Deplorables

I disagree with Hillary's statement that half of Trump's supporters are "deplorables", defined as people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or some combination of those.  Based on my life experience, 100% of them exhibit these traits in whole, or in part. And you can also throw "dumb as a box of rocks" into the mix.

Harsh? You have to actually live in Trump country and deal with his supporters on a daily basis to know how true it is.   I've interacted with angry white guys all my life, working class and professional, and I don't feel sorry for them a bit. To hell with the lot of them.  Pundits may say their anger is the result of frustration over the loss of the jobs that allowed their fathers to live a middle-class lifestyle without a college degree. And there's truth in that. But instead of blaming the ones responsible for their plight - Republicans - they take the easy way out and blame immigrants and minorities. And Democrats. Instead of embracing their most potent weapon for combating the Republican economic agenda of transferring all remaining wealth to the already rich - collective bargaining - they hoard guns and ammunition and pretend they will have to take on Democrats to preserve a way of life that is being taken away from them. When in reality, Democrats are the ones trying to save it for them.

Trump supporters would rather lose everything they have now, and everything their children might ever have, including a chance to go to college, healthcare, even  a habitable planet, in order not to have to face a reality in which they have common cause with poor and middle-class immigrants, minorities, and LGBT individuals in the fight against Republicans.  The only thing that matters to them is the fantasy that no matter how bad things get for them, they are still superior to those people. Trump encourages them to live in this fantasy world, and like drug addicts, they will destroy themselves and the world around them in order to keep that feeling.

So, racist, ignorant, selfish, delusional, and dumb as a box of rocks.  Eventually, their fantasy world will disintegrate and the ship of delusion they have constructed will capsize, but I'm afraid when that happens the basket of deplorables will be so large that we will all be dragged down with it.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Liberal Test

So what is a liberal?  Once in awhile a situation comes along that allows us to answer that question fairly definitively. Most recently it's the action taken by professional football player Colin Kaepernick, who remained seated during the pre-game playing of the national anthem to protest discrimination and violence against minorities in the US.

So, here's the test: Do you agree or disagree with his action? If you think the question is getting at, Yes, I  Agree = Liberal, or No, I Disagree = Conservative, it isn't that simple.  Here's the answer that defines what a liberal is: It doesn't matter.   As a liberal it doesn't matter if I agree with him or not. He has the right to engage in peaceful protest of a situation he sees as intolerable.  But going even further than recognizing his right to protest in this fashion, a liberal respects him for his action, and the words used to explain his action - respects him for putting his livelihood at risk. For in the macho, conservative world of pro football, his career has surely been jeopardized, regardless of his performance on the field.

I have my own feelings about what he did, and continues to do, but it doesn't matter, I support his right to do it. And that's the essence of being a liberal.  It's what  separates us from conservatives, whose value system is defined by what they believe is good and everything else is bad.  They cannot rise above themselves and their own beliefs in any debate about any issue. And the stronger their opinion, the more wrong is any other opinion. That's why the more they are in charge, the worse this country and the world becomes.

Many years ago I was attempting to have a rational conversation with a conservative coworker.  I knew the odds were against success, and I was right.  We were discussing the ACLU and he was expressing his disapproval by saying, "They do a lot of things I disagree  with." My response was that was the point.  If they weren't doing things we disagreed with, there would be no need for them.  He couldn't comprehend that.  I pointed out their defense of free speech by the Ku Klux Klan and American nazis as actions I disagreed with, but that free speech can't be only speech we agree with. To have a free society, we have to be willing to defend speech we don't agree with. I might as well have been speaking Klingon.

It's not easy being a liberal.  We have to defend not only our own liberty to think, speak, and act freely, but in order for us to be free, we have to defend the liberty of those who would gladly give our freedoms away: conservatives. They appear incapable of recognizing that the American flag means nothing if we aren't allowed to burn it. That the national anthem is just a song if we can't sit through it in protest. The concept of an underlying principal behind a symbol seems foreign to them.  The idea that the right of Muslims to practice their religion must be protected in order for Christians to enjoy the same right is nonsense to conservatives. So, as liberals we fight for ourselves, and for those who despise us and would happily jail us if they could.

