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Dec 13, 2019 | www.unz.com
G. Poulin , says: December 11, 2019 at 9:37 pm GMT
So if propaganda is so easy and effective, remind me again why democracy is such a great idea?El Dato , says: December 12, 2019 at 6:00 am GMT@G. Poulin You have two choices:Johan , says: December 12, 2019 at 11:49 pm GMT1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)
2) Being "managed" on behalf of various power centers. This can be liveable or can turn into strip mining of your "resources".Sadly, there is no algorithm that allows you to detect whether your are engaged or are being engaged on behalf of others. That would be easy. But one should start with a minimal state, hard money and the sons of the upper crust on the front lines and forbidden from taking office in government.
That being said, this article is a bit meandering. Came for Bellingcat but was confused.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist Chris Hedges.
Maximum Clown World.
@El Dato "1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)"There are no revolutions by means of pitchforks in a democracy, everything is weakened by compromise, false promises, infiltration, manipulation, etc. You cannot stay angry all the time too, it is very bad for your health, it needs to be short and intense to be effective, which is exactly what democracy prevents.
Democracy turns you into a petted animal.
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
From J.D. Vance's appearance last night on Tucker Carlson Tonight Vance has just said that the donor elites of the GOP are out of touch with the party's base. More:
CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters very well.
VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I don't like the Democratic Party's policies.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to serve those voters.
Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children. They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years? I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively, I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks. But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots, the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they realize who their own voters are.
Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.
CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect them.
VANCE: Yes.
CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."
VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives in D.C. I know you live in D.C.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican candidates these days.
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Apr 30, 2018 | www.wsws.org
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare. Elissa Slotkin
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
CNN's "State of the Union" program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a "career civil servant." However, the Jones for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, "Gina entered the US Air Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy" (the last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).
According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as "senior advisor for trade enforcement," a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the Trump administration.
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Apr 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
loveyajimbo , 3 hours ago link
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper for their obvious major felonies.
And YES... he could have.
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Dec 28, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
likbez 12.27.19 at 10:21 pm
John,I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
See discussion of this issue by Professor Ganesh Sitaraman in his recent article (based on his excellent book The Great Democracy ) https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the "soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups, such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals, etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
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Apr 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Former Vice President Joe Biden has released a video statement telling the American people that the accusations he is now facing of touching women in inappropriate ways without their consent is the product of changing "social norms", assuring everyone that he will indeed be adjusting to those changes.
And thank goodness. For a minute there, I was worried Biden might cave under the pressure of a looming scandal and decline to run for president on the grounds that it could cripple his campaign and leave America facing another four years of Donald Trump. Here are nine good reasons why I hope Joe Biden runs for president, and why you should support him too:
1. It's his turn.It's Biden's turn to be president. He's spent years playing second fiddle while other leading Democrats hogged all the limelight, and that's not fair. He's been waiting very patiently. Come on.
2. Most Qualified Candidate Ever.If Joe Biden secures the Democratic Party nomination for president, he would be the Most Qualified Candidate Ever to run for office. His service as a US Senator and a Vice President has given him unparalleled experience priming him for the most powerful elected office in the world. Everything Biden has done throughout his entire career proves that he'd make a great Commander-in-Chief.
3. He's closely associated with a popular Democratic president.You think Biden, you think Obama. You think Obama, you think greatness. You can't spend that much time with a great Democratic president without absorbing his greatness yourself. It's called osmosis.
4. You liked Obama, didn't you?Biden was part of the Obama administration. Remember the Obama administration? It was magical, right? If you want more of that, vote Biden.
5. But Trump!Do you want Trump to win the next election? You know he'll shatter all our norms and literally end the world if he does, right? You should be terrified of the possibility of Trump winning in 2020, and if you are, you should want him running against Joe Biden. What's the alternative? Nominating some crazy unelectable socialist like Bernie Sanders? Might as well just hand Trump the victory now, then. Anyone who wants to beat Trump must fall in line behind the Most Qualified Candidate Ever.
6. Iraq wasn't so bad.Okay, maybe some of his past foreign policy positions look bad in hindsight, but come on. Pushing for the Iraq war was what everyone was doing back in those days. It was all the rage. We all made it through, right? I mean, most of us?
7. This is happening whether you like it or not.We're doing this. We're going to push Joe Biden through whether you like it or not, and we can do it the easy way or the hard way. Just relax, take deep breaths, and think about a nice place far away from here. Don't struggle. This will be over before you know it. We'll use plenty of lube.
8. Just vote for him.Just vote for him, you insolent little shits. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You think you're entitled to a bunch of ponies and unicorns like healthcare and drinkable water? You only think that because you're a bunch of racist, sexist homophobes. You will vote for who we tell you to or we'll spend the next four years calling you all Russian agents and screaming about Susan Sarandon.
9. Nothing could possibly go wrong.Honestly, what could possibly go wrong? It's not like the Most Qualified Candidate Ever could manage to lose an election to some oafish reality TV star. Hell, Biden could beat Trump in his sleep. He could even skip campaigning in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and still win by a landslide, because those states are in the bag. There's no way he could fail, barring some unprecedented and completely unforeseeable freak occurrences from way out of left field that nobody could possibly have anticipated.
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Dec 30, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
You can hear echoes of progressive realism in the statements of leading progressive lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna. They have put ending America's support for the Saudi war on Yemen near the top of the progressive foreign policy agenda. On the stump, Sanders now singles out the military-industrial complex and the runaway defense budget for criticism. He promises, among other things, that "we will not continue to spend $700 billion a year on the military." These are welcome developments. Yet since November of 2016, something else has emerged alongside the antiwar component of progressive foreign policy that is not so welcome. Let's call it neoprogressive internationalism, or neoprogressivism for short.
Trump's administration brought with it the Russia scandal. To attack the president and his administration, critics revived Cold War attitudes. This is now part of the neoprogressive foreign policy critique. It places an "authoritarian axis" at its center. Now countries ruled by authoritarians, nationalists, and kleptocrats can and must be checked by an American-led crusade to make the world safe for progressive values. The problem with this neoprogressive narrative of a world divided between an authoritarian axis and the liberal West is what it will lead to: ever spiraling defense budgets, more foreign adventures, more Cold Wars -- and hot ones too.
Unfortunately, Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have adopted elements of the neoprogressive program. At a much remarked upon address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the site of Churchill's 1946 address, Sanders put forth a vision of a Manichean world. Instead of a world divided by the "Iron Curtain" of Soviet Communism, Sanders sees a world divided between right-wing authoritarians and the forces of progress embodied by American and Western European progressive values.
"Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe, including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win."
A year later, Sanders warned that the battle between the West and an "authoritarian axis" which is "committed to tearing down a post-Second World War global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth." Sanders calls this "a global struggle of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the -- economically, socially and environmentally -- is at stake."
Sanders's focus on this authoritarian axis is one that is shared with his intraparty rivals at the Center for American Progress (a think-tank long funded by some of the least progressive regimes on the planet), which he has pointedly criticized for smearing progressive Democrats like himself. CAP issued a report last September about "the threat presented by opportunist authoritarian regimes" which "urgently requires a rapid response."
The preoccupation with the authoritarian menace is one Sanders and CAP share with prominent progressive activists who warn about the creeping influence of what some have cynically hyped as an "authoritarian Internationale."
Cold War Calling
Senator Warren spelled out her foreign policy vision in a speech at American University in November 2018. Admirably, she criticized Saudi Arabia's savage war on Yemen, the defense industry, and neoliberal free trade agreements that have beggared the American working and middle classes.
"Foreign policy," Warren has said, "should not be run exclusively by the Pentagon." In the second round of the Democratic primary debates, Warren also called for a nuclear "no first use" policy.
And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats (Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here in the United States and around the world."
Warren also sees a rising tide of corrupt authoritarians "from Hungary to Turkey, from the Philippines to Brazil," where "wealthy elites work together to grow the state's power while the state works to grow the wealth of those who remain loyal to the leader."
The concern with the emerging authoritarian tide has become a central concern of progressive writers and thinkers. "Today, around the world," write progressive foreign policy activists Kate Kinzer and Stephen Miles, "growing authoritarianism and hate are fueled by oligarchies preying on economic, gender, and racial inequality."
Daniel Nexon, a progressive scholar of international relations, believes that "progressives must recognize that we are in a moment of fundamental crisis, featuring coordination among right-wing movements throughout the West and with the Russian government as a sponsor and supporter."
Likewise, The Nation 's Jeet Heer lays the blame for the rise of global authoritarianism at the feet of Vladimir Putin, who "seems to be pushing for an international alt-right, an informal alliance of right-wing parties held together by a shared xenophobia."
Blithely waving away concerns over sparking a new and more dangerous Cold War between the world's two nuclear superpowers, Heer advises that "the dovish left shouldn't let Cold War nightmares prevent them [from] speaking out about it." He concludes: "Leftists have to be ready to battle [Putinism] in all its forms, at home and abroad."
The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy."
Likewise, we are seeing the emergence of an "authoritarian school" which posits that the internal political dynamics of regimes such as Putin's cause them, ineffably, to follow revanchist, expansionist foreign policies.
Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context, history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian" nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis.
By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies allegedly don't fight wars against one another.
Yet as Richard Sakwa, a British scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, writes, "it is often assumed that Russia is critical of the West because of its authoritarian character, but it cannot be taken for granted that a change of regime would automatically make the country align with the West."
George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad policy.
True, some of the economic trends voters in Europe and South America are reacting to are global, but a diagnosis that links together the rise of Putin and Xi, the elections of Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, and Kaczyński in Poland with the right-wing insurgency movements of the Le Pens in France and Farage in the UK makes little sense.
Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a mistake.
Echoes of Neoconservatism
The progressive foreign policy organization Win Without War includes among its 10 foreign policy goals "ending economic, racial and gender inequality around the world." The U.S., according to WWW, "must safeguard universal human rights to dignity, equality, migration and refuge."
Is it a noble sentiment? Sure. But it's every bit as unrealistic as the crusade envisioned by George W. Bush in his second inaugural address, in which he declared, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
We know full well where appeals to "universal values" have taken us in the past. Such appeals are not reliable guides for progressives if they seek to reverse the tide of unchecked American intervention abroad. But maybe we should consider whether it's a policy of realism and restraint that they actually seek. Some progressive thinkers are at least honest enough to admit as much that it is not. Nexon admits that "abandoning the infrastructure of American international influence because of its many minuses and abuses will hamstring progressives for decades to come." In other words, America's hegemonic ambitions aren't in and of themselves objectionable or self-defeating, as long as we achieve our kind of hegemony. Progressive values crusades bear more than a passing resemblance to the neoconservative crusades to remake the world in the American self-image.
"Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now."
Neoprogressivism, like neoconservatism, risks catering to the U.S. establishment's worst impulses by playing on a belief in American exceptionalism to embark upon yet another global crusade. This raises some questions, including whether a neoprogressive approach to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, or Libya would be substantively different from the liberal interventionist approach of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Does a neoprogressive foreign policy organized around the concept of an "authoritarian axis" adequately address the concerns of voters in the American heartland who disproportionately suffer from the consequences of our wars and neoliberal economic policies? It was these voters, after all, who won the election for Trump.
Donald Trump's failure to keep his campaign promise to bring the forever wars to a close while fashioning a new foreign policy oriented around core U.S. national security interests provides Democrats with an opportunity. By repeatedly intervening in Syria, keeping troops in Afghanistan, kowtowing to the Israelis and Saudis, ratcheting up tensions with Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China, Trump has ceded the anti-interventionist ground he occupied when he ran for office. He can no longer claim the mantle of restraint, a position that found support among six-in-ten Americans in 2016.
Yet with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, for the most part the Democratic field is offering voters a foreign policy that amounts to "Trump minus belligerence." A truly progressive foreign policy must put questions of war and peace front and center. Addressing America's post 9/11 failures, military overextension, grotesquely bloated defense budget, and the ingrained militarism of our political-media establishment are the proper concerns of a progressive U.S. foreign policy.
But it is one that would place the welfare of our own citizens above all. As such, what is urgently required is the long-delayed realization of a peace dividend. The post-Cold War peace dividend that was envisioned in the early 1990s never materialized. Clinton's secretary of defense Les Aspin strangled the peace dividend in its crib by keeping the U.S. military on a footing that would allow it to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously. Unipolar fantasies of "full spectrum dominance" would come later in the decade.
One might have reasonably expected an effort by the Obama administration to realize a post-bin Laden peace dividend, but the forever wars dragged on and on. In a New Yorker profile from earlier this year, Sanders asked the right question: "Do we really need to spend more than the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids can't afford to go to college?"
The answer is obvious. And yet, how likely is it that progressives will be able realize their vision of a more just, more equal American society if we have to mobilize to face a global authoritarian axis led by Russia and China?
FDR's Good Neighbor Policy
The unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade is well behind us now. As the world becomes more and more multipolar, powers like China, Russia, Iran, India, and the U.S. will find increasing occasion to clash. A peaceful multipolar world requires stability. And stability requires balance.
In the absence of stability, none of the goods progressives see as desirable can take root. This world order would put a premium on stability and security rather than any specific set of values. An ethical, progressive foreign policy is one which understands that great powers have security interests of their own. "Spheres of influence" are not 19th century anachronisms, but essential to regional security: in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere.
It is a policy that would reject crusades to spread American values the world over. "The greatest thing America can do for the rest of the world," George Kennan once observed, "is to make a success of what it is doing here on this continent and to bring itself to a point where its own internal life is one of harmony, stability and self-assurance."
Progressive realism doesn't call for global crusades that seek to conquer the hearts and minds of others. It is not bound up in the hoary self-mythology of American Exceptionalism. It is boring. It puts a premium on the value of human life. It foreswears doing harm so that good may come. It is not a clarion call in the manner of John F. Kennedy who pledged to "to pay any price, bear any burden." It does not lend itself to the cheap moralizing of celebrity presidential speechwriters. In ordinary language, a summation of such a policy would go something like: "we will bear a reasonable price as long as identifiable U.S. security interests are at stake."
A policy that seeks to wind down the global war on terror, slash the defense budget, and shrink our global footprint won't inspire. It will, however, save lives. Such a policy has its roots in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address. "In the field of World policy," said Roosevelt, "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a World of neighbors."
