While We Were Reeling

The latest leaks of Donald Trump statements about women, as bad as they are, really tell us nothing new. Reading them was not like changing a song being played on the stereo; it was like turning up the volume of the same song we've been listening to. But we should note the timing of the leaks of Donald Trump statments: it was at the same time that Wikileaks posted the leaked the contents of speeches Hillary Clinton gave to Wall Street as they were contained in emails. And those speeches reveal what would be an increasingly disturbing picture of Hillary if we weren't going deaf from the blaring of Donald Trump's decadence.

A couple of sources could be accessed to see a summary of Hillary's speeches (click here and there). In short, two themes must be considered, but will most likely be ignored, by the public. The first theme is that Hillary seems to know how to play the political game of bait-and-switch on policies promised during a campaign. The line that indicates this is as follows:

Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.

So if Hillary believes in having a both public and private positions on issues, what have we learned to expect from a Hillary presidency from listening to her speeches and the debates? For many loyal Hillary followers and Democratic Party gang members, knowing what Hillary's actual positions are is completely irrelevant. Like many of Trump's loyal followers, there is nothing she could say or do that would dissuade them from voting for another candidate. That, in and of itself, says something ominous about us Americans. For many of us have already decided for whom to vote regardless of the facts. Is it any wonder that our elections continually provide worse and worse results or that our choice of candidates become more and more limited? But let's go on to what should be a more disturbing quote:

The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry

Why that quote should be disturbing is because it strongly indicates a position that those who work in our financial sector should be the ones who regulate themselves and hold themselves accountable--that is at odds with her promise to appoint effective regulators who would strongly pursue wrongdoing. Again, we should note the first quote about having public and private positions. 

Here we should note that there are at least two ways by which our financial sector can be, and perhaps is alreayd, self-regulated. The first way is to either not pass the regulations or enforce the ones the ones we have that would hold those in Wall Street acountable. The other way to make that industry self-regulated would be to appoint those who would oversee the activities of our financial industry from those currently work in these financial institutions. In either case, we are being told that the way to hold our financial sector accountable is to pursue the same approach that was taken when fraud and other misconduct on Wall Street brought about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In other words, Hillary is for maintaining the status quo and we see this in some of her appointments of those working in her campaign as well as in Obama's appointments for different watchdog agencies in the federal government. That approach is basically one of deputizing the foxes to be guards of the hen house.

Yes, sex sells and so there will be more revulsion over Trump's statements than over Hillary's and that is understandable. But in the end, it is Hillary's statements that paint a more ominous future than Trump's. And all of this points to the need to vote for third party candidates which is something that those residing in the land of the free and the home of the brave lack the courage to choose.

BTW, there are other Hillary statments that show here leanings toward policies listed in the articles linked to above. It is well worth anyone's time to read those statements and reflect on the direction we could expect from a Hillary presidency.