That's what a liberal is.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Coal Country

Here is what the right-wing press would have us believe about Hillary's comments when asked why coal miners should vote for her:

"God only knows, because when I'm President, I'm going to put a lot of coal companies out of business and a lot of coal miners out of work," she said, while rubbing her hands together and smiling gleefully.

While in reality, according to Politifact, this is what she really said: 

"Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right.  Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities. So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right? And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on. So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America.  We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history. Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.  So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work."

Which is the correct strategy to raise the coal-producing areas of the country out of the poverty that has afflicted them for generations. Contrast this tough, but honest, portrayal of the situation with Trump's pandering promises to bring back lost jobs by using his magical conservative powers to make coal an economically competitive source of energy again.  

Coal country is where I'm from.   My father was a coal miner and my mother a coal miner’s wife, which meant she worked longer hours than he did.  We were poor, as was everyone we knew. The wealth of the region traveled north with the coal trains, leaving behind poverty, ravaged mountains, polluted water, and poor health.  The men worked in the mines until they died or were disabled.  The women cooked, cleaned, tended garden, and cared for sick and dying husbands, parents, and children. 

My father died at the advanced age of 58, scarred and bent, an oxygen tank by his side and a plastic tube beneath his nose.  He never complained, though. None of them did.  This was their life.  Just as it had been the life of their parents and grandparents. So, when I saw them cheering for Donald Trump as he complained that, because of the fight to slow global warming, his favorite hair spray was not as effective as it used to be, I was sad, but not surprised.  This has been part of their lives, too: another rich guy from the big city promising a good life for them and their families, all the while planning to take everything they have now and everything they ever might have. 

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Trade

Trade, especially global trade deals, have been in the news lately, and as is usual in the age of Twitter, the arguments, pro and con, are greatly oversimplified. Usually it's conservatives who make the black-white, good-bad arguments because evidently their brains can't deal with any amount of nuance, context, or complexity.  But on the issue of trade, it's the left that's making the  argument that trade agreements like NAFTA and the proposed TPPA result in reduced wages and lost jobs for American workers.  Donald Trump also says he believes this, but who knows what he truly believes, if anything. His head is like a gumball machine, with unrelated ideas bouncing around that occasionally pop out in random fashion during his stream of unconsciousness speeches. The truth about how trade affects labor is complicated.

Throughout history, trade among nations has been the most effective way to increase national wealth and raise personal income.  And it remains so today. Ideally, a poor nation sells it's natural resources and low tech goods and services to a rich nation, thereby generating income for its citizens, who then can afford to buy the rich country's high tech, value-added goods and services. Then, after a few decades of this arrangement, the poor nation's work force and infrastructure have improved to the point that it begins manufacturing value-added goods and services and selling them to poor nations, and since workers' wages have increased along with the level of education and training, the newly rich nation ceases to manufacture cheap goods and to sell it's natural resources to rich countries, instead opting to buy both from poor nations who use the revenue to buy expensive imports from rich nations and invest in educating their labor force and improving their infrastructure and on and on it goes.

Since the beginning of civilization, this cycle has played itself out, resulting in a world that is wealthier and more advanced than it otherwise would have been. I'm old enough to remember when every little cheap knick-knack and Cracker Jack prize had a tag that said Made in Japan. This was in the fifties and early sixties, when Japan's economy was still recovering from WWII.  Just a few decades later, cheap trinkets were no longer being made in Japan; instead their exports were cars, computers, and consumer electronics.  China took over from Japan as the manufacturer of cheap goods, but now as China advances, that role is shifting to Bangladesh, and in twenty years it will be some other emerging country.

But this ancient cycle doesn't always work as it should and, that's because human greed often intervenes to distort what should be a natural and reliable process. Greed shows up as rich countries acting as colonial powers exploiting the cheap labor and natural resources of poor countries so that there is no money for them to invest in worker education and infrastructure, so no economic advancement takes place.