What came to be known as the "Good Neighbor" policy was further explicated by FDR's Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the Montevideo Conference in 1933, when he stated that "No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." Historian David C. Hendrickson sees this as an example of FDR's principles of "liberal pluralism," which included "respect for the integrity and importance of other states" and "non-intervention in the domestic affairs of neighboring states."
These ought to serve as the foundations on which to build a truly progressive foreign policy. They represent a return to the best traditions of the Democratic Party and would likely resonate with those very same blocs of voters that made up the New Deal coalition that the neoliberal iteration of the Democratic Party has largely shunned but will sorely need in order to unseat Trump. And yet, proponents of a neoprogressive foreign policy seem intent on running away from a popular policy of realism and restraint on which Trump has failed to deliver.
James W. Carden is contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation and a member of the Board of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.
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Dec 29, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Despite fond youthful memories of Bill Clinton/Kenneth Starr/Monica Lewinsky jokes on late-night television, my interest in the current impeachment saga can pretty much be summed up as follows: "Get back to me when they launch an impeachment inquiry over Yemen ." Watching the House vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump while barely stifling a yawn over the Afghanistan Papers does little to alter my skepticism about this constitutional crisis built for cable news.
Progressive commentator Michael Tracey offered this apt summary of Washington's bizarre priorities: "This last week teaches us that temporarily freezing and then unfreezing future military aid to one of our many far-flung client states is [a] huge national emergency but the government systematically lying about every aspect of the longest war in U.S. history is a forgettable non-issue."
Nobody will be impeached for lying about Afghanistan. There will be no intelligence community whistleblower setting in motion an impeachment inquiry over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, the same Nancy Pelosi who ultimately caved to the Resistance shut down antiwar Democrats who wanted such hearings into George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But here John Bolton, an advocate of preventive presidential war during this very administration, may finally get his wish of being greeted as a liberator .
Even as Representative Adam Schiff led the drive to impeach Trump, the California Democrat voted for a defense bill that lavishes the executive branch with money without restraining presidential war powers. But this seeming inconsistency is practically the point -- the entire impeachment inquiry was wrapped in hawkish assumptions and rhetoric as liberal Democrats unthinkingly stumbled into a Cold War 2.0 mindset that few of them this side of Hillary Clinton would have willingly embraced absent frequently overhyped Trump-Russia headlines dating back to the 2016 campaign.
No, Trump isn't Jesus Christ being handed over by Pontius Pilate. His phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasn't " perfect " and neither side of this partisan morality tale has exactly covered itself in glory. Rudy Giuliani's escapades seem particularly likely to end badly. One need not even necessarily defend Trump's conduct to oppose an impeachment inquiry largely predicated on threat inflation. Arm Ukraine, Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan testified, so they can "fight the Russians there and we don't have to fight them here." She could have been starring in a Democratic reboot of Red Dawn decades after the Soviet Union disintegrated.
There's no question Trump to some extent dangled a White House visit and congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine before Kyiv in pursuit of the talking point that Joe Biden was under investigation. The only matters in dispute are how determined the effort was, whether Trump's motives were at least partially publicly spirited, the degree of the Bidens' shadiness, and why the aid was ultimately disbursed (Byron York makes the case that it wasn't necessarily because of the whistleblower).
House Democrats began with a presumption of corrupt intent on all counts and a definition of foreign election interference elastic enough to include Trump utterances about WikiLeaks and Hillary's deleted emails but not Ukraine's (smaller, less systematic and arguably less effective than Russia's) 2016 influence campaign . And while not all investigations are created equal -- if Hunter Biden's business dealings are to be probed, it should not be as a favor to any president -- the impeachment inquiry itself is an investigation of a political rival, who was also investigated during his previous campaign .
If shortcuts were taken in the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, the origins of Trump-Ukraine resemble a template for undermining any seriously antiwar or civil libertarian president. Trump is not that president himself, of course -- his acquiescence to the Beltway blob on lethal military aid is precisely what increased his leverage over Ukraine -- but some plausible and even the occasional Republican could be. Trump's mild rhetorical dissents on foreign policy are clearly a factor in why he has reason to be suspicious of his own subordinates (it's also why it is disingenuous to suggest that replacing Trump with Mike Pence is no different than replacing Bill Clinton with ideologically identical Al Gore or that people who have worked for Bush, Cheney or John McCain would have no reason to oppose Trump).
Many Democrats sincerely believed they were impeaching Trump for the least of his crimes, like Al Capone and tax evasion, and that Robert Mueller let him escape last time. They are also making a case against Trump's ability to separate personal and national interests in a way that speaks to his fitness for the office, with Ukraine merely being their specific example. But in doing so, they are also ratifying a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has failed the American people, and that's bigger than any one president.
W. James Antle III is the editor of The American Conservative.
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Dec 29, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
Tulsi Gabbard: Quo Vadis?
Alligator Ed on Wed, 12/25/2019 - 11:02pm After bravely contesting a nomination she knows she cannot win, Tulsi Gabbard has and continues to exhibit a tenacious adherence to achievement of purpose. What is that purpose? I believe it is evident if you only let your eyes see and your ears hear. Listen to what she says. Looks at what she does.
Humble surroundings. Real people. Good food.
What this does is obvious. However, please forgive me if I proceed to explain the meaning. People see what apparently is her home milieu. I've been to Filipino homes for dinner as many of my nurse friends were Filipino. Tulsi is so human. Despite Hindu belief, she is respectful to the presence and perhaps the essence of Jesus, and does not sound pandering or hypocritical.
Getting to know Tulsi at the beginning of her hoped-for (by me) political ascendancy. Get in on almost the ground floor of what will become an extremely powerful force in future American life.
Why? What's the hurry?
The more support and the earlier Tulsi receives it propel the campaign. That's what momentum means: a self-generating growing strength.
One doesn't have to be a Tulsi supporter to hopefully receive some ideas which may not have occurred to you. This essay does not concern any specific Gabbard policy. What I write here is what I perceive of her character and thus her selected path. Mind-reading, perhaps. Arm-chair speculation, possibly.
Tulsi has completed phase 2A in her career. The little that I know of her early life, especially politically (such as how she voted in HI state legislature) limits a deep understanding which such knowledge would provide. As the tree is bent, etc.
- Phase 1A: youth, formative years, military
- Phase 1B: state legislature
- Phase 1C: Congress
- Phase 2B and possibly subsequent: interim between Congress and Presidential campaigning with realistic chance of victory.
We are in Phase 2B. Tulsi, as I wrote in another essay, is letting the tainted shroud of Democrat corruption fall off her shoulders without any effort of her own. The Democrat party is eating itself alive. It is all things to all people at once. That is a philosophy incapable of satisfaction.
Omni Democraticorundum in tres partes est (pardon the reference to the opening of Caesar's Gallic Wars, with liberal substitution by me).
The Dems trifurcate and the division will be neither pleasant nor reconcilable. Tribalism will be reborn after Trump crushes whomever in 2020.
Tribe one: urban/techno/überkinden.
Tribe two: leftward bound to a place where no politician has ever ventured. Not socialism. Not Communism. We could call it Fantasy Land, although I fear Disney owns that name.
Tribe three: progressive realists. By using such positive wording, you will correctly suspect my bias as to which Tribe I belong to.
Once again, policy will not be discussed. Only strategy and reality. Can't have good strategy without a good grasp of reality. This is why Establidems are bereft of thematic variability. For the past 3.3 years, they have been singing from a hymn book containing but one song. You know the title. Orange Man Bad. Yeah, that's it. If they don't like that title, we establidems have another song for ya. It's called Orange Man Bad. Like that one, huh? Wazzat, ya didn't like the song the first time. Hey, we thought the song would grown on you.
Them Dems, noses up, can't see the sidewalk. Oops. Stepped in something there, huh? Oh, yeah like the Impeachment.
But I digress: The latter part of Phase 2B is not clear. Tulsi will continue to accept small donor contributions, even after not obtaining the nomination next year. Public appearances will be important but should be low key with little press attention. Press attention is something however that won't be available when most desirable. What else Tulsi will do may be to form a nucleus of like-minded activists, thinkers, and other supporters to promote an agenda for a more liberal, tolerant society.
If the Dem Party is going to be kaput . . .Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 2:05pm. . . ah, never mind.
Don't be surprised if even Warren will fail to gather the 15% of votes needed in each early primary state to get awarded any delegates.
It's gonna Biden vs Bernie.
Bernie or Dust. Or she who shall not be named in which case even worse (and I don't mean Tulsi).
edit/add: Well, lookee here, hot off the presses as it were:
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/26/can-bernie-sanders-win-2020-ele...from your citation: If Sanders' candidacy ....Wally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 3:08pmIf Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked well for anyone," Pfeiffer said.What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only two things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.The reference was to 2020Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 3:55pm. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about a month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point memos, have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape survivors. Of course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it ain't Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have pretty much completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable? Not for me. Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last go round absent a Bernie miracle.
If Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked well for anyone," Pfeiffer said.
What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only two things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.Tulsi's support if Bernie's not nominatedWally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 5:17pm@Wally She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about a month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point memos, have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape survivors. Of course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it ain't Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have pretty much completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable? Not for me. Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last go round absent a Bernie miracle.
I don't think anyone other than Bernie or Yang would want Tulsiby Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 6:28pm. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she never and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy record regarding domestic affairs.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
She was working her way up the food chainwokkamile on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 5:29pm@Wally That's what intelligent predators do.
. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she never and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy record regarding domestic affairs.
Well, she wouldn'tby Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 6:30pm@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would feel comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone but Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a Neutral Party.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not campaign otherwise.
She IS finished as a DemWally on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 8:38pm@wokkamile Her dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
#2.1.1.1.1.1 #2.1.1.1.1.1 be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would feel comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone but Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a Neutral Party.
Will Tulsi win any delegates?Alligator Ed on Thu, 12/26/2019 - 9:40pmDon't forget that 15% state threshold for eligibility to be awarded delegates.
#2.1.1.1.1.1.2 Her dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
My crystal ball has developed cataractsWally on Fri, 12/27/2019 - 6:54am@Wally Thus my powers of predicting the future have dimmed accordingly. But two things haven't dimmed:
1. It is readily apparent that the DNC won't let Bernie win. They'll rob him of votes in CA (100% probability) and NY (95% probability), etc.
2. The Demonrats will get destroyed in 2020 up and down ballot except in the fiefdoms of Californicate and Ny-no-nah-nah.
What, pray good Sir, do you predict or is that an impossibility at this time?
Don't forget that 15% state threshold for eligibility to be awarded delegates.
I certainly won't be surprised if Bernie gets cheated or worseI will be surprised if Tulsi gets so much as one delegate.
More than a few knowledgeable people think he has a very good shot of winning California. I am less optimistic about NYS but I think he will do well enough to get a good number of delegates especially if he does well in the earlier primaries (NYS comes April 28).
I don't feel solidly about making any kind of predictions at this point but given the nature of the Democratic Party, I don't see it as falling into oblivion anytime soon or in our lifetimes.
As far as Bernie goes, I am not optimistic but I still have some hope. I still fervantly believe that his candidacy is the best chance we will have in our lifetimes of bringing about any substantial change -- and if he and his critical mass of supporters can't pull it off this time around, we're all phluckled big time, even alligators, in terms of combating climate change and putting a kabosh on endless wars. I wish you good future luck with Tulsi though. I just don't see it. But I've been wrong on more than one occasion in my life.
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Dec 26, 2019 | twitter.com
Robespierre Garçon 5:43 PM - 25 Dec 2019
I don't think Warren is a stalking horse for neoliberalism or whatever, but her inability to fight back against bad press (combined with her occasional baffling decisions to give herself bad press) is a big mark against her candidacy. There will be bad press for either of them.
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Dec 25, 2019 | www.nationalreview.com
The only real check left is impeachment. It is rarely invoked and (until very recently) has atrophied as a credible threat. But that doesn't make it any less indispensable.
The problem was exacerbated by the Clinton impeachment fiasco, which history has proved foolhardy. (I supported it at the time, but I was a government lawyer then, not a public commentator.) Republicans were sufficiently spooked by the experience that they seemed to regard impeachment as obsolete. Faithless Execution countered that this was the wrong lesson to take from the affair. Clinton's impeachment was a mistake because (a) his conduct, though disgraceful and indicative of unfitness, did not implicate the core responsibilities of the presidency; and more significantly, (b) the public, though appalled by the behavior, strongly opposed Clinton's removal. The right lesson was that impeachment must be reserved for grave misconduct that involves the president's essential Article II duties; and that because impeachment is so deeply divisive, it should never be launched in the absence of a public consensus that transcends partisan lines.
This is why, unlike many opponents of President Trump's impeachment, I have never questioned the legitimacy of the Democratic-controlled House's investigations of misconduct allegations against the president. I believe the House must act as a body (investigations should not be partisan attacks under the guise of House inquiries), and it must respect the lawful and essential privileges of the executive branch; but within those parameters, Congress has the authority and responsibility to expose executive misconduct.
Moreover, while egregious misconduct will usually be easy to spot and grasp, that will not always be the case. When members of Congress claim to see it, they should have a fair opportunity to expose and explain it. To my mind, President Obama was the kind of chief executive that the Framers feared, but this was not obvious because he was not committing felonies. Instead, he was consciously undermining our constitutional order. He usurped the right to dictate law rather than execute it. His extravagant theory of executive discretion to "waive" the enforcement of laws he opposed flouted his basic constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. He and his underlings willfully and serially deceived Congress and the public on such major matters as Obamacare and the Benghazi massacre. They misled Congress on, and obstructed its investigation of, the outrageous Fast and Furious "gun-walking" operation, in connection with which a border patrol agent was murdered. With his Iran deal, the president flouted the Constitution's treaty process and colluded with a hostile foreign power to withhold information from Congress, in an arrangement that empowered (and paid cash ransom to) the world's leading sponsor of anti-American terrorism.
My critics fairly noted that I opposed Obama politically, and therefore contended that I was masquerading as a constitutional objection what was really a series of policy disputes. I don't think that is right, though, for two reasons.
First, my impeachment argument was not that Obama was pursuing policies I deeply opposed. I was very clear that elections have consequences, and the president had every right to press his agenda. My objection was that he was imposing his agenda lawlessly, breaking the limitations within which the Framers cabined executive power, precisely to prevent presidents from becoming tyrants. If allowed to stand, Obama precedents would permanently alter our governing framework. Impeachment is there to protect our governing framework.
