How to explain this: Hillary Clinton praised a former president
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clinton-invokes-unlikely-allies-000000292.htmlThe man she spoke of was not her husband, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama, whom she hopes to succeed. It was George W. Bush — long one of the left’s most potent villains.
In an unusual election year, when a quarter of Republicans say they do not have a favorable opinion of their presumptive nominee, Clinton is making striking overtures to conservatives even as she works to shore up support on the left flank of her party by winning over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ liberal backers.
That’s included surprisingly warm talk about both former Presidents Bush, as well as GOP icon Ronald Reagan. At a campaign stop in Westminster, Calif., earlier this month, Clinton said she was fortunate enough to have known “a lot of presidents.”
“I knew President George H.W. Bush, and he was always willing to talk about issues and ask what was on your mind,” she said. Of his son, she offered more specific praise, saying he was “absolutely committed” after 9/11 to his promise to get New York City the billions of dollars it needed to rebuild. “He never wavered and I’ll never forget that,” she said of Bush, as a few supporters clapped tepidly. (At Nancy Reagan’s funeral in March, a CNN journalist posted a photo of the two hugging.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
Some say that's like a curse.
Never dissed Muslims? Invaded Iraq based on lies? No demonizing there.
Never demonized black people. I don't know, Bernie made me white, so I can't speak to that anymore.
Wow...I guess I've misunderstood compassionate conservatism for all those years. I didn't realize how non-racist it was.
It's time to rewrite history on the man who the rightwing Republican controlled Supreme Court made president in 2000.
Where did I defend Bush? Conservative?
You're on a roll today - I'm done with angry slash-and-burn types like yourself.
Jesus you're angry. Bye.
"I did none of those.
I just called out your devisive (sp) bullshit.
Deal with it. "
-blackspade
There is no need to denigrate, disrespect , deligitimize, and dehumanize me or any of the other denizens of this board from the anonymity of an internet modem. We don't cover ourselves in glory when we do that.
Have a wonderful life.
Your projection is noted.
I am just defending myself from your hurtful, calumnious, and unprovoked attacks.
I call on you to peer into your conscience, heed your better angels, apologize to me, and restore me to the position I enjoyed before you imputed my motives.
Thank you in advance.
I would be remiss if I didn't tell you to have a wonderful life, though.
At least here.
Have a lovely weekend and life.
I detest Bush. I detest Trump. But candor compels me to state the former didn't go out of way to take rhetorical dumps on vulnerable people.
because that was the biggest mother fucking dump taken on vulnerable people in a hell of a long time. It sure as fuck wasn't a kiss on the fucking head. candor my ass.
I will be the bigger person and not respond in kind.
It is up to all of us to elevate the discourse on our once august board.
I will continue to peer into my conscience, heed my better angels, and not further inflame the situation that has brought our once august board into the abyss.
Change begins with me.
Thank you... I hope to be your model in making Democratic Underground a kinder and gentler website. If we are all kinder and gentler to the next poster than he or she was to us we can make Democratic Underground the kindest and gentlest website on the internet.
Is she a Democrat or not? What's up with a supposed Democratic Party candidate who would rather have Republican votes than Democratic votes?
Effing bazarro twilight zone this country has turned into. 
Totally sicko.
misogynistic, anti-diversity, privileged and also less educated working class men. Aka 'Bernie Bros.' Amazing.
Real Kafkaesque contortions to fabricate alleged constituents, one the craziest efforts I've ever seen.
Must do-
and the worst terrorist attack ever on the US. Of course, H. Clinton was a partner with that regime, and strongly advocated for the illegal war in the Senate.
is right.
as she misspoke.
Then again you knew that, and just dredge up a dead issue for a few cheap points. You are nothing if not consistent, Mr. Blue. 
PS - I miss your near-daily jabs you used to give me over the transparency page.
I believe you are doing the right thing to honor your life love! I stand with you!!! 
Tell them they aren't serious people, etc.
Response to Trust Buster (Reply #106)
Response to Trust Buster (Reply #226)
"We are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you."