In the richest and most advanced country, the distortion is taking another form.  Conservatives are refusing to allow America's wealth to be invested in education and infrastructure, choosing instead to keep it in the hands of a small percentage of the population. The result of this distortion of the natural economic cycle is that low-paying, low-skill jobs have been lost, but are not being replaced with high-wage, high-skill jobs making value-added goods, so the middle class is disappearing, leaving only the rich and the poor.

Labor organizations and liberals are not helping by rejecting trade treaties and lobbying for protectionism.  It makes no economic sense to try to keep low-wage jobs in this country; the goods produced will never be competitive on the global market, and the wages paid to Americans will not allow for anything beyond a subsistence level existence.

American workers should not make textiles; they should make the machines that make textiles, whle buying towels from Bangladesh.  We should make expensive, high-tech cars, and buy economy cars from Mexico. In the future, we should make magnetic transporters and buy smart phones from Argentina. This is the way the world advances.  But, because conservatives control so many corporations and have taken over so much of government, we are stuck in a world of low taxes and low wages, and are missing out on the world of high taxes and high wages. The difference is a world apart.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

More murders

In my opinion, just about everything wrong with this country is the fault of conservatives, and, with the exception of natural disasters, they are behind almost every catastrophe that befalls us. And, actually, the many natural disasters that have their origins in global warning can also be laid at their feet. What a great country, and great world, we could have if it weren't for conservatives.

Take the current state of affairs between cops and black people. Recently, there have been far too many incidents of cops shooting and otherwise killing black people who are guilty either of nothing, or of relatively little. And, now it looks like black people are organizing and fighting back.

Why has our county come to such a sad state of affairs?  Conservatives, as usual.  For years, they, in close coordination with their political arm, the GOP, and lobbying arm, the NRA, have engaged in a strategy to turn America into the middle east. So that now it's gotten to the point that cops have to assume that everyone they approach, especially young males, are armed. Racism, and racial polarization don't help the situation, but that has been improving slowly, as more liberal policies of diversity and inclusion have been adopted to replace regressive conservative policies.

But no amount of dialogue and reconciliation can improve the situation much, not after conservatives have successfully turned the country into a collection of armed camps, and expanded their efforts by inflaming emotions in order to set the opposing sides permanently and irrevocably against each other.

Their strategy has succeeded to the degree that it seems like cops now see white men legally carrying guns as potential allies, while black men legally carrying guns are definite enemies.  And as the police increasingly become military organizations in response to an increasingly militarized populace, their tendency is to deal with enemies as the military does.

Conservative spokesmen remind me of bad magicians, constantly and clumsily trying to direct our attention to the threats from outside the country, in order to distract us from the carnage going on inside our country. The fact that so many of us fall for their act says as much about us as them.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Hillary

It's about time we had a woman president, and Hillary has earned it by battling in the trenches against the Republicans for decades.  She has proven her toughness.  She has been in the crucible and emerged whole and still willing and able to fight.  There aren't many who could stand up to years of the right wing onslaught and still stand strong and unbowed. She had Bill's back (at least in public, I can't imagine how she punished him in private) and endured both private hell and public humiliation, never once allowing what must have been a volcano of anger and hurt on the inside to show on the outside.  So if now she comes across as lacking spontaneity, as cold and calculating, that's okay.  She's earned the right.  I imagine iron self-control practiced for years can't easily be set aside.  Besides, while it doesn't make for a good political candidate by today's show-business standards, an over-abundance of self-discipline wouldn't be a bad characteristic for a president to possess.

While the November election should be a slam dunk victory for an intelligent, experienced, knowledgeable candidate over an ignorant, incompetent, dishonest bozo, it appears it's going to be close, and could go either way. It looks as if a sizable portion of the electorate has been influenced by the unrelenting attacks on her for more than twenty years by the right-wing propaganda machine doing what they do best: attacking those who would dare promote equality and equal opportunity in this country. I don't understand how any reasonably intelligent person could be influenced by Fox News and right-wing radio, two of the most dishonest entities to ever exist, but, then again, you have to admit, they are very good at what they do.

