2016 American Presidential Thread

[Guest Mauro]

I know, I know.

I just feel this time is different.

Perhaps because for the first time this particular candidate has no political experience and is a failed businessman, not to mention a racist, misogynistic sociopath.

[Guest Mauro]

Everyone always feels 'this time is different'. Ask the Baldwin brothers. They're always threatening to leave.

Alex Baldwin never threatened to leave.

[ULIZOS]

Trump's gonna magically win the Hispanic vote and black vote overnight. I mean they're a stupid constituency with no backbone who will totally cast a vote for him once he starts kissing their ass. Say goodbye to Florida and Nevada Hillary. They're going for Trump. Millions of Mexicans will forget about the taco bowl- it was just a goofy little joke anyway! Hehe

Trump has an uphill climb in this election and we all know it. He won the primaries. That's because everyone was too much of a coward to take him on. And no one took him seriously. Now people do.

Shitting on NATO, blowing through the debt ceiling, rounding up immigrants are all catastrophic things to run on. He got 14 millon votes and 45% of the republican primary vote. That's not a majority. The party is split. We will see how close this election is. But you don't win elections in this country with white people only. Ask Romney. Who fared much better than Trump fares with minorities at the moment and still suffered an embarrassing defeat.

Of course he has an uphill battle but for someone who's been running on basically nothing, no experience, no concrete policies and promises that he makes up along the way, etc., etc. he's doing very well. He's barely behind Hillary in the polls. And yes, the republican primaries were a mess, but i'm strictly talking about Clinton vs. Trump.

Absolutely anything can happen before November, but if winning only a tiny percent of the Latino vote and virtually 0% of the Black vote means a candidate is very unlikely to win then nobody here should be worried. Hillary will win. She can keep on being uninspiring, do absolutely nothing to make people feel like she's trustworthy and she and her supporters have nothing to be worried about.

[Raider of the lost Ark]

A trump win will mean I won't even be on here whining- I'll be getting the fuck outta here and pulling a ulizos

I'll keep it classy if Clinton wins. No gloating from me.

[Ai Papi Si.]

Everyone always feels 'this time is different'. Ask the Baldwin brothers. They're always threatening to leave.

None of the candidates you mentioned ran a campaign line Trump or said the things Trump has said tho. Not one. Even GWB- probably the scariest modern prez we've had, didn't run a campaign like this. Idk, you can't blame me for being a little tripped out.

[ULIZOS]

This is what I was talking about. I was asking for arguments and all you come up with is this kind of shit. Where are the facts? Hillary has a problematic record. Name those problems and we will talk about how substancial those claims are.

Trump has build a massively successful conglomerate. Again, please explain! Because from my knowledge he may have been successful but massively? But I guess it depends how one defines "massiv". The truth is, he is not one of the big builders in the U.S.. The truth is, most of the buildings he has slapped his name on are not even owned by Trump or he only has a minor stake in them. Truth is, his companies has faulted and called for bankruptcy countless times. Truth is, many smaller companies that were doing work for him on his projects had to call for bankruptcy because their were not paid. Truth is, many of his projects are financed by debt. Truth might be, he is not even a billionaire or at least not the multi billionaire he always claims to be. I guess his refusal to provide his tax returns may have to do with this very issue.

I used to post facts and facts and facts and facts about Hillary and people call me toxic and then call into question my sources or just say that I'm making it up, I'm going to leave soon (as in, go outside for a while) but if you want me to post facts and talk about the issues I'll do it. I'm not voting for the first time since I turned 18 so I don't really see why my opinion matters, but I'll do it if that's what you want.

[Raider of the lost Ark]

Perhaps because for the first time this particular candidate has no political experience and is a failed businessman, not to mention a racist, misogynistic sociopath.

Thank you.

[Ai Papi Si.]

Of course he has an uphill battle but for someone who's been running on basically nothing, no experience, no concrete policies and promises that he makes up along the way, etc., etc. he's doing very well. He's barely behind Hillary in the polls. And yes, the republican primaries were a mess, but i'm strictly talking about Clinton vs. Trump.

Absolutely anything can happen before November, but if winning only a tiny percent of the Latino vote and virtually 0% of the Black vote means a candidate is very unlikely to win then nobody here should be worried. Hillary will win. She can keep on being uninspiring, do absolutely nothing to make people feel like she's trustworthy and she and her supporters have nothing to be worried about.

He is unlikely to win but e doesn't have a zero chance. That alone worries me and I'd rather be worried than complacent. You all can mock me for what I say on here, but I pay taxes and work like everyone else and have no help. I am about to turn 30 and I kinda wanna live a full life, so...