"On behalf of all of us, let me just say that we are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you, and we can't thank you enough," Obama added.
SOURCE: http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/15/19487988-obama-toasts-bush-we-are-surely-a-kinder-and-gentler-nation-because-of-you
Apart from all the wars and death and misery and poverty and wasted lives, maybe.
Original OP from 2006: Know your BFEE or "Hey, America! Wake Up and Smell the Sulfur!"
Few today remember a most heinous terrorist act: The assassinations of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and American Ronnie Karpen Moffit.
Ms. Moffit was an American citizen murdered by agents of a foreign government on U.S. soil. Her only crime was being with Orlando Letelier, whose crime was to speak out against the military coup that toppled the democratically elected Chilean government he served. Because he refused to turn over the Chilean secret police and their American contacts, these assassinations were allowed, if not sanctioned, by George Bush, then director of central intelligence and head of the CIA.
As with all things having to do with the BFEE, the world get worse. So, a reminder:
October will mark the 30th anniversary of another most heinous terrorist act: The bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 passengers and crew. The pilots reported the blast caused their aircraft to catch fire and they were burning up as they attempted an emergency landing. The plane crashed into the Caribbean, a few miles west of Barbados. All aboard perished, including a close friend of the Great DUer malaise.
Cubana Airlines DC-8 like the one bombed by BFEE members Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both turds have been protected by Poppy and Baby Doc Bush and the CIA, which strangely has been loyal to them rather than to various presidencies before and in-between.
Here’s an excellent essay based on the facts:
The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer
Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax
By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch June 9, 2005
President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.
But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don't apply.
Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president's commitment to fight terrorism.
For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay ENRON's CEO got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United States."
The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called "Bambi" by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his eyeballs" in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.
SNIP…
One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United States with the idea that U.S. government complicity in aiding and abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities didn't inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in 1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada's agents placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has knowledge of Posada's covert activities for U.S. intelligence as well.
CONTINUED…
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html
[font color="red"]What ties these two events together is the involvement of George Herbert Walker Bush, as then-CIA director, in their cover-up as crimes and in the protection of their perpetrators, as in the person of one Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and their colleagues-in-terror.[/font color]
Think about it: A murder-forgiving CIA director Bush went on to become President of the United States. Today, Bush’s son, George, acts as president. The younger Bush has used his office from Day One to protect and cover-up the crimes of his father.
That’s what Hugo Chavez was talking about when he smelled the sulfur and called Bush “The Devil.”
America needs to wake up and smell the sulfur, too. Here’s some background on the above:
LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153 /
Don’t forget to check out Orlando Bosch, while you’re at it. GOOGLE with Jeb Bush for some interesting connections to the present day.
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed National Security Archive’s Peter Kornbluh and Letelier’s son, Francisco:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/153...
Another important point to remember, is Kissinger's close association with Operation CONDOR, the assassination program run out of "The Cone" to silence democrats, liberals, union leaders, progressives, socialists, communists or anyone who stood for justice and equality.
Chile security chief was CIA informer
BBC Tuesday, 19 September, 2000, 23:24 GMT 00:24 UK
Recently declassified documents in the United States show that the former head of the secret police in Chile, Manuel Contreras, was a paid informant for the US intelligence agency, the CIA.
The report, comprising CIA documents requested by the US Congress, show that contact with Contreras began in 1974 - a year after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.
Contreras oversaw the much-feared security service DINA
The report adds that the contact was maintained until 1977 - a year after Contreras plotted the killing of the then Chilean Foreign Minister and foe of General Pinochet, Orlando Letelier, in Washington.
A BBC correspondent in Washington, Nick Bryant, says the documents reinforce the view that the US turned a blind eye towards political repression in Chile during the Pinochet era and that the CIA was complicit in many human rights abuses.
Pinochet's confidant
As head of the security service, DINA, Contreras became the one of the most feared men in Chile, second only to General Pinochet.
The general's iron rule was underpinned by the tactics of brutal repression that saw thousands die and thousands more flee into exile. Others disappeared or were tortured.