I'm not claiming that Hillary is a saint.  After all, she's a life-long politician.  Honesty isn't something she has much practice at. But I do claim that she is more honest than any of the Republicans that continually attack her.  But the right wing propaganda is insidious in it's relentlessness.  Even if an individual is aware of it's partisan, self-serving nature, after years of being exposed to it, like a carcinogenic substance it can cause internal changes which can be damaging.  As a result of this long-term exposure, a large segment of the population will respond "dishonest" or "untruthful" when asked to describe her.  Ask for specifics, though and you'll get only some statement like, "she just is, always has been, everyone knows it." Or the answer might be something about Benghazi or emails, although they seldom know exactly what was wrong with whatever she did concerning Benghazi or emails.

Republicans, while not good at governing or anything else useful, are very good at investigating and charging Democrats with a variety of transgressions, as they have with Hillary for two decades  The fact that nothing results from an investigation doesn't matter at all.  Republican spokesmen will call attention to all the investigations (they like to refer to them as scandals) Hillary has been involved in dating back to Whitewater, but don't mention that all of them were initiated by themselves. People need to keep in mind that each investigation, each charge, each claim,  has resulted in nothing, and that 0+0+0+0+0 will always add up to 0 no matter how many zeroes are added, and waving your hands around saying they go, "On, and on, and on..." doesn't change that.

She has admitted using a private email server instead of a government network server during her days as Secretary of State, but Republicans aren't satisfied with calling this an error in judgment; instead, they talk of criminal charges being brought, and hint darkly at classified secrets being discussed with ...someone, and passed to...someone.  But like the Benghazi investigation, nothing substantive will result from the email investigation, but that won't stop the Republicans from adding another 0 to the list of Hillary scandals, hoping that eventually adding enough zeroes will add up to something.  Or just as good for their purposes, that the public will perceive that it does.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Hubris

Hubris - from the ancient Greek, defined as a tragic character flaw consisting of foolish, arrogant pride. It was one of the Greeks' favorite emotions.  They loved to write about its power to destroy the lives of everyone it touched, usually in dramatic, calamitous ways.

Whenever I think of hubris, I think of Ralph Nader, the third party candidate in the 2000 Bush versus Gore presidential election.  I grew up in the sixties, and he was one of my heroes: a champion of the little guy against the depredations of corporate America, a consumer watchdog, a warrior for the environment, defender of the earth.

In 2000 we were on the cusp of the golden age of America - the true golden age, not the make-believe fantasy of the fifties.  President Clinton had finally repaired the economic damage done by a succession of Republican presidents and managed to generate a budget surplus while retaining the safety net of programs for the poor and disabled, and while Republicans had begun to show signs of the brain-eating disease which would ultimately consume them all, there were still a few that were hanging on to their sanity.  And most importantly, the Clinton policies were about to be extended into a third term by an experienced, intelligent, progressive politician with a passion for protecting the environment.  It was right there before us - the golden age of America, and the world. All we had to do was reach out and take it.

But hubris intervened in the form of Ralph Nader, a man unwilling to pass the torch on to the next generation of environmentalists.  Old, bitter, consumed by hubris, he mounted a third party campaign, making the absurd claim there was no difference between Bush and Gore.

He wasn't the only reason Bush won: Gore wasn't a great campaigner; the Republicans had no compunction about lying about anything and everything; and half the electorate preferred to vote for someone who was a "regular guy" rather than someone who seemed more like a college professor. But Nader did his part, and everything he had accomplished in his long, distinguished career was wiped away by eight years of Bush.

Where would this country be if Gore had been elected?  Where would our economy be?  Where would race relations be? Where would global warming be? I hope Nader is satisfied to some degree by the realization that he was influential enough to affect the world. I imagine the fact that it was an extremely negative impact makes little difference to the god of hubris.