[Guest Mauro]

He is unlikely to win but e doesn't have a zero chance. That alone worries me and I'd rather be worried than complacent. You all can mock me for what I say on here, but I pay taxes and work like everyone else and have no help. I am about to turn 30 and I kinda wanna live a full life, so...

Without a friggin terrorist attack or race riot every week started by him opening his big mouth.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

I used to post facts and facts and facts and facts about Hillary and people call me toxic and then call into question my sources or just say that I'm making it up, I'm going to leave soon (as in, go outside for a while) but if you want me to post facts and talk about the issues I'll do it. I'm not voting for the first time since I turned 18 so I don't really see why my opinion matters, but I'll do it if that's what you want.

Just post The Perm!!!

[ULIZOS]

How Hillary Clinton Militarized US Policy in Honduras

She used a State Department office closely involved with counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to aid the coup regime in Honduras.

In 2012, as Honduras descended into social and political chaos in the wake of a US-sanctioned military coup, the civilian aid arm of Hillary Clinton’s State Department spent over $26 million on a propaganda program aimed at encouraging anti-violence “alliances” between Honduran community groups and local police and security forces.

The program, called “Honduras Convive,” was designed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to reduce violent crimes in a country that had simultaneously become the murder capital of the world and a staging ground for one of the largest deployments of US Special Operations forces outside of the Middle East.

It was part of a larger US program to support the conservative government of Pepe Lobo, who came to power in 2009 after the Honduran military ousted the elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, in a coup that was widely condemned in Central America. In reality, critics say, the program was an attempt by the State Department to scrub the image of a country where security forces have a record of domestic repression that continues to the present day.

“This was all about erasing memories of the coup and the structural causes of violence,” says Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University who spent the 2013-14 school year teaching at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. “It’s related to the complete absence of participatory democracy in Honduras, in which the United States is deeply complicit.”

“With the coup, Clinton had a real opportunity to do the right thing and shift US policy to respect democratic processes,” added Alex Main, an expert on US policy in Central America at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, after being told of the program. “But she completely messed it up, and we’re seeing the consequences of it now.”

Honduras Convive (“Honduras Coexists”) was the brainchild of the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a controversial unit of USAID that operates overseas much like the CIA did during the Cold War.

Sanctioned by Congress in 1994, OTI intervenes under the direction of the State Department, the Pentagon, and other security agencies in places like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Colombia to boost support for local governments backed by the United States. Sometimes, as it has in Cuba and Venezuela, its programs are directed at stirring opposition to leftist regimes. Clinton gave the office a major boost after she became Secretary of State; its programs are overseen by an under secretary of state as well as the top administrator of USAID.

OTI’s activities, the Congressional Research Service noted in a 2009 report, “are overtly political” and based on the idea that “timely and creative” US assistance can “tip the balance” toward outcomes “that advance U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

In Honduras, OTI seems to have followed the model it set in Iraq, where it sent some of the first US aid personnel after the 2003 invasion. At the time, CRS said, OTI’s strategy in Iraq was to convey “the tangible benefits of the regime change.”

The objective of Honduras Convive is spelled out on USAID’s website: “To disrupt the systems, perceptions and behaviors that support violence by building alliances between the communities and the state (especially the police and security forces).” A USAID official confirmed that the program is still ongoing, but played down US ties with Honduran security forces. Convive, he said, is “working in communities to build the capacity of civil society and government institutions, while strengthening community cohesion.” It was initiated “at the request of USAID and the broader U.S. Government due to high levels of violence in Honduras,” he added. “The beneficiaries of the Convive program are the Honduran people.” Much of the country’s violence is blamed on gangs and drug cartels and has led thousands of Hondurans to send their children north to flee the region.

But contractor documents obtained about the program show that it was based in part on communications strategies to win “hearts and minds” developed during the counterinsurgency phase of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several OTI officials and contractors overseeing the project came to Honduras from Afghanistan, where they managed the civilian, nation-building side of the war. They included Miguel Reabold, OTI’s country representative in Honduras, who previously represented OTI in Afghanistan.

In addition, a key part of the project was subcontracted to a company owned by David Kilcullen, who was the senior counterinsurgency adviser to Army General David Petraeus in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Kilcullen’s research methodology, according to a contract proposal I obtained, was “built around a streamlined set of metrics” that provide a “manageable method for assessing counterinsurgency campaigns that can be replicated and customized in other insecure environments.” The contract was submitted to Reabold on October 16, 2012.

The USAID official confirmed that Kilcullen’s company, Caerus Associates, “received two grants totaling approximately $77,000 to assist USAID/OTI to assess licit and illicit networks in San Pedro Sula,” Honduras’s largest and most violent city. But, he added, “the Honduras Convive program is not a counterinsurgency program.”