Second, I argued that, my objections notwithstanding, Obama should not be impeached in the absence of a public consensus for his removal. Yes, Republicans should try to build that case, try to edify the public about why the president's actions threatened the Constitution and its separation of powers. But they should not seek to file articles of impeachment simply because they could -- i.e., because control of the House theoretically gave them the numbers to do it. The House is not obliged to file impeachment articles just because there may be impeachable conduct. Because impeachment is so divisive, the Framers feared that it could be triggered on partisan rather than serious grounds. The two-thirds supermajority requirement for Senate conviction guards against that: The House should not impeach unless there is a reasonable possibility that the Senate would remove -- which, in Obama's case, there was not.
I also tried to focus on incentives. If impeachment were a credible threat, and Congress began investigating and publicly exposing abuses, a sensible president would desist in the misconduct, making it unnecessary to proceed with impeachment. On the other hand, a failed impeachment effort would likely embolden a rogue president to continue abusing power. If your real concern is executive lawlessness, then impeaching heedlessly and against public opinion would be counterproductive.
I've taken the same tack with President Trump.
The objections to Trump are very different from those to Obama. He is breaking not laws but norms of presidential behavior and decorum. For the most part, I object to this. There are lots of things about our government that need disruption, but even disruptive presidents should be mindful that they hold the office of Washington and Lincoln and aspire to their dignity, even if their greatness is out of reach.
That said, impeachment is about serious abuse of the presidency's core powers, not behavior that is intemperate or gauche. Critics must be mindful that the People, not the pundits, are sovereign, and they elected Donald Trump well aware of his flaws. That he turns out to be as president exactly what he appeared to be as a candidate is not a rationale for impeaching him.
The president's misconduct on Ukraine is small potatoes. Democrats were right to expose it, and we would be dealing with a more serious situation if the defense aid appropriated by Congress had actually been denied, rather than inconsequentially delayed. If Democrats had wanted to make a point about discouraging foreign interference in American politics (notwithstanding their long record of encouraging it), that would have been fine. They could have called for the president's censure, which would have put Republicans on the defensive. Ukraine could have been incorporated as part of their 2020 campaign that Trump should be defeated, despite a surging economy and relative peace.
Conducting an impeachment inquiry is one thing, but for the House to take the drastic step of impeaching the president is abusive on this record. Yes, it was foolish of Trump to mention the Bidens to President Zelensky and to seek Ukraine's help in investigating the Bidens. There may well be corruption worth probing, but the president ought to leave that to researchers in his campaign. If there is something that a government should be looking into, leave that to the Justice Department, which can (and routinely does) seek foreign assistance when necessary. The president, however, should have stayed out of it. Still, it is absurd to posit, as Democrats do, that, by not staying out of it, the president threatened election integrity and U.S. national security. Such outlandish arguments may make Ukraine more of a black eye for Democrats than for the president.
But whoever ultimately bears the brunt of the impeachment push, I have to ask myself a hard question: Is this the world I was asking for when I wrote a book contending that, for our system to work as designed, impeachment has to be a credible threat? I don't think so . . . but I do worry about it.
Back to the Clinton impeachment. I tried to make the point that that impeachment effort -- against public opinion, and based on misconduct that, while dreadful, was not central to the presidency -- has contributed significantly to the poisonous politics we have today. Democrats have been looking for payback ever since, and now they have it -- in a way that is very likely to make impeachment more routine in the future.
I don't see how our constitutional system can work without a viable impeachment remedy. But I may have been wrong to believe that we could be trusted to invoke the remedy responsibly. I used to poke fun at pols who would rather hide under their desks than utter the dreaded I-word. Turns out they knew something I didn't.
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Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Hepativore , December 23, 2019 at 2:37 pm
So, the fact that Obama is willing to put in a good word for Warren on behalf of the wealthy elite should give you a clue as to which side Warren is really on. While many non-political "normies" look upon the Obama years with rose-tinted glasses, I wonder if the disillusionment that many people had in retrospect with Obama has sunk in to mainstream political consciousness yet. If that is the case, an Obama endorsement might actually backfire among progressives, seeing as how it has become evident that Obama was basically a silver-tongued neoliberal in the same mold as Clinton and Pelosi.
I know that Warren is a political careerist at heart, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt when she first launched her 2020 presidential campaign. However, it has become increasingly clear that she has hitched her wagon to the wrong horse as the neoliberal corporate Democrats which she is aligning herself with are a sinking ship. I honestly do not think that she would even be fit to be Sander's vice presidential pick at this point considering how wide the political gulf between Warren and Sanders actually is. A better choice would be Nina Turner as Sander's running mate, with Tulsi Gabbard as his Secretary of State if he gets that far.
shinola , December 23, 2019 at 2:54 pm
" an Obama endorsement might actually backfire among progressives "
It hit me pretty much the same way – that's a strike against her.
Pelham , December 23, 2019 at 4:25 pm
My guess is that this is why he's working behind the scenes, minimizing the chances of a backfire on the left. Of course, how behind-the-scenes is it if it's reported by Politico? Still.
I'm actually undecided on Warren. There was that story last week about her supposedly pushing Hillary in 2016 to name decent people to her cabinet if elected. But then you have to ask why that particular story surfaced at the particular time when Warren was sinking in the polls.
If true, though, and if what the new Politico story says about her clashes with Obama are true, maybe Warren isn't quite as objectionable as we tend to think. Then again, she came right out last week (I believe) and said Medicare for All would be a matter of choice under her plan, emphasizing that "choice" factor.
So I'm confused. But maybe that's what she, her campaign and various surrogates want at this stage.
kimyo , December 23, 2019 at 5:16 pm
I'm actually undecided on Warren.
maybe this will help you decide?
Our military can help lead the fight in combating climate changeIt starts with an ambitious goal: consistent with the objectives of the Green New Deal, the Pentagon should achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and infrastructure by 2030.
having the pentagon 'lead the fight' against climate change is akin to appointing prince andrew as head of the global task force against pedophilia and child trafficking.
anon in so cal , December 23, 2019 at 6:06 pm
Yes, that plus Warren's comments during the Council on Foreign Relations interview, which were frightening (to me, at least).
Jeff W , December 23, 2019 at 7:32 pm
"maybe this will help you decide?"
Or one or both of these two What's Left podcasts:
"The Left Case Against Elizabeth Warren" here
"Warren's Medicare For All 'Plan'" here
Big River Bandido , December 23, 2019 at 3:29 pm
A few weeks ago I read in this spot that while Clinton people hate Sanders and like Warren, Obama was pushing Buttigieg because Warren was such a pain in his ass. Seems he's finally given his signal. Hopefully it's the kiss of death for both Warren and Buttigieg.
Big River Bandido , December 23, 2019 at 3:29 pm
A few weeks ago I read in this spot that while Clinton people hate Sanders and like Warren, Obama was pushing Buttigieg because Warren was such a pain in his ass. Seems he's finally given his signal. Hopefully it's the kiss of death for both Warren and Buttigieg.
Reply ↓Darius , December 23, 2019 at 5:14 pm
Buttigieg takes no votes from Sanders. While Warren does on the margins. I think Obama's calculation is simple as that. She also has special appeal to the virtue signaling liberals that are Obama's base.
notabanker , December 23, 2019 at 7:53 pm
as the neoliberal corporate Democrats which she is aligning herself with are a sinking ship ..
Bingo. Trump's letter goes right to the heart of it. These clowns are completely exposed and Obama hawking Warren to donors while the blob talks up a gay McKinsey/CIA Indiana Mayor shows just how far they have fallen.
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Dec 22, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org
And so it came to pass, that in the deep state's frenzy of electoral desperation, the 'impeachment' card was played. The hammer has fallen. Nearly the entirety of the legacy media news cycle has been dedicated to the details, and not really pertinent details, but the sorts of details which presume the validity of the charges against Trump in the first place. Yes, they all beg the question. What's forgotten here is that the use of this process along clearly partisan lines, and more – towards clearly partisan aims – is a very serious symptom of the larger undoing of any semblance of stability in the US government.The fact that the impeachment is dead in the water, by Pelosi's own admission , is evident in Trump's being adamant that indeed it must be sent to the Senate – where he knows he'll be exonerated. But even if it doesn't go to the Senate, what we're left with still appears as a loss for Democrats. Both places are his briar patch. This makes all of this a win-win for team Trump.
Only in a country that produces so much fake news at the official level, could there be a fake impeachment procedure made purely for media consumption, with no real or tangible possible victory in sight.
For in a constitutional republic like the United States, what makes an impeachment possible is when the representatives and the voters are in communion over the matter. This would normally be reflected in a mid-term election, like say for example the mid-term Senatorial race in 2018 where Democrats failed to take control. Control of the Senate would reflect a change of sentiment in the republic, which in turn and not coincidentally, would be what makes for a successful impeachment.
Don't forget, this impeachment is fake
Nancy Pelosi is evidently extraordinarily cynical. Her politics appears to be 'they deserve whatever they believe'. And her aim appears to be the one who makes them believe things so that they deserve what she gives them. For little else can explain the reasoning behind her claim that she will 'send the impeachment to the Senate' as soon as she 'has assurances and knows how the Senate will conduct the impeachment', except that it came from the same person who told the public regarding Obamacare that we have to 'We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.".
In both cases, reality is turned on its head – for rather we will know how the Senate intends to conduct its procedure as soon as it has the details, which substantively includes the impeachment documents themselves, in front of them, and likewise, legislators ought to know what's in a major piece of legislation before they vote either way on it. Pelosi's assault on reason, however, isn't without an ever growing tide of resentment from within the progressive base of the party itself.
We have quickly entered into a new era which increasingly resembles the broken political processes which have struck many a country, but none in living memory a country like the US. Now elected officials push judges to prosecute their political opponents, constitutional crises are manufactured to pursue personal or political vendettas, death threats and rumors of coups coming from media and celebrities being fed talking points by big and important players from powerful institutions.
This 'impeachment' show really takes the cake, does it not? We will recall shortly after Trump was elected, narrator for hire Morgan Freeman made a shocking public service announcement. It was for all intents and purposes, a PSA notifying the public that a military coup to remove Trump would be legitimate and in order. Speaking about this PSA, and recounting what was said, would in any event read as an exaggeration, or some allegorical paraphrasing made to prove a point. Jogging our memories then, Freeman spoke to tens of millions of viewers on television and YouTube saying :
"We have been attacked. We are at war. Imagine this movie script: A former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his motherland, plots a course for revenge – taking advantage of the chaos, he works his way up through the ranks of a post-soviet Russia and becomes president.
He establishes an authoritarian regime, then he sets his sights on his sworn enemy – the United States. And like the KGB spy that he is, he secretly uses cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world. Using social media to spread propaganda and false information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their political processes, even their neighbors. And he wins."
This really set the tone for the coming years, which have culminated in this manufactured 'impeachment' crisis, really befitting a banana republic.
It would be the height of dishonesty to approach this abuse of the impeachment procedure as if until this moment, the US's own political culture and processes were in good shape. Now isn't the time for the laundry list of eroded constitutional provisions, which go in a thousand and one unique directions. The US political system is surely broken, but as is the case with such large institutions several hundreds of years old, its meltdown appears to happen in slow motion to us mere mortals. And so what we are seeing today is the next phase of this break-down, and really ought to be understood as monumental in this sense. Once again revealed is the poor judgment of the Democratic Party and their agents, tools, warlords, and strategists, the same gang who sunk Hillary Clinton's campaign on the rocks of hubris.
Nancy Pelosi also has poor judgment, and these short-sighted and self-interested moves on her part stand a strong chance of backfiring. Her role in this charade is duly noted. This isn't said because of any disagreement over her aims, but rather that in purely objective terms it just so happens that her aims and her actions are out of synch – that is unless she wants to see Trump re-elected. Her aims are her aims, our intention is to connect these to their probable results, without moral judgments.
The real problem for the Democrats, the DNC, and any hopes for the White House in 2020, is that this all has the odor of a massive backfire, and something that Trump has been counting on happening. When one's opponent knows what is probable, and when they have a track record for preparing very well for such, it is only a question of what Trump's strategy is and how this falls into it, not whether there is one.
Imagine being a fly on the wall of the meeting with Pelosi where it was decided to go forward with impeachment in the House of Representatives, despite not having either sufficient traction in the Senate or any way to control the process that the Senate uses.
It probably went like this: ' We'll say we impeached him, because we did, and we'll say he was impeached. We'll declare victory, and go home. This will make him unelectable because of the stigma of impeachment. '
Informed citizens are aware that whatever their views towards Trump, nothing he has done reaches beyond the established precedent set by past presidents. Confused citizens on the other hand, are believing the manufactured talking points thrown their way, and the idea that a US president loosely reference a quid pro quo in trying to sort a corruption scandal in dealings with the president of a foreign country, is some crazy, new, never-before-done and highly-illegal thing. It is none of those things though.
Unfortunately, not needless to say, the entirety of the direct, physical evidence against Trump solely consists of the now infamous transcript of the phone call which he had with Ukrainian president Zelensky. The rest is hearsay, a conspiracy narrative, and entirely circumstantial. As this author has noted in numerous pieces, Biden's entire candidacy rests precisely upon his need to be a candidate so that any normal investigation into the wrongdoings of himself or his son in Ukraine, suddenly become the targeted persecution of a political opponent of Trump.
Other than this, it is evident that Biden stands little chance – the same polling institutions which give him a double-digit lead were those which foretold a Clinton electoral victory. Neither their methods nor those paying and publishing them, have substantively changed. Biden's candidacy, like the impeachment, is essentially fake. The real contenders for the party's base are Sanders and Gabbard.
The Democratic Party Activist Base Despises Pelosi as much as Clinton
The Democratic Party has two bases, one controlled by the DNC and the Clintons, and one which consists of its energized rank-and-file activists who are clearer in their populism, anti-establishment and ant-corporate agenda. Candidates like Gabbard and Sanders are closest to them politically, though far from perfect fits. Their renegade status is confirmed by the difficulties they have with visibility – they are the new silent majority of the party. The DNC base, on the other hand, relies on Rachel Maddow, Wolf Blitzer, and the likes for their default talking points, where they have free and pervasive access to legacy media. In the context of increased censorship online, this is not insignificant.