CONTINUED…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/932897.stm
Of course, there are even more sulferous friends than these…
Bush s Longstanding Criminal Mexican Amigos
The disturbing ties of some of George W. Bush's Latino advisors
More on Bush-Amigos links in PBS Frontline interview with Gary Jacobs
By Julie Reynolds
Research assistance by Victor Almazán and Ana Leonor Rojo
LOS AMIGOS DE BUSH
“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. (Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are.)” – “George W. Bush for President” web site
Those who say that George W. Bush has scant knowledge of foreign affairs don't understand his family's relationship with Mexico.
If one event could be said to make that relationship visible, it had to be the state dinner given eleven years ago by President Bush for Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas. It was an elegant yet boisterous gala, where the biggest movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico congregated and celebrated. This group was to become W's Mexican legacy, a gift of ties and connections passed on from the father to his son.
SNIP…
The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose Córdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace - some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated.
No one knew it then, but many at that banquet would survive to one day help young W beat a path back to the White House. There were loyal "Bushfellas" who were old friends of the family: Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend, Secretary of State James Baker. Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank González, was also a guest. Tony Garza, then a young judge, is now a Bush cabinet contender. Today, all are advisors or contributors to W's campaign.
Hidden among the glitterati were two relative unknowns. They were, however, familiar to the group at hand. They were the loyal "Amigos de Bush" from San Antonio: criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. In contrast to the Salinas group, the ties of Barrera and Ancira to drug cartels would remain unnoticed for another decade. Their ties to George W. would grow stronger.
CONTINUED…
GOOGLE cache:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Th5_dq9beuYJ:www.el...
May also be at:
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/contents10,2,00.htm
Henry Kissinger and Agusto Pinochet
[font size="3"][font color="green"]“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” -- Henry A. Kissinger[/font color][/font size]
Remember: If Kissinger -- friend of Hillary and the guy Poppy's Dim Son wanted to appoint head of the 9-11 Commission -- feels that way about democracy in Chile, what’s there to make us think he and those for whom he toils believe differently about democracy in the United States of America?
Bartcop coined the phrase to put a handle on the cabal that use their political and economic power to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation. They include the Wall Street types and their heirs who were the political and legal enemies of Gen. Smedley Butler.
Bill Moyers, Alfred W. McCoy and others have identified some of these players as part of “The Secret Government.” They use political and financial power under the cover of official secrecy to selfishly gain and unreservedly serve the ultra-right and ultra-rich who through their combined and concerted criminal actions have become the most powerful and undemocratic group in human history.
Among their policies that have remained in place since at least 1981 are the major tax cuts for the rich, while simultaneously increasing public spending on military hardware and now warfare and disaster capitalism without end while cutting back public expenditures, if not eliminating entirely, public education, housing, healthcare, welfare and other social-benefit programs. It also is why, by design and by law, most of the wealth created since Reaganomics has accrued in the pockets of the richest of the rich. It was supposed to.
Rather than bringing all that up, while still making them easy to identify, I call them the BFEE. Perhaps the best moniker for them is the War Party, for using their positions to make money through death, suffering and the exploitation of humanity. It’s what George W Bush meant when he said, “Money trumps peace.” And for the record, the last president to stand up and oppose these unmitigated warmongers was President John F. Kennedy.
Anyway, that bothers some DUers. Tuesday, I made the observation that a person is only a suspect until convicted in a trial. That concept is central to our system of justice, yet I got mocked by several DUers for stating it. The idea that all are innocent until proven guilty and the idea that all are equal under the law are basic to democratic government.
Here’s what I suspect these DUers don’t know or don’t want to acknowledge knowing. There are truly evil people in positions of power, both in and out of government. An important example is this guy, thoughtfully misidentified by Fox TV as a Democrat, the former Republican representative out of Florida, Mark Foley, BFEE:
The now-known child predator was given a position to oversee laws designed to protect children from child molesters. What’s more, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) covered it up. In America, married households may now be a minority, but parents who have kids hate child molesters. Same for most people, in general: Child molestation generates universal hatred.