Now we have the latest example of hubris in the person of Bernie Sanders. Again old, bitter, unwilling to step aside and let others take center stage. I feel the same anger toward him I felt toward Nader. Both of them so consumed by hubris they would rather allow pain,suffering, and irreparable damage to be inflicted on the planet rather than see someone other than themselves be the one to defeat the purveyors of hate and ignorance that threaten to destroy us.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Caitlyn Jenner

I'm old enough to remember when Bruce Jenner was an honest-to-goodness, real American hero.  The undersized all-American kid who became the world's greatest athlete by defeating the Russian and east German supermen. This was back in the day when the USSR, for propaganda purposes, invested heavily in identifying potential Olympic champions at a young age and enrolling them in state-run athletic mills where they were immersed in the the most up-to-date training, nutritional, and drug regimens. While American Olympic athletes, on the other hand, were pretty much on their own. So, it was quite an achievement when he won the grueling Decathlon in the 1976 Olympics.

Even later, when he revealed his Republican leanings, he remained a hero to me.  As the years, passed, though, and the GOP moved ever further to the right, becoming ever more bigoted, hate-filled, and intolerant, and he chose a career as a professional celebrity, it became increasingly difficult to hold him in high regard.  Then it became impossible.  It wasn't his decision to become a woman; I had no problem with that. I imagine the misery must be suffocating for individuals who perceive themselves trapped in a body not conforming to their true gender.

But as he, now she, maintained her loyalty to the Republican party, with no objection to it's ever-strengthening alliance with groups that are the primary persecutors of transgender people, a tipping point was reached for me, and she became a shallow, self-centered man with nothing inside, who became a shallow, self-centered woman with nothing inside. Nothing to see here, unfortunately.  Just another of the multitude whose moral compass points nowhere.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

The Great Game

When I was a young man I remember reading about the Great Game, which was played out on a global scale between Great Britain and Czarist Russia as Britain strove to maintain its dominance of the seas by preventing Russia from obtaining a permanent warm water port. Those must have been the days. But they are long gone. Now the term means something else entirely. Now the Great Game is the effort by Republican leaders to hide the true effects of their policies on working class white Americans - the group that most strongly supports, and votes, for them.

Over the years they have become experts at hiding the damage their policies inflict on their supporters. But once in a while the truth is mistakenly leaked, as Donald Trump recently did when he revealed that if Republicans succeed in having abortions made illegal, then women who have abortions will be treated as criminals. Now to the rest of us, this revelation came as no surprise. It's pretty obvious that those engaging in a criminal activity will face criminal penalties. If you are surprised that this revelation caused so much uproar, you haven’t been paying attention and aren't familiar with the rules of conservative world.

Because, actually, the Great Game, as it is played in conservative world, is more like a ponzi scheme, which can only operate successfully if both victims and perpetrators mutually agree not to reveal the con that is taking place. Whether it is Republican welfare policies that will only cut assistance to those that don’t deserve it and leave it alone for everyone else, economic policies that will only cut the wages of immigrants and raise them for everyone else, or social policies that will criminalize abortion but only punish providers, Republican leaders promise and their supporters invest.

It’s entertaining, and sad, when the Republican ruling class occasionally reveals the truth of the arrangement, like Trump recently did, or several years back when a journalist asked wealthy Republican women if they wanted the option of having an abortion for themselves or their daughters if it were to be necessary.  While many of them obfuscated, some of them in fits of honesty said that yes, they wanted that option, but that if it became necessary, they would only have one for the “right” reasons.

In the case of abortion, that is the arrangement that must not be spoken of: Republican leaders, both men and women, assume that the option to have an abortion for the “right” reasons will always be available to them, due to their wealth and power, no matter its actual legal status.  While at the same time, it will be forbidden to the poor, who would invariably seek it for the “wrong” reasons. Keep that in mind when you try to make sense of Republican politics and what passes for policy in conservative world and the Great Game that is played between its elected perpetrators and their willing victims.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Uncivil War

I'm old enough to remember when there were sensible Republicans - defined as ones who didn't wish the south had won the war.  I even voted for some of them.  That's hard for me to imagine now.  That was before the two parties flipped their roles, back when GOP politicians were often more progressive and the party more inclusive than Democrats. That was so long ago it wasn't even back in the day, it was more like back in the day before the day. It was before the terms conservative and Republican were synonymous.