Among the important reasons this 'impeachment' strategy will lose is that it will not energize the second and larger base. Even though this more progressive and populist base is also more motivated, they have faced – as has the so-called alt-light – an extraordinarily high degree of censorship on social media. Despite all the censorship, the Democrats' silent majority are rather well-informed people, highly motivated, and tend to be vocal in their communities and places of work. Their ideas move organically and virally among the populace.
This silent majority has a very good memory, and they know very well who Nancy Pelosi is, and who she isn't.
The silent majority remembers that after years of the public backlash against Bush's war crimes, crimes against humanity, destruction of remaining civil liberties with the Patriot Act, torture, warrantless search – and the list goes on and on – Democrats managed to retake the lower house in 2006. If there was a legitimate reason for an impeachment, it would have been championed by Pelosi against Bush for going to war using false, falsified, manufactured evidence about WMD in Iraq. At the time, Pelosi squashed the hopes of her own electorate, reasoning that such moves would be divisive, that they would distract from the Democrats' momentum to take the White House in '08, that Bush had recently (?) won his last election, and so on. Of course these were real crimes, and the reasons not to prosecute may have as much to do with Pelosi's own role in the war industry. Pelosi couldn't really push against Bush over torture, etc. because she had been on an elite congressional committee – the House Intelligence Committee – during the Bush years in office which starting in 2003 was dedicated to making sure that torture could and would become normalized and entirely legal.
It seems Pelosi can't even go anywhere with this impeachment on Trump today, and therefore doesn't even really plan to submit it to the Senate for the next stage . The political stunt was pulled, a fireworks show consisting of one lonely rocket that sort of fizzled off out of sight.
Trump emerges unscathed, and more to the point, we are closer to the election and his base is even more energized. Pelosi spent the better part of three years inoculating the public against any significance being attached to any impeachment procedure. Pelosi cried wolf so many times, and Trump has made good on the opportunities handed to him to get his talking points in order and to condition his base to receive and process the scandals in such and such way. This wouldn't have been possible without Pelosi's help. Thanks in part to Pelosi and the DNC, Trump appears primed for re-election.
Trump energizes his base, and the DNC suppresses and disappoints theirs. That's where the election will be won or lost.
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Dec 23, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.'s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.
... ... ...
Mr. Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress , about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia's interference, the people said.
... ... ..
"The president bore the burden of probably one of the greatest conspiracy theories -- baseless conspiracy theories -- in American political history," Mr. Barr told Fox News. He has long expressed skepticism that the F.B.I. had enough information to begin its inquiry in 2016, publicly criticizing an inspector general report released last week that affirmed that the bureau did.
Mr. Barr has long been interested in the conclusion about Mr. Putin ordering intervention on Mr. Trump's behalf, perhaps the intelligence report's most explosive assertion. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. reported high confidence in the conclusion, while the N.S.A., which conducts electronic surveillance, had a moderate degree of confidence.
... ... ...
Critics of the intelligence assessment, like Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah, said the C.I.A.'s sourcing failed to justify the high level of confidence about Moscow's intervention on behalf of Mr. Trump.
"I don't agree with the conclusion, particularly that it's such a high level of confidence," Mr. Stewart said, citing raw intelligence that he said he reviewed.
"I just think there should've been allowances made for some of the ambiguity in that and especially for those who didn't also share in the conclusion that it was a high degree of confidence," he added.
Mr. Durham's investigators also want to know more about the discussions that prompted intelligence community leaders to include Mr. Steele's allegations in the appendix of their assessment.
Mr. Brennan has repeatedly said, including in his 2017 congressional testimony, that the C.I.A. did not rely on the dossier when it helped develop the assessment, and the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has also testified before lawmakers that the same was true for the intelligence agencies more broadly. But Mr. Trump's allies have long asked pointed questions about the dossier, including how it was used in the intelligence agency's assessment.
Some C.I.A. analysts and officials insisted that the dossier be left out of the assessment, while some F.B.I. leaders wanted to include it and bristled at its relegation to the appendix. Their disagreements were captured in the highly anticipated report released last week by Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, examining aspects of the F.B.I.'s Russia investigation.
Mr. Steele's information "was a topic of significant discussion within the F.B.I. and with the other agencies participating in drafting" the declassified intelligence assessment about Russia interference, Mr. Horowitz wrote. The F.B.I. shared Mr. Steele's information with the team of officials from multiple agencies drafting the assessment.
Mr. Comey also briefed Mr. Brennan and other top Obama administration intelligence officials including the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, and Mr. Clapper about the bureau's efforts to assess the information in the dossier, Mr. Comey told the inspector general. He said that analysts had found it to be "credible on its face."
... ... ...
Andrew G. McCabe, then the deputy director of the F.B.I., pushed back, according to the inspector general report, accusing the intelligence chiefs of trying to minimize Mr. Steele's information.
Ultimately the two sides compromised by placing Mr. Steele's material in the appendix. After BuzzFeed News published the dossier in January 2017, days after the intelligence assessment about Russia's election sabotage was released, Mr. Comey complained to Mr. Clapper about his decision to publicly state that the intelligence community "has not made any judgment" about the document's reliability.
Mr. Comey said that the F.B.I. had concluded that Mr. Steele was reliable, according to the inspector general report. Mr. Clapper ignored Mr. Comey, the report said.
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Dec 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
AG Barr Blasts Soros For Stoking Hatred Of Police by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/22/2019 - 21:00 0 SHARES
"They have started to win in a number of cities and they have, in my view, not given the proper support to the police. "
That is the warning that Attorney General William Barr has for Americans, as he told Fox News' Martha MacCallum in a recent interview that liberal billionaire George Soros has been bankrolling radical prosecutor candidates in cities across the country .
"There's this recent development [where] George Soros has been coming in, in largely Democratic primaries where there has not been much voter turnout and putting in a lot of money to elect people who are not very supportive of law enforcement and don't view the office as bringing to trial and prosecuting criminals but pursuing other social agendas, " Barr told Martha MacCallum.
Specifically, Barr warned that if the trend continues, it will lead to more violent crime , ading that the process of electing these prosecutors will likely cause law enforcement officers to consider whether the leadership in their municipality "has their back."
"They can either stop policing or they can move to a jurisdiction more hospitable," he said.
"We could find ourselves in a position that communities that are not supporting the police may not get the police protection they need."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UnnnpiYQODk
The Washington Post recently reported that while two Virginia prosecutorial candidates - funded by Soros' Justice and Public Safety PAC - have never prosecuted a case in a state court, they beat candidates with more than 60 years of experience between them .
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Dec 22, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Joe Well , December 21, 2019 at 11:03 am
Where is AOC in all this? She was the prime mover on impeachment, specifically impeachment over a phone call rather than concentration camps and genocide.
And now with impeachment she gave Pelosi cover to sell the country out again.
I was wondering why many libreral centrists were expreasing admiration for her, a socialist. Maybe they recognized something?
Yves Smith Post author , December 21, 2019 at 4:02 pm
"Prime mover"? What planet are you from? They were Schiff, Nadler, and Pelosi. Did you miss that Russiagate was in motion while AOC was still tending bar? AOC isn't even on any of the key committees (Judiciary and Intel).
Joe Well , December 21, 2019 at 4:47 pm
I shouldn't have said THE prime mover, but ONE OF the prime movers in the House in actually pushing it over the line against Pelosi's opposition. It seems like the House Dem consensus ever since Russiagate was just to tease their base with it and milk the suspense for all it was worth, until AOC, among others, rallied the base.
AOC is one of the highest-profile members of Congress and she blasted Pelosi for resisting impeachment since May. In September, she tweeted, " At this point, the bigger national scandal isn't the president's lawbreaking behavior – it is the Democratic Party's refusal to impeach him for it. " "Lawbreaking behavior" is nice and vague, but in this case it seems like she is talking about the Ukraine phone call.
There were other reps who pushed for impeachment, but AOC has one of the biggest platforms and crucially, expanded popular support for impeachment outside the MSNBC crowd. So yes, a key figure in the political/PR effort to move from conspiracy theories to actual impeachment.
Geo , December 21, 2019 at 6:09 pm
"AOC is one of the highest-profile members of Congress and she blasted Pelosi for resisting impeachment since May."
Liz Warren is the one who made it a part of her campaign before anyone else. Rashida Tlaib was the one who made t-shirt with her "impeach the mf'er" quote on it. A lot of them were "blasting" Pelosi for dithering. AOC also "blasted" her for giving ICE more money and a lot of their things .
Your central focus on AOC for the impeachment fiasco while ignoring her active role in spotlighting so many other issues of importance which no one else speaks about is interesting. Did you catch any of her speaking at the Sanders rally in LA today? Any other "high profile" Dems pushing such important issues and campaigns?
Carey , December 21, 2019 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for this comment. I don't trust *any of them* except Sanders, but AOC has been making more good noises than bad, and to claim that it was she who's been driving Pelosi to impeachment is quite a stretch. Poor, helpless/hapless Rep. Pelosi sure.
Yves Smith Post author , December 21, 2019 at 9:15 pm
Pelosi has repeatedly stared down the progressives in the House. The overwhelming majority of the freshmen reps are what used to be called Blue Dogs, as in corporate Dems. AOC making noise on this issue would not move Pelosi any more than it has on other issues.
IMHO Pelosi didn't try to tamp down Russiagate, and that created expectations that Something Big would happen. Plus she lives in the California/blue cities bubble.
What Dem donors think matters to her way more than what AOC tweets about. If anything, Pelosi (secondarily, I sincerely doubt this would be a big issue in her calculus) would view impeachment as a way to reduce the attention recently given to progressive issues like single payer and student debt forgiveness.
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Dec 22, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Yves Smith Post author , December 21, 2019 at 4:05 pm
Please bone up on US procedure. It's not good to have you confuse readers.
The Senate can't do anything until the House passes a motion referring the impeachment to the Senate. The House ALSO needs to designate managers as part of that process.
Darthbobber , December 21, 2019 at 4:35 pm
Right now, it's Schrodinger's impeachment.
Joe Well , December 21, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Michael Tracey argued that it's only Senate rules that require that the House formally transmit the impeachment verdict. The Constitution says that the Senate has to try an impeached president, and the Constitution trumps the Senate's rules. Logically, then, the Senate could just modify its rules to try the president.
But the whole delay is weird and impeachment has only been done twice before, so not a lot of precedent.
My paranoid fear is that Pelosi or McConnell might try to time the proceedings so as to take Bernie and Warren off the campaign trail at a crucial moment, helping Biden.
Amfortas the hippie , December 21, 2019 at 5:40 pm
that, and sucking the air out of the room for the primaries. When's super tuesday, again? surely they can engineer it so that their "high drama" coincides.
"let's talk about universal material benefits" " ok, Vlad trying to distract us from whats really important "Hepativore , December 21, 2019 at 6:49 pm
Happy winter Solstice, everyone!
Anyway, the funny thing is, that Biden himself has said that he only wants to be a one-term president. It makes me wonder if he knows that he has neither the energy or presence of mind to hold the office, and that he is merely doing so because of establishment pressure to stop Sanders at all costs. Plus, if the Democrats get the brokered convention they are after, he can bow out, satisfied that he helped the DNC protect the donor class from the Sanders threat.
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.cnn.com
... ... ...
Mark Galli, its current editor (who is leaving the publication in two weeks) takes on Trump directly -- a courageous move on his part, as his magazine has largely been apolitical. "The facts in this instance are unambiguous: the president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president's political opponents," Galli writes. He draws the obvious conclusion for Christians: "That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral." Galli goes further, digging into the behavior of the man in the Oval Office, noting that Trump "has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration." He gets specific: "He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals." As if that wasn't enough, Galli adds, "He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone -- with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders -- is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused." Galli's warning to Christians is clear. "To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: remember who you are and whom you serve," Galli writes. "Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don't reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?" Galli also acknowledged Friday in an interview on CNN's "New Day" that his stand is unlikely to shake loose Trump's strong hold on this voter segment, a crucial portion of his political base. Galli's move is even more admirable when you consider that he published his editorial even knowing that, as he said in his interview, he's not optimistic that his editorial will alter Trump's support among white evangelicals. It's not a stretch to say that white evangelicals put Trump into office in 2016. About 80% of them voted for him. They did so because of the abortion issue, mostly. They wanted pro-life judges throughout the justice system. But this was a devil's bargain, at best.
Humility lies at the heart of Christian behavior. As does honesty. In these, Trump has set a terrible example, and he's now been taken down for this by an important Christian voice. If only another 10 percent of evangelicals take this seriously, and I suspect they will, Donald J. Trump's presidency is destined for the ash heap of history.<img alt="Faith could bring us together. But too often it divides us" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/191121180252-20191121-fractured-states-religious-leaders-large-169.jpg"> Faith could bring us together. But too often it divides us Younger evangelicals, those under 45, have been slowly but steadily moving away from Trump during the past two years or so, unhappy about his example. A key topic that has driven them away is immigration. Loving your neighbor as yourself has always been a bedrock Christian value. And Trump's stance on immigrants (especially those of color) has upset the younger generation of evangelicals, with two-thirds of them saying in surveys that immigrants strengthen our country, bringing their work ethic and talents with them from Mexico or Central America or Syria. Climate change is another issue that has caught the imagination of younger evangelicals. "I can't love my neighbor if I'm not protecting the earth that sustains them and defending their rights to clean water, clean air, and a stable climate," Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, a national organizer for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, told Grist . Needless to say, Trump's contempt on this subject grates badly on these young Christians. Perhaps naively, Americans have always looked to the presidency for exemplary moral behavior, and when there are obvious personal or moral failures, as with Nixon and Clinton, there is disappointment, even anger. But if you're a Christian -- and I lay claim to this for myself -- you understand that it's human to fail at perfect behavior. There is always forgiveness. And, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Humility is endless."
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com
Delaying the Senate trial erodes the Democrats' argument that impeachment was so urgent that they could not wait for the courts to act on Trump's aggressive claims of privilege.
Seven Democratic presidential candidates who gathered on a debate stage in Los Angeles on Thursday represent another argument for moving beyond impeachment.
... ... ...
Washington is fixated on the daily turns of the impeachment saga, but polls indicate that most Americans are not. Business executive Andrew Yang pointed out that, even when the current president is gone, the struggles of many people will remain, particularly in parts of the country that helped elect Trump in 2016.
"We blasted away 4 million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri. I just left Iowa -- we blasted 40,000 manufacturing jobs there," Yang said. "The more we act like Donald Trump is the cause of all our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what's going on in our communities and solve those problems."