In a lengthy e-mail, the official added that Convive “has drawn its lessons from best practices in violence prevention, community policing, and community cohesion from urban environments all over the world.” Since the program began, he insisted, violence has declined. He provided figures showing “marked reductions in homicides between 2013 and 2014 in some of the city’s most dangerous communities,” with declines of between 18 and 46 percent in several municipalities.

“USAID believes that homicides are decreasing due to a combination of factors, included among them a more cohesive community, represented by empowered leaders, working closely with Honduran government partners (including the police); international donors; and complementary USAID programs,” the official wrote in his e-mail.

But nowhere in the USAID documents does the word “coup” appear. The agency’s claims and statistics stand in stark contrast to the situation in Honduras, where civil society has been reeling from a wave of political violence and assassinations perpetuated by what many believe are state-sponsored death squads.

Even as Convive was being formulated in 2012, repression and violence had become a pressing issue for Hondurans. That January, UC-Santa Cruz historian Dana Frank described the carnage in The New York Times, reporting that “more than 300 people have been killed by state security forces since the coup, according to the leading human rights organization Cofadeh.” It appears to be just as bad in 2016.

A month ago, on March 3, the renowned environmental activist Berta Cáceres was murdered in her home by unknown gunmen. Two weeks later, Nelson Garcia, a member of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), co-founded by Cáceres, was shot to death. Since then, thousand of Hondurans have protested what Democracy Now! has described as a “culture of repression and impunity linked to the Honduran government’s support for corporate interests.”

The killings have brought the US government’s programs in Honduras under increased scrutiny and drawn sharp criticism of Clinton’s covert support for the 2009 coup while she was Secretary of State.

In particular, opponents of Clinton have seized on her own admissions in her autobiography, Hard Choices, that she used her power as Secretary of State to deflect criticism of the coup and shift US backing to the new government. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot,” Clinton wrote.

In 2014, two years before her murder, Cáceres herself condemned Clinton’s statements about the coup, saying “this demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country.” Clinton, she added, “recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency…even though we warned this was going to be very dangerous and that it would permit a barbarity.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to e-mails seeking comment on her department’s role in Honduras Convive or in shaping US policy toward Honduras. But in March, after Cáceres’s statements on Clinton were reported in The Nation, a campaign official told Latino USA that charges that the former Secretary of State supported the 2009 coup were “simply nonsense.” “Hillary Clinton engaged in active diplomacy that resolved a constitutional crisis and paved the way for legitimate democratic elections,” she said.

* * *

The players in Honduras Convive provide a glimpse into the privatized world of covert operations managed by USAID and OTI, and how they dovetail with broader US foreign-policy goals of supporting governments friendly to US economic and strategic interests. They also show how Hillary Clinton might manage US foreign policy as president.

Under Clinton’s 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, OTI’s programs were expanded and strengthened, and the State Department pledged to “work much more closely” with the office. “We will build upon OTI’s business model of executing programming tailored to facilitate transition and promote stability in select crisis countries,” the review said. The overall plan for OTI was overseen by a Clinton deputy and the administrator of USAID. Most of its projects are contracted to a group of private aid companies in Washington.

Honduras Convive, for example, was outsourced to Creative Associates International (CAI), a company that has worked closely with USAID’s OTI on projects in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya. In 2010, CAI teamed up with OTI to run a clandestine operation in Cuba dubbed “Cuban Twitter,” as revealed in 2014 by the Associated Press. It was designed to use social media to spark anti-government unrest in that country.

A key piece of CAI’s project in Honduras, determining the social networks responsible for violence in the country’s largest city, was subcontracted to Caerus, Kilcullen’s company. It was founded in 2010 while Kilcullen was working as a top counterinsurgency adviser to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. In addition to advising Petraeus, Kilcullen served during the Bush administration as a senior adviser on counterinsurgency to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

One of Kilcullen’s first contracts in Afghanistan, according to the Caerus documents I obtained, was to design and manage a $15 million USAID program measuring stability in Afghanistan—a key task of the counterinsurgency effort. Kilcullen also developed close ties to the Office of Transition Initiatives. OTI is “the closest thing we have now to an organizational structure specifically designed to deal with the environments of the last ten to twenty years,” Kilcullen said in a talk to the New America Foundation in 2013.

