member who caucused with the Democrats, voted with the opposition. At the time, Sanders gave a floor speech disputing the administration’s claims about Saddam’s arsenal. He not only cautioned that both American and Iraqi casualties could rise unacceptably high, but also warned “about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations.”
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, stood among the right-wing minority of Democrats in Washington.
The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time of the war authorization. Had they closed ranks and voted in opposition, the Bush administration would have been unable to launch the tragic invasion — at least not legally. Instead, Clinton and other pro-war Democrats chose to cross the aisle to side with the Republicans.
And she didn’t back down from the position that her vote on Iraq was the right one, even after the Bush administration’s dubious claims that Saddam Husein’s Iraq supported Al Qaeda and was chock full of weapons of mass destruction, just waiting to blossom into mushroom clouds over America, was proven absolutely, positively to be pure, unadulterated horsepucky.
Even many months after the Bush administration itself acknowledged that Iraq had neither WMDs nor ties to Al-Qaeda, Clinton declared in a speech at George Washington University that her support for the authorization was still “the right vote” and one that “I stand by.” Similarly, in an interview on Larry King Live in April 2004, when asked about her vote despite the absence of WMDs or al-Qaeda ties, she acknowledged, “I don’t regret giving the president authority.”
I don’t care what you say, that took guts, a true profile in courage.
Warmth
Perhaps her best quality, however, is her undisputed charm and grace, and the welcoming, compassionate way she has with ordinary people. For example, just watch her in action, taking the time to generously offer advice to this young woman:
Or how about the time she calmly and patiently dealt with adversity when confronted by an hysterical, foaming at the mouth eco-terrorist nutjob?
What grace under pressure! But she has always shown compassion and empathy for the plight of others, especially those so different from herself.
“I’m not a ‘super-predator,’ Hillary Clinton,” Williams said. “Can you apologize to black people for mass incarceration?” Williams asks while brandishing a sign that read, “We have to bring them to heel.” […]
Clinton seemed audibly and visibly irritated, saying she would answer if allowed to speak and then, even more notably, “that no one had ever asked her that before.” Then, Clinton essentially moved on with her regularly scheduled fundraising program. There was no accounting, partial or full, for her 1996 position nor how she arrived at her 2016 stance on criminal justice reform. Moving on.
It just – I don’t know – brought a tear to my eyes when Hillary, after it was finally brought to her attention, did the right thing, and apologized for calling young black youth “super predators.” I know some might say that she acted only out of political expediency, and her apology came 20 years too late considering the mass incarceration of so many people after her public support and advocacy for her Hubby’s “tough on crime” bill, but such people don’t know the Hillary Clinton I know. Her own words say it far better than I.
Clinton said she has devoted her life’s work to helping underserved children, too many of whom, she said, are in African-American communities.
“We haven’t done right by them. We need to,” she said. “We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.”
How can anyone object to that? Her life’s work – helping the most underserved children in America? It just goes to show you that Hillary Clinton really is the most …
Wonderful Human Being
on the planet.
Remember when Hillary said, “We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.” Well, the minute someone pointed out to her that some of her political contributions came from the for-profit prison industry, which has grown exponentially over the last 20 years, she cut them completely out of her life.
“When we’re dealing with a mass incarceration crisis, we don’t need private industry incentives that may contribute — or have the appearance of contributing — to over-incarceration,” campaign spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told ThinkProgress, explaining that Clinton will donate the large amount she has already received from these sources to a yet-to-be-named charity.
How great is that? Sure, she took her time reaching that decision, but to be fair, she had to balance the interests of everyone involved. You can’t just make a knee jerk reaction to every little criticism that comes your way.
[Her] decision came after months of pressure from civil rights and immigrant justice groups, who launched online petitions and interrupted Clinton’s public events, demanding she cut ties with the private prison industry.
“Our message was, ‘You can’t be pro-immigrant and still have this blemish on your record,’” said Zenén Jaimes Pérez with United We Dream, one of many organizations that teamed up to press Clinton. “She had [campaign donation] bundlers who worked for the Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group, which run most of the immigrant detention centers in this country. For me, it was a big deal, because my dad was detained in a Geo facility. She was taking money from a group profiting from my family’s suffering.”
Yet, in the end the money went to a good use – charity. Which charity? I don’t know. Maybe her own. Does it matter? After all, she has promised to end the $7 billion to $8 billion private prison industry forever, and her word is her bond.
And speaking of charity, no one does charity better than Hillary, primarily through the Clinton Foundation, one of the most largest and best charitable organizations in the world, which bar none, knows how to deliver the goods to the people who need their help the most.
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Soon after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the U.S. ambassador at the time—WikiLeaks documents showed this—wrote a cable essentially saying that a gold rush is on, a gold rush meaning for U.S. corporations and others. […] The solution that the Obama administration gave for Haiti, pushed by Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, their daughter, were industrial parks—essentially, places that Haitians can get underpaid and not trained to make cheap clothing for Gap and Wal-Mart that you and I maybe, hopefully, won’t buy in the U.S.
[T]he legacy of the Clinton Foundation—and I examine this deeply in the book—is utterly appalling. There are example after example of the Clinton Foundation funding a number of centers that have been infected by chemicals, which also, I might add, the Clinton Foundation were investing in failed things after Hurricane Katrina, as well, here in the U.S. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and others—I mean, they’re one example—their solution has primarily been industrial parks.
Who wouldn’t want to work at an industrial park, especially one heavily supported by the Clinton Foundation?
Haiti’s Caracol Industrial Park—the U.S. State Department and Clinton Foundation pet project to deliver aid and reconstruction to earthquake-ravaged Haiti in the form of private investment—is systematically stealing its garment workers’ wages, paying them 34 percent less than minimum wage set by federal law, a breaking report from the Worker Rights Consortium reveals. Critics charge that poverty wages illustrate the deep flaws with corporate models of so-called aid.
The failure of the Caracol Industrial Park to comply with minimum wage laws is a stain on the U.S.’s post-earthquake investments in Haiti and calls into question the sustainability and effectiveness of relying on the garment industry to lead Haiti’s reconstruction said Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in an interview with Common Dreams. […]
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended Caracol’s opening ceremony a year ago. “We’re sending a message that Haiti is open for business again,” Hillary Clinton declared upon the announcement of the opening.
It’s the type of thing I would expect from Hillary Clinton. Her service to others continues to amaze me. She is always willing to help out a friend in need.
Well, I hope you understand now why I felt it necessary to reveal what I know about the true heart and character of Hillary Clinton. The New York primary is tomorrow. We sure wouldn’t want anyone confused about Hillary Clinton’s record as a humanitarian and all around do-gooder.
Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,” said Philip H. Gordon, one of [Clinton’s} assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.”
Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.
The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.
Whenever push came to shove, Hillary always chose to do the right thing, no mater how difficult the choice:
[A]s union leaders and human rights activists conveyed these harrowing reports of violence to then-Secretary of State Clinton in late 2011, urging her to pressure the Colombian government to protect labor organizers, she responded first with silence, these organizers say. The State Department publicly praised Colombia’s progress on human rights, thereby permitting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to flow to the same Colombian military that labor activists say helped intimidate workers.
At the same time that Clinton’s State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.
The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation — supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself — Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact. Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it “strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States.” The change of heart by Clinton and other Democratic leaders enabled congressional passage of a Colombia trade deal that experts say delivered big benefits to foreign investors like Giustra.
Let me put it this way. When New Yorkers go to the polls tomorrow, we don’t want them making the wrong choice because they were misinformed about what Hillary Clinton stands for, and what values, like integrity in public service, and transparency and open government, she holds most dear, do we?