That’s why Fox and so many other “news” media have tried to connect Foley, “by accident,” to the Democrats. Even Huffington Post made the connection. Once an idea is in a person’s head, it takes a LOT of Truth to drive it out. Consider the nonexistent ties between Osama and Saddam that so many Americans still believe to exist. So, if the connection between the House Republicans and Foley can be made in the minds of enough Americans, they will not vote for Republikkkens.
Eleven GOPers Fingered in Foley Cover-Up
By Justin Rood - September 30, 2006, 9:32 PM
Roll Call's John Bresnahan reports:
As of Saturday evening, nearly a dozen House GOP lawmakers and staffers have acknowledged that they knew of the initial batch of non-sexually explicit messages from Foley to a 16-year-old former House page, some of them for a year or more. These include Hastert (R-IL); Majority Leader John Boehner (Ohio); National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.); Reps. Rodney Alexander (La.) and John Shimkus (Ill.); Mike Stokke, the Speaker’s deputy chief of staff; Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s counsel; Paula Nowakowski, Boehner’s chief of staff; Jeff Trandahl, the former Clerk of the House; and another Hastert aide and Alexander’s chief of staff, according to public statements and GOP insiders.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/eleven-gopers-fingered-in-foley-cover-up
Not only did he chair the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, Foley was in the House GOP leadership. As Deputy Majority Whip, he might’ve followed in the sweaty steps of his mentor, Dennis Hastert as Speaker of the House. That’s something you won’t hear mentioned by John Boehner or anyone on Fox TV.
Foley never went to trial. But he should have been investigated in public, preferably by a Grand Jury led by a Special Prosecutor. Same for his colleagues in power, Dennis Hastert. A big reason they aren't around when you need one is George H.W. Bush let the special prosecutor law expire.
This is hard to write about when all the powers are with those in secret offices of government. Consider what Snowden, Assange and the other brave whistleblowers in and out of government and private industry have endured just to give us a peak at the top of the iceberg that represents the virtually unlimited spy powers applied by the FBI, NSA, DIA, CIA and who knows what else.
Then again, if DU, like Bartcop before us, and Thom Hartmann and Talking Points Memo and ConsortiumNews and the all too few others didn’t, who would? Rupert Murdoch? Roger Ailes? ABCNNBCBSFakeNoiseNutworks? Not bloody likely.
The Hitler defense?
... I'm sure I'll bump into more occasions to use it... 
Holding republicans to account for their murderous criminal bullshit is way out there?
Holy fuck! 
Hillary won the election, but ignore the voter disenfranchisement.
Hillary is the true progressive, but ignore the paid speeches, the pro-war statements, and the anti-gay marriage remarks.
Hillary is down with A.A.'s, but ignore her comments about C.P. time and Super predators.
Trump is under investigation, but ignore that Hillary is also under investigation.
Disgusted is the understatement of the century.
Not to support Clinton and help Trump get elected?
The tangled excuses truly are astounding.
Yet when Bernie spoke at Liberty university and praised Sensenbrener, that was supposed to signs of his ability to work with Republicans. He can endorse anti choice candidates or opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, and his supporters shell out cash to help get them elected, but Clinton notes that Bush had some positive attributes, and that's supposed to be an excuse for opposing the Democratic nominees do as a result help Trump get elected. 
Let's cut the crap, why don't we? the way the arguments twist and turn for political expediency is transparent.
Clinton is the nominee, so your continual references to what others do is irrelevant at this point. What Clinton says and does from this point forward will impact the general election and to say that discussing and questioning her actions is 'electing Trump' is childish.
Grow up. If we can't have honest discussions about our candidate, then we relegate ourselves to the status if children.
Children are taught to bow to authority, to not question, to deflect and obfuscate. Some grow out of it, but obviously that is hit or miss even here at DU.
So, if you can't discuss Clinton's actions in terms of their impact on her chances in November like an adult, then I suggest you find another hobby.
The RW has poloried him for decades. Where is the praise and love for him? Even from our own party elite?
