Vetting Hillary

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” 
  – Virginia Woolf                    

The coronation of Hillary Rodham as presidential nominee for 2016 is proceeding apace if the debate schedule provides any evidence. The first Democrat “debate” is scheduled for 13 October. So far there are only two and a half candidates, so the events might best be called the Hillary and Bernie hour. 

With only five debates scheduled, a coalition of the usual network suspects is in line au gauche starting with CNN in October and ending with PBS in early Spring.

Fillers between the progressive network bookends include ABC, CBS, NBC, and Univision. Rumor has it that Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and Chris Matthews might come in off the bench if needed. Indeed, J. A. “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera could pinch hit for Univision should Mrs. Clinton stub her toe on illegals, anchor babies, crime, or Mexican drug culture.

Still, there are now a few doubts about Hillary’s nomination and more than a few questions about her electability. Nonetheless, short of a criminal indictment, she will probably make it to the Democrat debates.

In the spirit of the transparency so often promised in the Obama era, the following list of voter questions are recommended to media panelists. Given the sympathies of the interlocutors, however, there is no expectation that these questions will be asked or answered.

                            On Women’s Issues

 Mrs. Clinton:

Your husband’s staff created the neologism “bimbo eruptions” to describe Bill’s affairs at the Arkansas State House and the White House. If “bimbo” is a fair characterization of your husband’s lady friends, what would you call a woman who tolerates, enables, or excuses a philanderer?

Do you think elected officials should risk the dignity of high office or the integrity of security officers (State Police and Secret Service) to solicit or exploit naive and vulnerable girls?

Perhaps you are aware that the Secret Service has been used as cover for sexual escapades of former presidents that include Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and now your husband.  Will that practice continue if and when a woman becomes president?

Will your husband have female interns as helpers or assistants in a Hillary Rodham White House?

Do you still think a presidential dalliance is a private matter, therefore protected, behavior?

If extra-marital sex is a private or protected behavior, should lying about such affairs before a grand jury be considered perjury?

Has your husband’s license to practice law been restored in any state?

By any fair assessment of recent history, your husband and Huma Abedin’s spouse are serial predators and/or serial flashers respectively. What role will these men have in a Hillary Clinton campaign or White House?

If Donald Trump’s rhetoric is abusive, how should we describe your husband’s, or Anthony Wiener’s, actual behavior with women?

Are Bill and Tony “ill” in some clinical sense or are there larger moral, character, or judgement issues in play with these men?

Do you or your husband still believe that you are victims of a “vast right wing” conspiracy?

                            On Foreign Policy

Mrs. Clinton:

In the Obama era, the Israeli PM came to the US on more than a dozen occasions. During the same period, President Obama traveled to Israel once. Will isolation and sanction of Israel continue in your administration?

What do you think of the BDS movement or any boycott of Israel for that matter?

Do you believe that Obama era hostility towards Israel has contributed to the rise of antisemitism and attacks upon Jews globally?

Women are still abducted, abused, bought, sold, traded, raped, stoned, mutilated, and beheaded; especially by American “partners” in Arab and Muslim states. What specifically, besides rhetoric at the UN, have you or your predecessors at the State Department done to help abused women abroad?

Do you think that Russian nationalism is a bigger problem than Islamic imperialism? Isn’t the former a local problem and the latter a global threat?

Do you think NATO expansion in Europe is a good idea?

How, specifically, does Russophobia or a resuscitated Cold War serve American interests?

Russia and Israel have been isolated and sanctioned in the Clinton/Obama era. Why are there no comparable sanctions for the host of Muslim nation states (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are examples) that supply jihadists to kill Americans, Jews, and Christians in the name of God and Islam?

Do you think Russia’s Putin is a bigger threat to America  than Mexico’s Guzman or the Islamic State’s Baghdadi?

Do you remember your now famous victory dance in Libya after the summary execution of Gaddafi? What responsibility are you willing to take for the Libyan collapse and subsequent Benghazi atrocity?

Gloating in Libya

Do you still consider ongoing events in North Africa and the Levant an “Arab Spring” or a “Jasmine Revolution?”

The Obama administration is signing agreements instead of treaties with repressive Islamic theocracies, pariah states like Iran? Is an “agreement” more enforceable? How will this work in a Clinton White House?

If the nuclear “deal” with the ayatollahs is designed to insure or prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, can you explain the “insurance” provisions in detail?

Some have suggested that any agreement with Iran is a game of “kick the can.” As President, what is the Hillary game plan to deal with any Persian recidivism?

UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s world view has been described charitably as “humanitarian” intervention and elsewhere as imperial democracy – aka “regime change.” How would you characterize a decade of botched US interventions?

How do you reconcile values like national “sovereignty” and US schemes to undermine regimes in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and elsewhere?

As president, will you formally recognize the Armenian genocide in Turkey?

You must be aware by now that American aircraft and weapons are being used by Turkey to kill Kurds in Iraq and Syria? How do you justify NATO attacks against our one reliable Muslim ally in the Levant?

Has NSA done a formal security risk assessment on your use of “private” servers while you were Secretary of State?

As a cabinet officer, how does your personal convenience trump national security?

Couldn’t NSA or the Intelligence Community provide copies of your “personal” server emails to the FBI and Congress?

Will you make such a request, to DCI James Clapper, in order to put this matter behind you?

                           On Domestic Policy

Mrs. Clinton:

Do you consider drug felonies non-violent crimes? If drugs destroy individual lives, imperil families, neighborhoods, and communities; how is any of this “non-violent?”

Do you favor amnesty and/or early release for so-called non-violent American drug lords?

Donald Trump has proposed to build a barrier on the Mexican border to control illegal immigration. What is your plan to control illegals?

Mr. Trump also claims that Mexico is exporting criminals to the United States. American prisons now house nearly 400,000 felons who were born in Mexico, indeed, as much as a third of the American prison population. If facts matter, prison demographics support Trump’s claim. Is Mexico exporting crime and felons to America?

The world’s most notorious and homicidal drug lord, “El Chapo” Guzman, has had a least two anchor babies in Los Angeles. Do you think the wives or girlfriends of Mexican felons should have the same rights as legal visitors and legal immigrants?

Do you consider Guzman a “violent” drug offender?

American debt and deficits have reached record highs under Mr. Obama. If we can assume “growth,” as a solution, is off the table for the near term, what’s your plan?

Do you ever consider restraint or austerity as a solution to profligate spending?

Can you name two failed federal programs, or Federal departments, that you would cashier in the name of reform or cost effectiveness?

Why is increased funding the knee-jerk solution to all ineffective or failed federal programs? When government rewards failure, what is the incentive for change, improvement, or reform?

Do any federal programs ever have an expiration date?

The Obama administration has invested treasure and the First Lady’s prestige on pre-school, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack programs. The most expensive public school system in the world, especially in urban areas, is pretty much a consensus failure and more than half the food served in public schools now goes in the trash. What is your solution for such incompetence and waste?

The police seem to have become the enemy in the Obama era. What is the more important problem here, social pathology in minority communities or law enforcement in those troubled neighborhoods?

Can you tell me how many black men, women, and children were killed by other black men in 2014?

If not, could you tell us the 2015 homicide rate, and the race of perps and victims, in Washington, DC alone this year?

Isn’t the District of Columbia, after all, President Obama’s back yard?

Why isn’t the nation’s capital, of all American cities, an urban role model for the rest of America?

Do you think the District of Columbia should be a state?

                      One last personal question

We would like to end a personal note, Mrs. Clinton, if you don’t mind. Have you or your husband ever considered yourselves role models for youngsters who might aspire to careers in politics or public service?

Thank you and good luck.