That is what voters are waiting to hear, and the sooner the better for Democrats.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
uncle tungsten , Dec 19 2019 6:17 utc | 81
evilempire #40Horowitz put the telescope to his blind eye, its an old deep state trick that Lord Nelson used in an illegal war that the British mythologize about. IMO Horowitz is a whitewash man and there most likely will be questions that Durham will be asking Priestap IF that is the Giuliani plan. Wont hold my breath though. Trump seems to be acting MAD as hell but then so do wrestlers in their fake as fake can be.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
evilempire , Dec 18 2019 23:48 utc | 40
There is one glaring contradiction that I did not see addressed in the Horowitz hearing. Priestap has testified that he inherited (page 14 of the pdf) operation crossfire hurricane. If he inherited the investigation then how could he have played any role in opening crossfire hurricane? Yet in the FISA report, Horowitz's finding that there was no bias in opening the investigation was almost exclusively based on finding no bias in Priestap. I have not seen this contradiction addressed anywhere.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
evilempire , Dec 18 2019 22:32 utc | 28
If anyone was watching The Horowitz hearing in the senate today it would be hard to conclude that RussiaGate and Ukrainegate will not have serious consequences going forward.The whole sordid, nasty conspiracy seems on the verge of being exposed, maybe as high as Obama himself, although he is just a puppet himself, and indictments are sure to follow. I don't see how anyone could think that this will not be catastrophic for the democratic party.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on December 18, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. What Black calls the New Democrats have more recently been called Blue Dogs and even (gah) frontliners, but whatever you want to call them, they are corporate stooges loyal to bad economic ideas, most notably deficit hawkery and austerity.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives
On December 5, 2019, Lawrence O'Donnell made an impassioned attack on Pete Buttigieg on his " The Last Word " program on MSNBC. Buttigieg's statements criticizing the Democratic Party as historically soft on deficits enraged O'Donnell. The context was Buttigieg's effort to signal to New Hampshire voters that he was the most conservative Democratic candidate for the presidential nomination. Nothing signals 'responsible' so well to 'New Democrats' and the media as a candidate screaming 'deficits' in a crowded meeting room in a small New Hampshire town.
O'Donnell correctly pointed out that Buttigieg's claims about Democrats and deficits are 'Republican lies.' The truth is that New Democrats have been the only group in America dedicated to inflicting austerity on our Nation. Republicans only pretend to care about deficits when Democrats have power. Buttigieg knows this, but his political interests in portraying himself as a stalwart emerging leader of the New Democrats caused him to position himself (falsely) as unique among New Democrats in his dedication to inflict austerity.
O'Donnell (largely) correctly pointed out that New Democrats had been fighting federal deficits for Buttigieg's entire life. O'Donnell stressed the New Democrats actions in 1993, when Buttigieg was eleven. O'Donnell lauded the New Democrats for pushing austerity even when they knew doing so was likely to cause Democrats to lose elections.
O'Donnell's dominant message, measured by both length and passion, was the crippling price the Democrats paid for the New Democrats' pushing for austerity in 1993. He made clear it was not a "one-off" – Democrats paid that price again when President Obama, a self-described New Democrat, pushed to inflict austerity on the Nation in 2010.
O'Donnell describes the New Democrats (Bill Clinton and Al Gore) as knowingly taking a "grave political risk" in 1993 in voting in favor of austerity. The risk was that Democrats, not simply New Democrats, would lose scores of seats – and control of the House and Senate. O'Donnell stressed that no Republicans voted for the New Democrat's 1993 austerity program. O'Donnell explained the initial political results of austerity. "The Democrats lost the House because of that vote for the first time in 40 years." He then explained they also lost the Senate.
O'Donnell repeatedly explained that the New Democrats knew that their decision to inflict austerity on Americans would likely produce this political disaster – and "bravely" did so because of their belief that inflicting austerity on Americans was essential. He noted that he "watched with pride" this exercise of political suicide.
O'Donnell then cited President Obama's austerity efforts – during the weak recovery from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). At a time when the need to provide stimulus, not inflict austerity, was obvious, Obama embraced what again proved the politically suicidal option.
As fate would have it, the death of Paul Volcker days after O'Donnell's takedown of Buttigieg extended O'Donnell's argument further back in time – to before Buttigieg's birth. In 1979, President Carter (a Democrat) appointed Volcker to Chair the Federal Reserve. Volcker soon unleashed powerful monetary austerity, raising interest rates to unprecedented levels for the United States. Volcker's obituary stressed the politically suicidal nature of inflicting austerity – and the Democrats' pride in knowingly losing elections because of their embrace of it.
The harsh Fed policy no doubt contributed to Mr. Carter's re-election defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan; he had to campaign when interest rates were at their peak, and before the inflation fever had begun to break. Mr. Carter, in his memoirs, would offer a typically understated assessment: "Our trepidation about Volcker's appointment was later justified."
***
"Paul was as stubborn as he was tall," Mr. Carter said in a statement on Monday morning, "and although some of his policies as Fed chairman were politically costly, they were the right thing to do.
O'Donnell's denunciation of Buttigieg for adopting dishonest Republican talking points about Democrats and deficits did not discuss several essential points. The first two points emerge from answering this question: what was the cost to the Nation – not the loss of Democratic seats – of the New Democrats' intransigent insistence on inflicting austerity? Shakespeare explained famously that "mercy" was "twice blest," because it blesses both the giver and the receiver. The quality of austerity, however, is typically at least thrice damned. It is not a "gentle rain from heaven," but a sandstorm from hell that batters the public and punishes the politicians who unleash the whirlwind. It is at least thrice damned because it causes three grave forms of harm on the public.
Inflicting austerity on the United States government has three likely consequences for the public. It is likely to cause or extend a recession. It forces Democrats into an unending series of "Sophie's choice[s]s." We cannot adopt any new program of consequence without budget 'scoring' – requiring new taxes or cutting other vital federal programs. Under austerity, Democrats must shrink existing overall federal spending. By extending existing recessions or leading to new ones, austerity causes economic harms that increase social and political breakdowns that can lead to the election of fanatics and corrupt fake-populists. The political parties that refuse to inflict austerity (at least when they are in power) will be the political winners.
Republican fiscal policies combine "wedge" offerings to fire up the worst of their base and massive tax breaks for the elites that fund their campaigns – leading to a recurrent cycle in which the New Democrats champion policies that cause the public to identify Democrats as the party most likely to raise taxes and cut vital federal programs. Republican political power and 'wedge' legislation and policies cause enormous harm, particularly to the poor and minorities. The larger the Republican deficits, the greater the New Democrats' urgency to inflict austerity – and embrace political suicide. It is a self-reinforcing cycle producing recurrent political disaster for Democrats.
O'Donnell does not address two other critical points. First, MSNBC's top commentators endlessly warn Democrats that they must nominate the presidential candidate most likely to defeat President Trump. MSNBC's commentators implore us not to focus on policy differences among the candidates. Their message is relentless realpolitik, particularly, you should never vote for the candidate whose policies you believe are far superior to the candidate the MSNBC commentators think is most electable. MSNBC and the New Democrats claim they share the same prime directive – Democratic Party electoral victories are the only imperative.
O'Donnell's anti-Buttigieg rant reveals the truth about MSNBC and the New Democrats' real prime directive – inflicting austerity even when doing so is economically irrational and politically suicidal is their sole imperative. The obvious questions, which O'Donnell never asked or attempted to answer, are why he and his MSNBC colleagues push the false prime directive (winning must be the sole paramount goal) as gospel while praising the New Democrats for repeatedly causing the Democratic Party to commit political suicide through inflicting austerity on our Nation. Logically, the only possible answer to that question is that O'Donnell and the New Democrats must view inflicting austerity as being of transcendent importance. It outweighs everything. Inflicting austerity is the New Democrats and MSNBC's sole prime directive. They are not simply willing to lose so many contests that they lose control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate – they are "proud" to do so when the reason for those losses is 'we committed political suicide to fight to inflict austerity.' The related questions are whether MSNBC and the New Democrats are actually blind to the contradiction between the real and phony prime directives and why they think viewers and voters will be too dumb to spot the obvious contradiction. Why do New Democrats and MSNBC insist on hiding their real prime directive?
A related question arises from this bizarre prime directive to inflict austerity even when it is politically suicidal. Why did New Democrats and MSNBC choose inflicting austerity as their holy grail? What is it about inflicting austerity that makes New Democrats so "proud" to cause the Democratic Party to commit political suicide and deliver control of the House, Senate, and Presidency to the likes of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump? Preventing Bush's invasion of Iraq, global climate disruption, and Trump's election would all make sense as overriding priorities. Those are things worthy of losing a House seat or even the entire House.
Inflicting austerity typically harms America and our people. A federal budget deficit is not bad. A federal budget surplus is not good. Clinton and Gore's budget surpluses were not good for America. They were likely harmful, as recessions soon followed our prior budget surpluses throughout our history. In each of the cases O'Donnell lauded, the New Democrats' insistence on inflicting austerity did not simply prove politically suicidal for the Democratic Party – austerity was a terrible economic policy that caused harm. How did inflicting austerity become the overriding priority of New Democrats, swamping all other policies? In 1993, when Clinton and Gore made O'Donnell "proud" by inflicting austerity, the inflation rate was three percent. That rate of inflation was trivially higher than what the Fed would adopt as its inflation target (2%) – the preferred rate of inflation. Even under neoclassical economic nostrums, there was no need, much less a compelling need, to inflict austerity.
In 2010, when Obama first sought to inflict austerity on us, the rate of inflation was 2.3 percent and the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent. The economic illiteracy of his austerity horrified even neoclassical economists. Fortunately, the Tea Party Republicans pushed so aggressively in the "Grand Bargain" negotiations with Obama that the tentative deal he reached with congressional Republicans collapsed. Otherwise, Obama's infliction of austerity would have ended the already weak recovery, plunged the Nation back into a Great Recession, and caused him and scores of congressional Democrats to lose their elections in 2012.
O'Donnell's presentation, implicitly, makes it clear that he thinks austerity is so obviously desirable, and the budget deficits of a fully sovereign nation so obviously the gravest conceivable threat that he need provide neither logic nor evidence to support the New Democrat's politically suicidal and economically illiterate austerity prime directive. O'Donnell's cheerleading for the austerity prime directive was never supported, but it has become facially indefensible over the last quarter-century. Trump's tax reduction scheme for the wealthiest was outrageous on multiple grounds, but O'Donnell can observe the present unemployment and inflation rates. Unemployment is at 3.5% and the inflation rate for 2018 was 1.9% -- less than the Fed's target rate. Inflation is the only logical bugaboo about federal budget deficits, so O'Donnell and Buttigieg's feverish fear that federal deficits are about to cause a catastrophe is beyond bizarre. The bond markets confirm that there is no expectation of material inflation.
The New Democrats remain transfixed by their 'virtue' and 'bravery' in losing control of all three branches of government by insisting on inflicting economically illiterate and politically suicidal austerity assaults on the voters – raising taxes and cutting vital services. They refuse to act on the real emergencies we face such as global climate disruption based on the economically illiterate fantasy that 'we cannot afford' to prevent the worsening catastrophe. The 'New Democrats' and their media enablers demand that we nominate candidates dedicated to enacting politically suicidal deficit hysteria policies and adopting tepid anti-environment policies that are suicidal towards the lives of our children and grandchildren. The most remarkable aspect of this insanity, however, is that the hucksters pitch their embrace of their prime directive as defining the concept of "responsible." Indeed, it is so obviously 'responsible' that O'Donnell and Buttigieg feel neither logic nor facts are necessary to prove the virtues of austerity. They omit the fact that austerity proponents' warnings and promises have repeatedly proved false and outright harmful as well as politically suicidal.
timotheus , December 18, 2019 at 7:52 am
Could it be that the New Democrats are not stupid or irrational at all but know what they are doing and happily play their role in the permanent professional wrestling spectacle as the hapless patsies who keep losing to the real tough guy? After all, they get paid handsomely in any case.
Adam1 , December 18, 2019 at 8:02 am
Not only did President Carter appoint Volcker, but he also vetoed a bill to raise the national debt ceiling. Thankfully Congress, run by a very different set of Democrats at the time, over-rode his veto.
NotTimothyGeithner , December 18, 2019 at 9:58 am
"Austerity" is basically the only policy Team Blue has undertaken without outside pressure. As bad as it is, it's the one thing they can point to over the last 25 years as something they did without mass mobilization or court cases embarrassing them into not being totally heinous.
Then little Mayo Pete is trying to deny Team Blue their only accomplishment.
shinola , December 18, 2019 at 12:25 pm
"New Democrat" = Neoliberal.
If Buttgag et al were really concerned about deficits, how about reverting to Eisenhower era tax rates & cutting back on "defense" spending?
Oh, wait – that would upset their real constituents – the 1% & the MIC.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Artful Dodger , Dec 19 2019 8:00 utc | 86
The Trump Card was and is a masterstroke of scripting live, non-stop, divisive, politically paralytic distraction while the US oligarchy goes all-tard-in for private power.Russ , Dec 19 2019 7:30 utc | 85
Since the whole impeachment farce already has been a political loser for the idiot Democrats, they'd have to be doubly stupid to double down on political stupidity by obstructing the transmission to the Senate, when most Americans just want this crap to be over with.Meanwhile the Senate Republicans, once they get the charges, would be stupid to do anything but vote them down immediately. Otherwise they'll become complicit in the odious circus and rightly incur their share of the political blame.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Procopius , December 18, 2019 at 5:10 pm
MSNBC and the New Democrats claim they share the same prime directive – Democratic Party electoral victories are the only imperative.
This is exactly the justification Al From gave for the program of the Democratic Leadership Council (see The NEW Democrats and the Return to Power ). All those who joined shared the same goal. They took control of the party in 1992, and still control it. That's why I think Trump is going to be re-elected.
Joe Well , December 18, 2019 at 12:44 pm
Reading between the lines: many people think that government spending only helps "those" people (the poor/the politically connected businesses/the bureaucrats/the old/the young/the non-innovative). You yourself are always a virtuous wealth creator, because of course you are.
Even many former government employees now living on a government pension believe this.
And when austerity comes for something important to you, it is a mistake, not something that makes you question austerity, since of course you are not one of "those" people.
It's prejudice/arrogance all the way down, and extremely hard to argue with since it goes against people's self-image in many ways.