Like Kilcullen himself, the Caerus contractors who led the Honduras project had extensive experience with the wars in Afghanistan. Stacia George, Caerus’s “Team Leader” on the Honduras project, was employed at Caerus from 2012 to 2014, where one of her tasks was training “Department of Defense professionals on using development as a counterinsurgency tool in Afghanistan” (she is now deputy director of OTI). Another Caerus associate involved in the Honduras program, William Upshur, taught counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan for the Army’s 10th Mountain and 82nd Airborne divisions from 2010 to 2013 (he’s now an associate with intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton).

The Caerus proposal to OTI, which I obtained, emphasizes the company’s extensive experience with counterinsurgency, surveillance, and data collection in Afghanistan as well as its ties to OTI. Many Caerus staffers “have worked directly for [OTI] developing policy, implementing field programs, and managing program evaluations based on stabilization goals and objectives,” it says.

CAI, the prime contractor for Honduras Convive, deferred all questions about the project to USAID. But a CAI spokesperson said that “Creative doesn’t do counterinsurgency work and doesn’t have anybody on staff involved in counterinsurgency.”

The AID/OTI program was part of a grand US plan to improve security in Central America by building closer ties with local military forces and using US troops to train their police. Honduras has become a litmus test for the plan.

Today, hundreds of US Special Forces and Navy SEALs are training Honduran units for civilian law enforcement. The plan is “driven by the hope that beefing up police operations will stabilize a small country closer to home,” The Wall Street Journal reported. The training is set to expand in the $1 billion “Alliance for Prosperity” program for the region that was unveiled in late January of 2015 by Vice President Joe Biden.

Main, the CEPR analyst, says Central Americans should greet the Biden plan with skepticism. “From the U.S.-backed dirty wars of the 1980s to the broken promises of economic development under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the historical record shows that U.S. policies and assistance have often undermined prosperity, stability, and democracy in the region,” he wrote last year in NACLA Report on the Americas.

In Honduras, Main told me, the overriding US interest has been “keeping this government in power.” The “window dressing” of Honduras Convive, he added, has “been going on pretty much since the coup.” Many observers, including lawmakers, agree.

On March 16, 730 scholars organized by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs signed a letter urging the State Department to demand human rights accountability in its dealings with Honduras. “We are deeply concerned that the U.S. government condones and supports the current Honduran government by sending financial and technical support to strengthen the Honduran military and police, institutions that have been responsible for human rights violations since the coup d’état of 2009,” the letter stated.

That same week, 23 members of Congress and the AFL-CIO called on Secretary of State John Kerry to address the violence in Honduras directed against trade unionists and human rights defenders. And on March 14, activists with SOA Watch, which opposes the School of the Americas, where many Honduran and Central American military leaders have been trained, raised a banner in front of USAID’s headquarters in Washington reading “Stop Funding Murder in Honduras!”

“I’ve been pretty much appalled by US policy with respect to Honduras,” Lawrence Wilkerson, the former deputy to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told me when I brought OTI’s Honduras program to his attention in an interview last year. “If I could sum it up for what it’s been for so many years, that’s protecting all the criminals in power, basically for US commercial interests.”

[Guest Pud Whacker]

None of the candidates you mentioned ran a campaign line Trump or said the things Trump has said tho. Not one. Even GWB- probably the scariest modern prez we've had, didn't run a campaign like this. Idk, you can't blame me for being a little tripped out.

Yes. I see everyone getting all revved up. You must understand my delight when all I have to do is use the word TRUMP in a conversation to get everyone all riled up!!! And sit back and watch it unfold!!!

People are so easy these days!

[Ai Papi Si.]

Yes. I see everyone getting all revved up. You must understand my delight when all I have to do is use the word TRUMP in a conversation to get everyone all riled up!!! And sit back and watch it unfold!!!

People are so easy these days!

I'll be honest and say I thought he was hilarious during the primaries. I enjoyed him making an idiot out of everyone. Then May rolled around and he won the nomination. Then I started to trip.

I don't think Trump himself meant to get this far which is just pathetic.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

I'll be honest and say I thought he was hilarious during the primaries. I enjoyed him making an idiot out of everyone. Then May rolled around and he won the nomination. Then I started to trip.

I don't think Trump himself meant to get this far which is just pathetic.

I think you're right!

I said it way back when. Insulting him is like insulting Madonna. It's like throwing gasoline on a fire. It makes THEM BIGGER.

Nobody listened.

[Raider of the lost Ark]

Take it from me. I've lived through Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and nothing changes. Life still goes on.

I suppose you must live a very privileged life to say that. None of all of it seems to bother you. Many people in here have mentioned the dangers that come with a Trump presidency. Most above all, the judges he might appoint for the Supreme Court. Judges that will be there for a very long time. Do you really think civil rights are for granted? What if someone challenges some of those? And people will be stripped off their civil rights? Yes, life goes on. But what kind of life will that be?

