WOW JEB BUSH AWFUL CANDIDATE ...WHAT MS COLLINS. MISSED

WOW JEB BUSH IS AWFUL...WHAT GAIL COLLINS LEFT OUT


In an opinion piece published in the NYT by Gail Collins on May 14, 2015, "Wow Jeb Bush is Awful," Ms Collins rightfully skewers Jeb Bush as an "awful" candidate. She listed his recent fumbles and stumbles. She goes on to bewail the fact that concerned voting citizens who were rightly repelled by some of the other GOP hopefuls and hoped for Bush as an alternate might have no other choice but to vote for one of these even more repulsive candidate. She does not name these candidates but her list of  their major faux pas makes clear who they are.  She is right on this score. I was pleased to read the piece, agreeing whole heartedly with her conclusions.  But coming to the end  I was left disappointed and dispirited, like a professor reading a blue paper final test and finding the student did not answer the last and crucial part of the question.


What Gail left out was the frightening similarity we are faced with as a nation with "awful" candidates on BOTH sides of the  political spectrum. The only (so far) viable,  candidate on the left  is even more "awful".  Ms. Collins fails her "final" by not even bothering to mention the barrage of  poisonous revelations about Ms Clinton and her "Foundation".  Revelations which  should make a voter pinch their nose and turn away.

Ms Collins did not bother to characterize the candidate on the left. Perhaps the task was too daunting. Recent revelations about candidate Clinton would have gone well beyond the limits of her 1000 word column.  So let me just finish her "blue book" for her.



The blunders, faux pas and illegalities of Mrs. Clinton revealed since she finally "admitted" to her candidacy are legion. Her suspicious and off-the-legal-spectrum use of a personal email server as Secretary of State , her personally editing her emails ( then wiping clean the server) before passing them on to the Administration, the probes of shady dealing of the Clinton Foundation, and headlines from all stripes of the political spectrum were a battering that Ms Collins ignores.   A few examples of news while Ms Collins was writing her piece:°  Britebart News, May 7, 2015, "Revealed Four Clinton Foundation Trustees  Charged or Convicted...", USA Today, "Man this Clinton Foundation Seems Shady", May 5, 2015;  "The Soft Corruption of Clinton Inc." Huffington Post, May 5, 2015,  and many many more like that.



But most damaging and which should certainly eliminate the Democrat candidate from consideration is the revelations published yesterday by International Business Times, (IBT) "Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary" May 26,  2015.  (This last piece of news of course post dated Ms Collins Op Ed piece.)



IBT staff writers David Sirota and Andrew Prez document the fact that under Hillary Clinton the State Department approved $165 billion dollars worth of arms sales to 20 nations whose governments had given millions to the Clinton Foundation.  They characterize the case of the arms deals to Saudi Arabia as: "this one was enormous."  During Clinton's term, "a consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets" to SA.   The IBT authors report that, though the State Department had documented "concerns" over the sale, in late 2011 staff at State Department revealed that the deal was  "a personal  top priority" for Secretary of State Clinton.  The author's note that it was well documented that the Saudi family had contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation just prior to Hillary assuming control over the State Department and then, just two months before the jet sale deal was finalized, Boeing, the manufacturer of the planes contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The authors  delved further to discover that under Clinton's leadership the State Department approved $165 billion dollars in commercial arms sales to 20 nations the government's of which also gave money to the Clinton Foundation. An interesting and seeming incriminating fact is  that during  the three year tenure of Clinton at State the value of arms sales to those countries was nearly double the amount approved by the State Department during the same period of George Bush's second term.



Thus Ms Collins' "blue book" might have ended with the conclusion that our nation is faced with a terrible dilemma..on one hand a group of radical ideologues too far to the right for the mass of   American voter, and a self proclaimed "populist" centrist who has so much baggage, and evidence of "soft"corruption to make the outlook for her presidency a horror of constant investigations and gridlock that she can not be seriously considered for the post.



Perhaps Ms Collins might have also asked..."how did we get our nation to such a juncture?" And how can we possibly extricate ourselves from looming political and electoral disaster?