Joe Well , December 18, 2019 at 12:44 pm
Reading between the lines: many people think that government spending only helps "those" people (the poor/the politically connected businesses/the bureaucrats/the old/the young/the non-innovative). You yourself are always a virtuous wealth creator, because of course you are.
Even many former government employees now living on a government pension believe this.
And when austerity comes for something important to you, it is a mistake, not something that makes you question austerity, since of course you are not one of "those" people.
It's prejudice/arrogance all the way down, and extremely hard to argue with since it goes against people's self-image in many ways.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
librul , Dec 18 2019 21:10 utc | 1
Democratic Party - Henceforth known as the Anti-Democracy Party.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Teamtc321 , 12 minutes ago link
BREAKING BIG: John Durham Is Investigating Former CIA Director John Brennan's Role in 2016 Election Interference and His LIES TO CONGRESS! (Video)
The New York Times reported tonight that federal prosecutor John Durham is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan's role in the 2016 election. Durham has called for Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
uncle tungsten , Dec 19 2019 4:38 utc | 76
psychohistorian #73I read in a couple of places today that the strategy of the Dems is to not forward the impeachment to the Senate for an indeterminate amount of time......let the stew, the Senate and Trump simmer a bit.....more kabuki for the masses while the public continues to be screwed economically.Thank you for that observation and I have seen that idea about the traps too.
I don't see the impeachment as being held up for too long as Durham will likely press on hard with his prosecutions and may even go after Biden for wire fraud or some such very soon. The minute Durham moves the demoncrazies will try to obstruct, They dont have much dry powder right now but then they are good at imagining things so they might try and manifest more powder. If speculation confirms that it is a kabuki hoax to kill their own leftish insurgency then that too will emerge mighty soon.
I am unfamiliar with the USA system but if the Congress has made a clear resolution and its next destination is normally the Senate then what is to stop the Senate Leader Mitch McConnel from tabling the decision of the Congress for immediate vote. Does the impeachment referral to the Senate actually have to be moved by the Minority Leader representing the Democrats or is that just a polite convention?
Good to see Tulsi keep her distance from this turd just dropped the Congress.
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Dec 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Peter Svab via The Epoch Times,
A federal judge has denied requests by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to prompt the government to give him information he deems exculpatory and to dismiss the case against him .
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the government in arguing that Flynn was already given all the information to which he was entitled. The judge also dismissed Flynn's allegations of government misconduct, noting that Flynn already pleaded guilty to his crime and failed to raise his objections earlier when some of the issues he now complains about were brought to his attention.
"The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said in his Dec. 16 opinion ( pdf ).
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2017, to one count of lying to the FBI. He's been expected to receive a light sentence, including no prison time, after extensively cooperating with the government on multiple investigations.
In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it late.
Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation.
Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something it could allege was false.
Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers, Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview."
Flynn was interviewed by two FBI agents, Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, two days after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The prosecutors argued that the FBI had a "sufficient and appropriate basis" for the interview because Flynn days earlier told members of the Trump campaign, including soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence, that he didn't discuss with the Russian ambassador the expulsion of Russian diplomats in late December 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
Flynn later admitted in his statement of offense that he asked, via Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, for Russia to only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner and not escalate the situation.
The FBI was at the time investigating whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian 2016 election meddling. No such coordination was established by the probe, which concluded more than two years later under then-special counsel Robert Mueller.
Powell argued that whatever Flynn told Pence and others in the transition team was none of the FBI's business.
"The Executive Branch has different reasons for saying different things publicly and privately, and not everyone is told the details of every conversation," she said in a previous court filing .
"If the FBI is charged with investigating discrepancies in statements made by government officials to the public, the entirety of its resources would be consumed in a week."
Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI investigation of election meddling.
Sullivan, however, thought otherwise, using a broader description of the investigation. The bureau, he said, probed the "nature of any links between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and Russia" and what Flynn said was material to it. The description Sullivan used appears to omit the context of the probe, which focused specifically on the Russian election meddling.
Lord Raglan , 1 minute ago link
thebigunit , 22 minutes ago linkPowell was dealt a bad hand by Flynn's previous corrupt and incompetent attorneys. The judge has an obligation to honor the new views of new counsel. He can't assume that Flynn had been well advised by former counsel. There's no evidence or history of that. They sold him out.
hairlessBalls , 30 minutes ago linkNot sure what's going on.
Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what his first team of "counselors" advised.
benb , 11 minutes ago linkFlynn is as deep state as it gets. He would throw the book at any one of you. Make no mistake. Being a general is a political appointment.
spoonful , 8 minutes ago linkHe's so Deep State that Brennen and Clapper went to Soetoro to get him fired after the election. Flynn was going to rat them out on the treasonous Iran deal. When Obama said no because it was too close to the end of his presidency they then criminally framed Flynn.
You're talking out your butt.
VideoEng_NC , 30 minutes ago linkconcurrr
peippe , 46 minutes ago linkWe're witnessing a judge being compromised. His actions & bold off-topic statements in court earlier this year seems to be the sign. DS Strikes Back.
socialist chum , 43 minutes ago linknever speak to leo without a lawyer representing you.
poor flynn.
AHBL , 41 minutes ago linkFlynn was lied to. Flynn was a 30 year veteran and General. Flynn couldn't imagine his country turning against him like this. None of us could. But with the cabal running our country, it could and did happen. Now we have to stamp out the cockroaches before it's too late.
peippe , 39 minutes ago linkFlynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore.
AHBL , 36 minutes ago linkhe had a dinner, at a gala, where foreigners were indeed present. (actually invited & not by Flynn)
Crime? You decide
peippe , 33 minutes ago linkThe **** are you talking about?
"Michael Flynn reportedly filed paperwork on Tuesday for the $530,000 worth of work he did last year that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/08/michael-flynn-admits-turkey-lobbying
Anthraxed , 33 minutes ago linkthought Turkey was our, umm, friend. Also, I did not know the cash disbursements had to be 15 million + ('Biden Sized')
to be forgiven.....or overlooked.
Interesting.
sbin , 24 minutes ago linkTony Pedoesta did the same thing. Yet, somehow was not prosecuted for it...
Soloamber , 48 minutes ago linkNATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet.
Impotence on parade
leodogma1 , 50 minutes ago linkThis ***** judge will give him a mouse sentence to protect his own *** . We don't know the half of it . How close is the judge to Obama ? I think we are going to find out .
dibiase , 41 minutes ago linkPresident Trump should step in now and Pardon Gen.Flynn and Roger Stone both trial were fixed unethical and not based on fact and law. In Stones case a radical jury of Demon Rat-Brains were assembled to hand down a guilty verdict.
PrideOfMammon , 7 minutes ago linkStone was bragging he had dirt on Clinton from Assange and when the government called his bs, he lied to them.
Stone is a piece of ****.
sbin , 56 minutes ago linkThey say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile.
hairlessBalls , 35 minutes ago linkFlynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses.
Those who violated the constitution and rule of law are media pundants and undisturbed.
Orange dotard please divert some of your swamp creatures from destroying Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia.
America needs the secret police smashed and held accountable for sedition and treason.
VideoEng_NC , 28 minutes ago linkOh how soon you forget that Flynn commited war crimes in Grenada.
sbin , 12 minutes ago linkThen bring him up on those charges. In court those kinds of leaps are inaddmissable.
Soloamber , 59 minutes ago linkHahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year
PopeRatzo , 1 hour ago linkThe minute they let Flynn off he talks and they sure as hell don't want that. They want to drag this out as long as possible and hope for a miracle (Trump gets beat ) or at least time enough for them to bugger off. FISA has known for years they were lied to by the FBI and now it has been confirmed . So why didn't they do anything then or now ? Were they in on it ? How do you draw any other conclusion ?
Spetzco , 28 minutes ago linkRemember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is sentencing him is PISSED.
Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say you weren't warned.
GreatUncle , 15 minutes ago linkThey threatened his son if he did not plead guilty. Of course, to you Dems the means justifies the end. He will be pardoned, and deservedly so.
MurderNeverWasLove , 55 minutes ago linkI don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other criminals.
sowhat1929 , 55 minutes ago linkFlynn can ask to withdraw plea, but he's turned down that opportunity three times, so judge might not allow it. Then everything Powell has been doing becomes relevant. Up to this point it's just a bunch of noise, unfortunately.
lwilland1012 , 1 hour ago linkThe house cleaning this country needs is truly astounding. This ******* judge can be swept out with all the other worthless trash
GoldenDonuts , 1 hour ago linkSo let me just be sure I understand this: he is being denied evidence that could prove innocence on a trial related to a guilty plea, which was largely the result of persecution by the FBI and we ALLOW this to happen in America? What has happened to this country?
And the same old same old continues. I really hope that all of these people receive the judgement that they so richly deserve.
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Dec 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
President Trump explicitly stated in a private conversation with one of the Democrats' witnesses that he wanted "no quid pro quo." But the mind-reading Democrats know Trump meant the opposite ; Trump did want a quid pro quo.
Though Ukrainian experts say a holdup of U.S. aid would not have impacted their ability to fight the Russians, since they manufacture their own lethal weapons (and sell a lot to other countries), the Democrats can read minds: They say people died because of the delay.
Each of the Democrats' witnesses also drew conclusions about President Trump, his supposedly corrupt motivations and thought processes, that would require them to read minds. (Most of them said they'd neither met nor spoken to Trump.)
Lastly, Democrats can read Joe Biden's mind, too. They know that when Biden insisted on the firing of the prosecutor investigating his son's company, that his son didn't factor into the decision.
Democrats could be correct on all counts.
But I think that from a practical standpoint, it's difficult to prosecute a serious case based almost solely on the idea that you claim to know what the other guy was thinking.
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Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that closely so that's just a general impression.
My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.
The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it. So I clicked on the BBC article -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49939123
- and came across this -
" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".
Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.
On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you might happen to have dug up.
Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the compliment and topple Her Majesty.
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Dec 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Via Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com,
Former CIA officer and counter-intelligence expert Kevin Shipp says that former Obama Administration Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder gave a big Deep State panic signal when he wrote in an Op-Ed last week in the Washington Post trashing current AG William Barr and his top prosecutor John Durham. Shipp explains,
"This is very significant. We all remember that Holder was Obama's right hand man. Eric Holder was Barack Obama's enforcer. The fact that Holder comes out this quickly after the Inspector General (IG) Horowitz Report comes out... and makes this veiled threat against Durham's reputation. The fact that Eric Holder came out and made this statement is a clear indication to me they are running scared.
We have to understand it was Eric Holder that Barack Obama used to target the heads of corporations that spoke out publicly about Barack Obama. We know Holder was held in 'Contempt of Congress.' He spied on AP reporters, ran guns to drug cartels and blacked out the information. He spied on over a hundred journalists, and on and on we go...
They (Deep State) are convinced there are going to be indictments. Secondly, there is AG Barr's outrage over (IG) Horowitz's report and what it did not do. He made statements that there was spying and actions by government officials that need to be criminally looked into. Barr's outrage over this shows me that there are going to be indictments, and that he is taking this seriously. Again, when Holder comes out and puts out this bombshell in the Washington Post, which is another indication that indictments are coming. John Brennan, former Obama Administration CIA Director, is going to be at the top of the list. "
Shipp says during the entire Trump Presidency, the mainstream media (MSM) has operated as a propaganda arm of the Deep State and the Democrats . Shipp contends,
"They put these stories out intentionally because they are creating their own story, and that is what the propaganda mainstream media does. It creates its own story...
They want to frame their latest story that there really wasn't any spying on Trump. That's what FISA warrants and applications are all about. They are all about spying ."
Shipp thinks this will be a big nail in the coffin of the MSM. Shipp says, "The mainstream media will never come back from this..."
"...because finally, through shows like this and others, the real information is coming out as to what the mainstream media has done . At the top of that list is the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC...
What they did is they created the Russia collusion story as if it was reality, as if it was real. That is part of the procedure in doing this. Then, they invented the evidence, and that was the Steele Dossier. They portrayed this as evidence to create this false narrative. Then they sent this story out to each outlet, and all repeat the same story over and over and over again knowing the more they repeat it, the more people were going to believe it. Then, the FBI leaked information to the mainstream media. The FBI took that information leaked to the media and used their stories as evidence. Brennan leaked the dossier to the mainstream media as part of this whole machine."
Shipp says the hoax of Russia collusion and the impeachment sham of President Trump is distracting us from other very big problems such as the extreme debt the country and the world is facing . Shipp says,
"Trump inherited a financial monster that was not his doing. When he was sworn into office, it already existed. It is very serious, and I think now or very soon the U.S. government will not be able to afford the interest on the national debt, much less paying off the debt itself."
It is reported that central banks are buying record amounts of gold, and even Goldman Sachs is telling its clients to buy the yellow metal. Shipp says,
" This is a solid indicator that we are headed for the financial rapids with Goldman Sachs especially. Goldman Sachs is a global bank, and it's one of the main banks in the United States. The fact that Sachs and others are building up gold reserves is a clear indication that they expect a financial downturn, to put it mildly, that is coming. "
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp.
To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here
_triplesix_ , 1 minute ago link
jm , 2 minutes ago linkWake me when someone goes to jail.
I kinda think that everyone is holding off to see if Trump gets re-elected.
If he does then there will be indictments, jail time, and a real cleaning of the house.
The guys in the middle of this investigation depose the "liberal" old guard and offer sacrifices to their own "conservative" god of filth. Same Mammon, just a different order of worship.
If he doesn't get re-elected then the guys that are investigating this can just slink back into the current slime and survive in some basic way.
I have seen this dynamic when companies merge as equals. Everybody is afraid to act because the stakes are so high. It's a chess game played by ruthless cowards.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com
FOX 10 Phoenix 722K subscribers The U.S. attorney who is conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe released a rare statement Monday saying he disagrees with conclusions of the so-called FISA report -- after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found in that review that the probe's launch largely complied with DOJ and FBI policies. "Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened," U.S. Attorney John Durham said in a statement. Horowitz released his report Monday saying his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to launch that 2016 probe and to seek a highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the early months of the investigation. Still, it found that there were "significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised." "I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff," Durham said. "However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S." As Horowitz has conducted his review of DOJ actions during the Russia probe, Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, has also been conducting a wider inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Fox News reported in October that Durham's ongoing probe has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation. Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr ripped the FBI's "intrusive" investigation after the release of Horowitz's review, saying it was launched based on the "thinnest of suspicions." "The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken," Barr said in a statement. Barr expressed frustration that the FBI continued investigating the Trump campaign, even as "exculpatory" information came to the light.