Now I hate Republicans for what they believe, for what they represent, for what they are.  That's not literally true - I know some individual Republicans I don't hate.  I don't like them, but I don't actively hate them. But as a group, I do hate them for what they are doing to this country.  They seem determined to destroy it along with any hint of fairness, tolerance, compassion, charity, inclusion, and create a new country in their own image.  A new country dedicated to fear, intolerance, bigotry, selfishness, and ignorance.

Republicans and their political leaders don't even seem to consider themselves Americans.  Don't believe me?  Ask them if Obama is their president.  They are citizens of conservative world, with its own rules of governance, its own principles, and even its own reality that have little in common with the United States and its place in the world as the rest of us know it.  The way they describe it, the U.S is a weak, poor, dangerous country, governed by an ineligible president not respected by the rest of the world. In conservative world, George W. Bush kept us safe and Barack Obama hasn't. In the reality the rest of us live in, the opposite of all those statements is true

I live in the middle of conservative world, at least geographically, so I'm familiar with this alternate reality. I see it on television, I hear it on the radio and in conversations.  I get angry at the racism and determined ignorance of the Republicans that surround me, but I get even angrier at their leaders who mostly know how they are damaging our country, but can't force themselves to risk their elected offices by challenging their constituents.

I wonder if any of the leaders of the south in the years leading up to the civil war tried to talk their fellow citizens out of  tearing the country apart.  If so, I haven't read about any of them.  But I'm no historian, so there could have been some.  Are there any today? I'm more confident in my answer to this one.  There aren't any. Not one who will stand up and take the side of America over the interests of conservative world.  And as usual they create their own reality in which they are the patriots.  Not in this universe.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Election time

I'm going to vote for Hillary, even though as a liberal I like Bernie's policies better.  I like his policies, but don't like him very much, and it's vital for the survival of our country that a Democrat be elected in November, and I think Hillary is more electable than he is. And when I say the survival of our country is at stake, I'm not being melodramatic.  The Republicans have gotten so bad, that to elect one as President could actually mean the United States as we know it will cease to exist.

I feel an affinity to her that I don't feel towards him.  I'm about the same age as her, and I feel as if we've been through the wars together.  I've worked in the public sector for many years developing housing for low-income people with disabilities, and I followed the budget wars Bill waged with Republicans in the House and Senate as they fought to zero out the housing and other programs that were the only hope for a decent life for millions of the neediest Americans.  I remember the relief I felt when the final budget numbers came out and he had managed to restore enough funding to keep these programs alive.  I knew that Hillary was his partner in these efforts, and I was one of the many thousands who wrote to her encouraging her efforts to extend health insurance to the millions who had none. And later, it was good to know she was there, encouraging President Obama as he fought the Republicans on the same issues.

And now comes Bernie, looking down from on high, declaring that nothing that has been accomplished by Democrats is good enough. Nothing measures up to his standards. Everything is inferior, lacking in the purity and integrity that he demands.  There's something irritatingly patrician in his manner, like a Roman Senator holding forth on the Senate portico, not willing to come down and mix with the mob.  Closer to home for me, he reminds me of the many politically-appointed administrators in the agencies I've worked for and with in every sector of government. The ones who were unwilling and unable to do the actual work of the agencies, but who were more than willing to criticize the work everyone else was doing.

Do I wish that Hillary weren't so close to Wall Street?  Yes, absolutely.  But Wall Street wasn't always the cesspool of avarice and corruption that it became under Bush.  I have to believe that when it comes time to lance the boil that it has become, Hillary will, as she has always done and Republicans are incapable of doing, put the well-being of all of us above that of the richest and most privileged of us.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.