[Ai Papi Si.]

I think you're right!

I said it way back when. Insulting him is like insulting Madonna. It's like throwing gasoline on a fire. It makes THEM BIGGER.

Nobody listened.

Ignoring him obviously didn't work either. I think the only way he's defeated is through brute humiliation.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

I suppose you must live a very privileged life to say that. None of all of it seems to bother you. Many people in here have mentioned the dangers that come with a Trump presidency. Most above all, the judges he might appoint for the Supreme Court. Judges that will be there for a very long time. Do you really think civil rights are for granted? What if someone challenges some of those? And people will be stripped off their civil rights? Yes, life goes on. But what kind of life will that be?

This is the United States of America you're talking about. Not Afghanistan.

Get with it kid.

[Guest Mauro]

I suppose you must live a very privileged life to say that. None of all of it seems to bother you. Many people in here have mentioned the dangers that come with a Trump presidency. Most above all, the judges he might appoint for the Supreme Court. Judges that will be there for a very long time. Do you really think civil rights are for granted? What if someone challenges some of those? And people will be stripped off their civil rights? Yes, life goes on. But what kind of life will that be?

You're going to attempt a serious political discussion with Pud Whacker? Just post a photo of Putin and get it over with.

[Guest Mauro]

Ignoring him obviously didn't work either. I think the only way he's defeated is through brute humiliation.

He's a sociopath, just as his ghostwriter said. Emotion to him is very complex.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

Ignoring him obviously didn't work either. I think the only way he's defeated is through brute humiliation.

He's impossible to ignore. He's DONALD TRUMP.

So nobody did.

[Ai Papi Si.]

He's a sociopath, just as his ghostwriter said. Emotion to him is very complex.

I don't play armchair psychology with Trump cuz there's just too much to work with. But he flails spectacularly when he's embarrassed. How quickly we forget Megyn Kelly.

Him losing to a woman is going to send him off the rails. The ultimate humiliation. God, I love it.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

I don't play armchair psychology with Trump cuz there's just too much to work with. But he flails spectacularly when he's embarrassed. How quickly we forget Megyn Kelly.

Him losing to a woman is going to send him off the rails. The ultimate humiliation. God, I love it.

Him losing period, I think drives him crazy. Woman or not.

[Sloane]

Him losing to a woman is going to send him off the rails. The ultimate humiliation. God, I love it.

It's almost worth voting for Hillary just to see that. Because it is true.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

It's almost worth voting for Hillary just to see that. Because it is true.

Wait, I was under the impression we were all voting for Hillary!!! No matter she had people murdered and how vile and frumpy she is!

Am I wrong?!!!

[Guest Mauro]

Michael Bloomberg is going to endorse Hillary!

[ULIZOS]

Wait, I was under the impression we were all voting for Hillary!!! No matter she had people murdered and how vile and frumpy she is!

Am I wrong?!!!

I'm not voting. The peso took a nose dive and I'm not paying for all that extra shipping and handling fees. She's not worth it and I don't care enough.

[ULIZOS]

And just for the record, I do hope the American people aren't stupid enough to choose Trump over Clinton. I despise the woman, BUT AT LEAST we all know she will do everything in her power to make sure that the country at least kind of continues down the same path (stability, pro-Israel, etc.). The country will AT LEAST not move backwards under her presidency. And even though I think people are seriously overreacting when it comes to Trump, him winning is kind of a mystery. Nobody, not even republicans, knows what will happen if he wins.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

And just for the record, I do hope the American people aren't stupid enough to choose Trump over Clinton. I despise the woman, BUT AT LEAST we all know she will do everything in her power to make sure that the country at least kind of continues down the same path (stability, pro-Israel, etc.). The country will AT LEAST not move backwards under her presidency. And even though I think people are seriously overreacting when it comes to Trump, him winning is kind of a mystery. Nobody, not even republicans, knows what will happen if he wins.

of course.

i also know im not under some stupid spell. i know who that woman is.

when i see people in here defending or making excuses for her, i just laugh. shes horrible, shes done horrible things. but she is our only choice.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

I'm not voting. The peso took a nose dive and I'm not paying for all that extra shipping and handling fees. She's not worth it and I don't care enough.

totally, that could be a vegetarian taco, man.

[ULIZOS]

This is the United States of America you're talking about. Not Afghanistan.

Get with it kid.

I love how people make it sound like people REALLY suffer in the Unite States and they're one presidency away from starving to death And, well, I guess the only choice is Hillary. She'll make sure the non-privileged don't starve to death