Are See , 2 days agoWhen the FBI lies to a court it's called an "Irregularity" When you or I lie to a court, it's called "Perjury" and we go to jail.
Terry R , 2 days agoThe history of FBI and DOJ lying and legal abuse is much older than Trump. Read Sidney Powell's LICENSED TO LIE. Been going on since at least the Enron prosecutions. And judges are just as much to blame.
Guitarguts63 , 2 days agoThis is what we get for having so many lawyers in office.
Liam Daniels , 2 days ago16 minutes and 30 seconds in should be labeled as treason
Geena Gador , 2 days agoThe evidence is glaring. Indictments need to be handed out or else this is a mockery of justice
sethgabel , 2 days agoTalk is cheap. DO something to bring justice to the perpetrators.
SWFL Motorsports Fan , 2 days agoPage and Strzok conversation is more like insurgency than pillow talk.
Wynette Greer , 2 days agoThank God for: Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, and Louie Gohmert to represent our country in this mess to shed light on whats been going on. Drain the swamp in Washington!
Lillie Holmes , 2 days agoThe CIA are just as corrupt as the FBI , they have even more power to abuse !
Karlyn Pinson , 2 days agoWOW all the investigations they did on Trump was just to set him up, James Comey should be arrested
Arlene Duran , 2 days agoHOROWITZ'S IS A DEEP STATE SWAMP RAT. FIRE HIM
Michael Carr , 2 days agoCNN should be sued and barred from all angles of media. Dangerous very very dangerous situation.
Crystal kellim , 1 day agoAnd the tax payers of the United States spent 40 million dollars investigating Trump because of the Steele Dossier. Terrible, just awful.
Why aren't Lisa page and stroke in cuffs by NOW, this is conspiracy, treasonous behavior.... biased and they think they are above Americans.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com
Tim Burton , 4 days agoThe dems slandered Barr and Durham but not Horowitz, now we know why .
SwapPart, LLC , 4 days agoGraham running cover for the Deep-State and directing us to low-level offenders NOT obama/hillary/DNC and their FAILED CoupD'etat's
William Bailey , 4 days agoHorowitz is just afraid of being added to the Clinton's body count.
Rice Family , 4 days ago (edited)Well folks there you have it. The deep state investigated themselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing.
It's insane to say there were "17 material omissions, miss-representations (lies) and errors" - but no evidence of bias. This is like accidentally shooting someone 17 times.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , Dec 13 2019 17:15 utc | 75
Corbyn's defeat was entirely due to the treachery of the engrained leadership of the Labour Party.While the membership is generally radical and socialist, 80% of the MPs, local councillors, Union Officers and party officials were put there by the Blairites and are almost impossible to remove from the offices in which they have enormous potential influence.
Corbyn was in an almost impossible position but his mistake was, characteristically, to assume a higher degree of good will and loyalty to the 'cause' than most MPs, careerists, contemptuous of ordinary people and desperate for the approval-in a society which is famous for its social snobbery- of the ruling Establishment.It is significant that, whereas Johnson expelled dozens of MPs from the Tory party, Labour expelled only one-Chris Williamson on the basis of an obviously idiotic charge of antisemitism on his part.
Sometimes left wing winners have to be ready to fight to the death to secure the mandates they are given and in doing so to damage the opposition. In this case the Blairites.
Sometimes betraying the working class and the poor takes the form of refusing to be ruthless.
The irony is that Corbyn is by far the longest standing critic of the EU in British public life, as the Blairites very quickly charged when the referendum on the EU (" a highly democratic organisation" in Laguerre's astonishing judgement) was won by the 'wrong side'. And in 2017 he campaigned on the promise to 'get Brexit done". It was only out of a refusal to confront the Remainers, including most of his Shadow Cabinet, that the hybrid policy to implement the Blairite Peoples Vote was adopted.
I imagine that the Remainers in the Labour Party and the Blairites of every sort will be saddened by the public's renewed mandate for Brexit, but their dominant emotion will be euphoria that the left was defeated, neo-liberalism still reins unchallenged and imperialism maintained in British Foreign Policy.If the Labour Party now sticks to its principles it will purge itself of its Fifth Columns and use the breathing space before the next election to re-organise itself as a socialist party.
To do this it needs firstly, to establish a newspaper, secondly to build a Youth wing, thirdly to institute a national system of political education so that every member understands what socialism is and takes a part in its construction. And fourthly that Labour becomes the organising focus for both Unions organising the unorganised and social movements defending tenants, the poor, disabled and vulnerable.
But this is all very unlikely, the party structure is biassed against democracy, it is almost impossible to impose the will of the membership on the people who run the party. And ought to be run out of it.
JC was crucified, by authority of the Empire, at the urging of the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem and with the invaluable assistance of corrupt traitors among his own people
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com
In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News' Pete Williams about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General's report on the Russia investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.
Gary Ellis , 2 days agoIt appears that none of AG Barr's answers were what Pete Williams wanted to hear.
greg j , 2 days agoI sincerely hope that the Durham investigation brings people to justice for what they have done to our country.
Jeremy Elice , 3 days agoThe man just admitted "this may be the biggest conspiracy in U.S Political History." Ouch!
JOHN DRUMHELLER , 2 days agoShame we didn't get to see Pete William's face during Barr's answer accusing "an irresponsible press of fanning the flames."
Hart , 1 day agoHere's the adult in the room. Look out children.
Russell McAfee , 1 day ago (edited)This is like if Watergate was on steroids and then some. Everyone involved should be prosecuted including the person who bought the dossier
Richard McLeod , 1 day agoThe FBI never got the actual DNC server. Crowdstrike has it. The FBI got a 'forensic copy'
King Eris , 1 day agoThe FBI has now been proven to be corrupt at its' highest levels.
Noble Victory , 1 day agoI could listen to AG Barr talk for hours. He's so calm and professional.
Nolan Gleason , 3 days agoBarr is so intelligent and just. He's smoothe like the way he plays the Bagpipes. Pretty amazing! 🇺🇸👍
ctafrance , 1 day agoDeath to the swamp
Roman King , 1 day ago (edited)The press is hopelessly corrupt. If we didn't know it already, this interview proves it.
Clarion Call , 2 days agoI'm So glade we have a competent attorney General pushing back on the massive disinformation narrative that comes from Giant News outlets of which are used to being unchallenged, unchecked by today's "journalistic standards"
wkcw1 , 2 days agoI so respect and admire this man's brain and logical thinking. His vocabulary is great as well.
barbandrob1 , 1 day agoNBC realizing they need to take a bath on this whole thing. Probably a bit too late now.
Faris Hamarneh , 3 days agoBarr just basically clarified and justified Fox news reporting over the last 2 years.. Thanks NBC
Craig Bigelow , 2 days agoI love Barr's nonchalant style. But this is real big and heads are going to roll
Luis Santiago , 1 day agoObama spied on Trump. Obama should have known about the FISA warrant!
macfan128 , 1 day agoso this guy really asked Bahr"why not open an investigation even with little evidence?" because is a violation of civil liberties to invade the privacy of law abiding citizens. You need compelling evidence for something so huge
David , 3 days ago17:44 "Why should the Attorney General care that the FBI was spying on a presidential candidate?" LOLOLOLOL Our media is a jooooooooke.
Bill the Cat , 2 days agoNBC did a straight up interview??? This is shocking. Who told them that they could start doing journalism again?
Clapper and Brennan will be shaking in their boots after watching Barr's interview.
MegaTrucker65 , 1 day agoHorowitz should be instructed to edit or update his Report to discuss The Question of Bias and Evidence of Bias. He has clearly misguided Americans with his choice of words and has omitted important facts underpinning bias.
Gamer John3:18 , 1 day agoI haven't looked into Ukraine YET.
Yo Mama , 2 days agoAG Barr is an outstanding role model, a man of integrity and wisdom, calm in a raging political storm. I have full confidence he will make those who fabricated evidence and hid exculpatory evidence finally face justice. AG Barr for President 2024!
Barr is a straight shooter and I love it. It sounds like we will get to the real truth eventually through Durhams investigation I just hope it doesnt take another year to get to the prosecutions.
Wolverines Fight , 1 day agoSo, I watched the interview... The video is called, "Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation." Not once did I hear him criticize the I.G.'s report. In fact, A.G. Barr clarified that the I.G.'s report was limited in scope because of the limitations put on the I.G. He said that the report was appropriate.
Benny .Burmeister Jørgensen , 3 days agoIt's scary to see how powerful the corruption of the Democratic Party has grown. It represents a serious threat to all our personal freedom. The Democratic Party has to be stopped.
Mike Dorsey , 1 day agoOk after watching this interview its quite clear that Barr and Durham is going after these criminals and people are going to jail. Maybe there is hope for US yet becuase this dane consider US atm a banana republic. Spying on political candidates? Forging documents? You FBI behaving like Stalins secret police. Lets see what happen.
protochris , 1 day agoGod Bless Bill Barr. I'm glad there's still some adults in government that will speak their mind intelligently, rationally and unabashedly.
Dan Kuo , 1 day agoThis guy is brilliant; he's clearly exposing the FBI and the barking dogs on the alphabet networks.
Jbyrd Texas , 2 days agoAmazing for the AG to go in deep into enemy territory at the heart of the opposition media to lay out a case for the criminal activities that undermined our country prior to and after the 2016 election. The deep state is trembling at the prospect of being held accountable after all the facts are laid out to the american people that these activities cannot be brushed aside or swept under the carpet if we are to continue as a country.
Stephan Coutts , 1 day agoThe corrupt media is trying to act like they have not been involved in this treasonous scam since the beginning working directly with the treasonous cabal. The media has been lying and pushing fake news for 3 years calling Trump a Russia agent and called him treasonous. I knew the whole time that they were lying there was evidence from day one that this was all lies and if I can see that from the public then they can definitely see that from the inside they are purposefully lying.
Worlds Best Metal Detectorist , 2 days agoI dare anyone on here to research Barr's History back to his involvement in the assignation of JFK, the cover up, defending Nixon, Epstein, and many other illegal and immoral activities. After reviewing the evidence, I walked away believing that Barr is trying to cover up his tracks so he does do jail time. No need to reply. Either take my dare or not. God Bless America and ALL her people, Stephan
Right Thinking , 3 days agoThe public are sick of waiting . I find myself skipping through a half hour news show in 5 minutes flat looking for arrests ,whereas before I was rivited to every minute of the half hour show but it goes on and on and at the there is Nothiing .The Democrats are the masters , it's obvious . If they break the law they get off scott free . If you are republican wave bye bye , you will be in jail for years . America is not the free and fair country it is all cracked up to be . It is corrupted by the democrats who have peoiple in high places that thwart real justice.
dethtrk Jones , 3 days agoMifsud approached George! Who was Mifsud working for (western asset) and why did he approach George? He’s the one who offered George dirt on Hill. Then invited him to meet the fake “niece”, of Putin, in England! What about this information? Someone set George up to make this happen outside the US, because of EO 12333. It had to happen outside the US so they could go to the fisa court!
Brad Brown , 2 days agoI dont trust Christopher Wrey. He keeps slow-walking all the FBI documents and declassifications. He also fights judicial watch and judges that rule in their favor and continue not giving over what is ordered! This last judge was ready to hold him in contempt for refusing to cooperate with court ordered documents.
Why did the FBI continue to investigate Trump after January when the case collapsed? To try and find a way to impeach Trump. Remember the Washington Post headlined article right after the inauguration "The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway." The FBI "insurance" policy was essential!
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com
human151 , 2 days agoThis is Washington corruption, and they wonder why Trump was voted in.
Does Horowitz really expect people to believe his conclusions? The guy is obviously dirty.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Danny , December 13, 2019 at 3:31 pm
Warren's awkward attempts to portray herself as a woman of color, even if a etsy weeny tiny bit, always seemed strange to me, ignoring the resume nonsense. It makes sense with the realization that Women of Color, have become a new politically privileged class, in spite of some of them being not very oppressed.
Indian (subcontinent) women come from a tradition of a caste based society of wealth and privilege. The most succesful ones intuitively home in on and game American race-based identity politics in spite of their advantages, such as being one of the wealthiest religious groups in the nation,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/No Bernie style economic class based socialism for them, no way. It's maintain privilege, Silicon Valley corporate caste based salaries, Republican reductionism, Hillary hopium and yet, they proudly proclaim their affiliation with real women of color, on whose backs they surf, like last generation's black cleaning women, the grandparents of which might have actually been slaves.
3 examples: Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, Neera Tanden and Kamala Harris.drumlin woodchuckles , December 14, 2019 at 12:49 am
Women-of-color in general are not a privileged class. The not-very-poor women of color are perhaps a newly privileged class.
The Goldman Sachs women-of-color have become a new privileged class, in line with the tenets of Goldman Sachs Feminism. " The arc of history is long, and it bends towards rainbow gender-fluid oligarchy."
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Tomonthebeach , December 13, 2019 at 5:10 pm
As Dean Baker pointed out in his book Rigged, the neoliberal capitalism of America is rigged to benefit the top 1%. After all, they were the architects. Most Americans appreciate that. Nevertheless, the vast majority willingly wade into its rigged quicksand. All economies are rigged in the sense that there is a structure to it all. Moreover, the architects of that system will ensure there is something in it for themselves – rigged. Our school system does not instruct Americans on how their own economic system works (is rigged), so most of us become its victims rather than its beneficiaries.
Books by Liz Warren and her daughter offer remedial guidance on how to make the current US economic system work for the average household. So, in a sense, Liz comes across as an adherent to the system she is trying to help others master .
This seems to be a losing proposition for candidate Warren because most Americans want a new system with new rigging; not a repaired system that has been screwing them for generations.
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Dec 12, 2019 | theintercept.com
Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds .Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don't consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that's what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.
In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It's brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
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Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
SolentBound , 10 Dec 2019 15:05
A few days ago, veterans' group VoteVets endorsed Pete Buttigieg. It has previously supported Tulsi Gabbard. Details:New York Times, "Liberal Veterans' Group Endorses Pete Buttigieg in 2020 Race": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-votevets-endorsement.html
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Dec 12, 2019 | foreignpolicy.com
Elizabeth Warren's politics seem like a tangle of contradictions. She wants free markets, but also wants to tax billionaires' capital. Her enemies on the right claim that she is a socialist , but Warren describes herself as "capitalist to my bones."
