Friday, May 15, 2015

Bolton out, leaves us with: "Clinton has no problem getting to the left of Warren"

It is to laugh out loud with one's ass falling off.

(Former UN Ambassador John) Bolton’s decision not to run for President is a good thing for our country, but it means the loss of a great deal of entertainment. Bolton would not have been the only Republican extremist to run for President in 2016, but he might have been the most bizarre one. He has a frumpy grumpy kind of right wing outrage that makes him fun to watch, and he’s fond of making categorical statements that are thoroughly unanchored to reality.
For instance, Bolton recently declared that Hillary Clinton “doesn’t have any problem getting to the left of Elizabeth Warren.”

I know I have ripped on a few people about this already.  The point here is that it's not just me.

As a United States senator, Elizabeth Warren has been an opponent of government surveillance. Hillary Clinton was part of the Obama Administration that perpetrated it.

Elizabeth Warren opposes fracking. Hillary Clinton supports it.

Elizabeth Warren speaks out strongly in opposition to global warming. Hillary Clinton is mostly silent on the subject.

Elizabeth Warren has been an outspoken critic of Walmart’s systematic economic exploitation of poverty here in the United States and around the world. Hillary Clinton was on Walmart’s board of directors.

Elizabeth Warren opposed bankruptcy restrictions that force people to keep repaying enormous college loans even when they have lost their jobs and everything they own. Hillary Clinton voted for them.

Elizabeth Warren is a critic of free trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton supports them. 

At least she was prior to announcing her campaign for president.  She's been silent since.

Elizabeth Warren opposed George W. Bush’s rush to invade Iraq in 2003. Hillary Clinton voted in favor of it.

No, Hillary Clinton is not to the left of Elizabeth Warren. In fact, Hillary Clinton is to the right of most Democrats. John Bolton and his supporters are off so far over on the right wing of American politics, however, that everything on this side of Rush Limbaugh looks Communist to them.

Bernie Sanders and Clinton -- Warren is standing in for Sanders in the above, in case you overlooked that -- are also poles apart on the PATRIOT Act, in 2001.

So let's all wave goodbye to Yosemite Sam John Bolton, but his fever dreams of calling Hillary Clinton a socialist will never die.  They'll be picked up by the rest of the GOP field and flogged like American Pharoah in the Kentucky Derby.  And keep in mind that if rightists call Clinton a leftist, and Democrats call Hillary a progressive, they're both incorrect in essentially the same way.  Besides... they're all socialists anyway.

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