by Stephen Lendman

All US presidential cycles are money controlled corrupted processes with no legitimacy whatever. Voters have no say despite believing otherwise.

They naively think electing new bums replacing old ones improves things. Their choices are among an array of long ago bought and paid for candidates supporting what most harms them.

The late Gore Vidal said "(b)y the time a (candidate) gets to be presidential material, (he or she has) been bought ten times over."

"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party (with) two right wings: Republican and Democrat," he explained.

Hillary Clinton perhaps represents the worst choice among an array of aspirants looking more like a police lineup. Previous articles explained her warmongering lust for endless conflicts. She's unabashedly hawkish.

As first lady, she urged husband Bill to bomb Belgrade. Yugoslavia's rape and pillage followed. As a New York senator, she supported Bush's war on Afghanistan. As Secretary of State, she urged escalating it.

She backed lawless aggression on Iraq based entirely on Big Lies. Her supportive Senate remarks included baseless fabrications about Saddam "continu(ing) to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and (efforts) to keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." She got the war she wanted.

She backed military intervention to topple Libya's Gaddafi. She urged more extensive drone bombings. She promoted war to oust Syria's Assad.

She favors nuclear weapons use. She calls them peacekeeping deterrents. She wants US-dominated NATO used more aggressively.

Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk contributed at least $8.6 million to the Clinton Global Initiative - involved in "moderniz(ing) Ukraine" to harden fascist rule.

She's hostile to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and other independent countries.

She urges more heavily arming Kiev fascists than already for continued war on Donbass freedom fighters wanting democratic governance everyone deserves.

As first lady, New York senator and Secretary of State, she's been ideologically hardline - pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist, anti-labor.

As presidential aspirant, she's selling a different image. Whether enough people buy it to get her nominated and elected remains to be seen. It's a long time to November 2016. A lot can happen between now and then to derail her outsized ambitions.

On June 13, she launched her campaign in New York - at Roosevelt Island's Four Freedoms Park, wrapping her candidacy in FDR's New Deal.

As first lady, she supported so-called welfare reform signed into law by husband Bill - gutting social safety net protection for families with dependent children established in the 1930s.

Her rhetoric belies her hardline agenda - the same one duopoly power in Washington espoused for decades, notably post-9/11.

Days earlier at the New School for Social Research in New York, she sounded more Republican than self-styled populist saying:

"I want to be the small business president, and I mean it. And throughout this campaign I’m going to be talking about how we empower entrepreneurs with less red tape, easier access to capital, tax relief and simplification."

Like Washington's bipartisan criminal class, she favors stimulating economic growth by corporate tax cuts and other business friendly measures.

She has no program to address mass unemployment, underemployment or reduce poverty. Nothing to stop continued offshoring of US jobs to low-wage countries. Nothing to help ordinary Americans most in need.

Monied interests can feel safe in her hands - her underlying message despite its pseudo-populist rhetoric. As president, socialism for the rich and powerful contrasted with neoliberal harshness for most others will be the centerpiece of her agenda - along with continued endless war of aggression for wealth and dominance.

She shamelessly calls corporate tax cuts, credits and other handouts "the best anti-poverty program" - creating the illusion they stimulate jobs creation. They don't. They're used for self-serving interests.

Clinton exclusively supports Wall Street, war profiteers and other corporate favorites at the expense of serving everyone equitably and fairly - wrapped in disingenuous pseudo-populist rhetoric, pure demagoguery masking her business as usual agenda.

She urges gutting Medicare and Social Security - bedrock retirement programs financed by payroll taxes saving millions of seniors from deep poverty, deprivation and despair, including being unable to afford vital healthcare when most needed.

"It's time to stop having debates over the small stuff and focus on how we're going to tackle the big stuff together," she blustered - code language for waging war on social justice.

She's against a minimum living wage, job protections, helping America's most disadvantaged, programs to lift them out of poverty and other measures real populists support.

Electing her next year assures worse than ever business as usual - a toxic agenda most people everywhere deplore.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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