Warren's politics are so confusing because we have forgotten that a pro-capitalist left is even possible. For a long time, political debate in the United States has been a fight between conservatives and libertarians on the right, who favored the market, and socialists and liberals on the left, who favored the government.
It has been clear since 2016 that the traditional coalition of the right was breaking up. Conservatives such as U.S. President Donald Trump are no fans of open trade and free markets, and even favor social protections so long as they benefit their white supporters. Now, the left is changing too.
Warren is reviving a pro-market left that has been neglected for decades, by drawing on a surprising resource: public choice economics. This economic theory is reviled by many on the left, who have claimed that it is a Koch-funded intellectual conspiracy designed to destroy democracy. Yet there is a left version of public choice economics too, associated with thinkers such as the late Mancur Olson. Like Olson, Warren is not a socialist but a left-wing capitalist, who wants to use public choice ideas to cleanse both markets and the state of their corruption.
Public choice economics has big influence and a bad name. It is a school of economic thought that has at different times been associated with scholars at the University of Rochester, Virginia Tech, and George Mason University. Public choice came into being in fervent opposition to the mainstream of economics, which was dominated by scholars such as Paul Samuelson.Samuelson, in his famous and influential textbooks, saw a clear role for government in regulating markets. Public choice scholars vehemently disagreed . For political and theoretical reasons, they instead saw government as a fountain of corruption. Public choice economists argued that government regulations were the product of special interest groups that had "captured" the power of the state, to cripple rivals and squeeze money from citizens and consumers. Regulations were not made in the public interest, but instead were designed to bilk ordinary citizens.
Perhaps the most influential version of public choice was known as law and economics. For decades, conservative foundations supported seminars that taught judges and legal academics the principles of public choice economics. Attendees were taught that harsh sentences would deter future crime, that government regulation should be treated with profound skepticism, and that antitrust enforcement had worse consequences than the monopolies it was supposed to correct. As statistical research by Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, and Suresh Naidu has shown , these seminars played a crucial role in shifting American courts to the right.
Warren was one of the young legal academics who attended these seminars , and was largely convinced by the arguments. Her early work on bankruptcy law started from public choice principles, and displayed a deep skepticism of intervention.
The conventional story is that as Warren moved from the right to the left, she abandoned the public choice way of thinking about the world, in favor of a more traditional left-wing radicalism. A more accurate take might be that she didn't abandon public choice, but instead remained committed to its free-market ideals, while reversing some of its valences. Her work as an academic was aimed at combating special interests, showing how the financial industry had shaped bankruptcy reforms so that they boosted lenders' profits at borrowers' expense. Notably, she applied public choice theory to explain some aspects of public choice, showing how financial interests had funded scholarly centers which provided a patina of genteel respectability to industry's preferred positions.
Now, Warren wants to to wash away the filth that has built up over decades to clog the workings of American capitalism. Financial rules that have been designed by lobbyists need to be torn up. Vast inequalities of wealth, which provide the rich with disproportionate political and economic power, need to be reversed. Intellectual property rules, which make it so that farmers no longer really own the seeds they sow or the machinery they use to plant them, need to be abolished. For Warren, the problem with modern American capitalism is that it is not nearly capitalist enough. It has been captured by special interests, which are strangling competition.
It is hard to see how deeply Warren's program is rooted in public choice ideas, because public choice has come to be the target of left-wing conspiracy theories. A recent popular history book, which qualified as a finalist for the National Book Award, depicts public choice as a kind of stealth intellectual weapons program , developed by economist James Buchanan to provide Chilean President Augusto Pinochet with the justification for his dictatorial constitution, and the Koch brothers with the tools to dismantle American democracy.For sure, the mainstream of public choice is strongly libertarian, and the development of the approach was funded by conservative individuals and foundations. What left-wing paranoia overlooks is that there has always been a significant left-wing current of public choice, and even a potent left-wing radicalism buried deep within public choice waiting to be uncovered. The free-market ideal is a situation in which no actor has economic power over any other. As many of Warren's proposals demonstrate, trying to achieve this ideal can animate a radical program for reform.
Warren's ideas have a close family resemblance to those of Olson, a celebrated public choice theorist. (Perhaps she has read him; perhaps she has just reached similar conclusions from similar starting points.) Olson, like other public choice scholars, worried about the power of interest groups. He famously developed a theory of collective action that shows how narrowly focused interest groups can dominate politics, because they can organize more cheaply and reap great benefits by setting rules and creating monopolies at the expense of the ordinary public. This means that government programs often actively harm the poor rather than helping them.
However, Olson also castigated libertarian economists for their "monodiabolism" and "almost utopian lack of concern about other problems" so long as the government was chained down. He argued that the government was not the only source of economic power: Business special interests would corrupt markets even if the government did not help them.
The result, according to Olson, was that societies, economies, and political systems became increasingly encrusted with special-interest politics as the decades passed. Countries benefited economically from great upheavals such as wars and social revolutions, which tore interest groups from their privileged perches and sent them tumbling into the abyss.
Olson wanted to open up both politics and the economy to greater competition, equalizing power relations as much as possible between the many and the few. He argued that under some circumstances, powerful trade unions could benefit the economy. When unions and business groups were sufficiently big that they represented a substantial percentage of workers or business as a whole, they would be less likely to seek special benefits at the expense of the many, and more likely to prioritize the good of the whole. Olson also believed strongly in the benefits of open trade, not just because it led to standard economic efficiencies, but because it made it harder for interest groups to capture government and markets. Northern European economies such as Denmark, which combine powerful trade unions with a strong commitment to free markets, represent Olsonian politics in action.
Warren shares far more intellectual DNA with Mancur Olson and his colleagues than with traditional socialism. However, there are important differences. Olson wrote his key work in the 1980s, before the globalization boom. His arguments for free trade depend on the assumption that open borders will disempower special interests.As economists such as Dani Rodrik and political scientists such as Susan Sell have shown, this hasn't quite worked out as Olson expected. Free trade agreements have become a magnet for special interest groups, who want to cement their preferences in international agreements that are incredibly hard to reverse. The U.S. "fast track" approach to trade negotiations makes it harder for Congress to demand change, but allows industry lobbyists to shape the administration's negotiating stance. Investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms provide business with a friendly forum where they can target government rules that hurt their economic interests. All of this helps explain why Warren is skeptical of arguments for the general benefits of free-trade agreements: they aren't nearly so general as economists claim.
Close attention to Warren's public choice influences reveals both her radicalism and its limits. Like Olson, she is committed to the notion that making capitalism work for citizens will require changes that border on the revolutionary. The sweeping proposals she makes for changes to America's gross economic inequality, its economic relations with the rest of the world, its approach to antitrust legislation, and its tolerance of sleazy relationships among politicians, regulators, and industry are all aimed at creating a major upheaval. Where she proposes major state action, as in her "Medicare for All" plans, it is to supplant market institutions that aren't working, and are so embedded in interest group power dynamics that they are incapable of reform.
Yet this is a distinctly capitalist variety of radicalism. Socialists will inevitably be disappointed in the limits to her arguments. Warren's ideal is markets that work as they should, in contrast to the socialist belief that some forms of power are inherent within markets themselves. Not only Marxists, but economists such as Thomas Piketty, have suggested that the market system is rigged in ways that will inevitably favor capital over the long run. The fixes that Warren proposes will at most dampen down these tendencies rather than remove them.
If Warren wins, she will not only disappoint socialists. Her proposals may end up being too radical for Congress, but not nearly radical enough to tackle challenges such as climate change, which will require a rapid and dramatic transformation of the global economy if catastrophe is to be averted. Libertarians and mainstream public choice scholars will attack her from a different vantage point, arguing that she is both too skeptical about existing market structures and too trusting of the machineries of the state that she hopes to use to remedy them. State efforts to reform markets can easily turn into protectionism.
What Warren offers, then, is neither a socialist or deep green alternative to capitalism, nor a public choice justification for why regulators ought to leave it alone. The bet she is making is that capitalism can solve the major problems that the United States faces, so long as the government tackles inequality and defangs the special interests that have parasitized the political and economic systems. Like all such bets, it is a risky one, but one that might transform the U.S. model of capitalism if it succeeds.
Henry Farrell is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
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Dec 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Rudy Giuliani Can Barely Contain Himself Over His Ukraine Findings by Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 - 17:05 0 SHARES
Rudy Giuliani is grinning like the Cheshire cat. His standard smile.
For the past several weeks, the personal attorney to President Trump has been in Ukraine, interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence to shed light on what the Bidens were up to during the Obama years, and get to the bottom of claims that Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He has enlisted the help of former Ukrainian diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, to gather information from politicians and ask them to participate in a documentary series in partnership with One America News Network (OANN) - which will make the case for investigating the Bidens as well as Burisma Holdings - the natural gas firm which employed the son of a sitting US Vice President in a case which reeks of textbook corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zi2UWTO2DyY
According to the Journal , Giuliani will present findings from his self-described "secret assignment" in a 20-page report .
Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries . - Wall Street Journal
( Note the Wall Street Journal's use of a straw man when they write: "The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference ."
Apparently the three journalists who collaborated on the article didn't get the memo that two countries can meddle at the same time, nor did any of them read the January, 2017 Politico article: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - which outlines how Ukrainian government officials conspired with a DNC operative to hurt the Trump campaign during the 2016 election - a move which led to the disruptive ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort).
Rudy Giuliani's trip to Kyiv this month, which he described as a "secret assignment," included a meeting with Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. PHOTO: PRESS OFFICE OF ANDRIY DERKACH/ASSOCIATED PRESSTelizhenko, the former diplomat, tells the Journal that the plan for the series was conceived during the impeachment hearings as a way for Giuliani to tell his side of the story. The former Ukrainian diplomat flew to Washington on November 20 to film with Giuliani, while in early December he accompanied America's Mayor on the Kiev trip - stopping in Budapest, Vienna and Rome.
Rudy comes home
Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the Wall Street Journal .
" What did you get? " Trump asked. " More than you can imagine ," answered the former New York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a then-federal prosecutor.
According to the 77-year-old Giuliani, Trump instructed him to brief Attorney General William Barr and GOP lawmakers on his findings. Soon after, the president then told reporters at the White House, " I hear he has found plenty ."
Rudy has been working on this project for a while. In late January, he conducted phone interviews with former Ukrainian prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yiury Lutsenko. On the call was George Boyle - Giuliani's Chief Operating Officer and Director of Investigations. Boyle started as a NYPD beat cop in 1987, and was promoted to detective - eventually joining the Special Victims Squad. In short, the ever-grinning Giuliani has some serious professionals working on this.
" When he believes he's right, he loves taking on fights ," said longtime Giuliani friend, Tony Carbonetti.
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Please enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing! Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.That said, Giuliani's efforts have not gone off without a hitch. In October, two associates - Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both of whom assisted with his Ukraine investigation, were related in October on campaign-finance charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty, while Giuliani denies wrongdoing and says they did not lobby him. Parnas, notably, was also on the January call with Shokin and Lutsenko as a translator.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tc4nQD6eiW4
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by holding his phone over them . But on his recent trip, he said, "despite whatever else you can say, I missed them." - Wall Street Journal
Trump opponents insist Giuliani is conducting shadow foreign policy and orchestrated the ouster of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch - who Ukraine's new president Volodomyr Zelensky complained on a now-famous July 25 phone call accused of not recognizing his authority.
In the impeachment hearings, witnesses accused Mr. Giuliani of conducting a shadow foreign policy and orchestrating the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was described as "problematic" and "disruptive" and, in testimony that cited former national security adviser John Bolton, likened to a "hand grenade that's going to blow everybody up." Mr. Giuliani has said he kept the State Department apprised of his efforts and that he was working at the president's behest. - Wall Street Journal
" Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career ," Giuliani wrote in a text message while conducting his investigation overseas.
Surftown , 8 minutes ago link
J S Bach , 12 minutes ago linkIf it doesn't fit the Mueller narrative.
It doesn't fit the Horowitz narrative.
It fits the impeachment narrative.
- Pelosi, Podestas, Bidens, Clinton, Soros, washing foreign aid money, -- So the manufactured whistleblower handlers including DNI IG are dirty.
- But if nobody heard a conversation they Only heard "about" -- who in NSA or CIA ( Ciaramella) gave the illegal surveillance to Schiff?
That sounds like Brennan still doing his dirty work.
His name was Seth Rich.
SolidGold , 6 minutes ago linkNever forget... Giuliani was up to his neck in the treasonous happenings on 9/11. For that, he can NEVER be forgiven... no matter how much dirt he digs up in this inane Ukranian circus.
rosiescenario , 12 minutes ago linkI get it. 911 was a deep state, CIA, Mossad type deal.
Giuliani was just the mayor.
precarryus , 18 minutes ago linkMaybe Rudy discovered just what the Ukraine arms dealer got in return from Pelosi and Schiff for their money?
Three j ournalists also wrote a WSJ piece October 22, '19; one author same as December 13 piece. ( Identify a narrative?)
Excerpts:
" Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have repeatedly promoted an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee before the 2016 election, and that a related computer server is now located there. That theory is sharply at odds with the findings of a special counsel investigation and a 2017 U.S. intelligence community report that found Russia was responsible for the hack and leak of Democratic emails as part of a broader operation intended to aid Mr. Trump."... ...... ... " Mr. Giuliani, who didn't respond to a request for comment, had for months pressed for Ukraine to investigate issues related to the 2016 election as well as Mr. Biden, a potential 2020 rival of Mr. Trump. As vice president under President Obama, Mr. Biden led an anti-corruption drive in Ukraine at the same time as his son received $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, an arrangement Mr. Trump has called corrupt. Mr. Biden and his son have denied any wrongdoing, and no evidence of wrongdoing has been presented. "
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Dec 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, the first AG in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt by Congress for failing to turn over ' Fast and Furious ' documents, says that current Attorney General William Barr is "nakedly partisan" and unfit for office.
In a Wednesday night op-ed in the Washington Post , Holder - who previously described himself as President Obama's 'wing-man,' wrote that Barr is employing "the tactics of an unscrupulous criminal defense lawyer" by vilifying critics of President Trump.
Holder slammed Barr's recent comments at a Federalist Society event, in which the AG "delivered an ode to essentially unbridled executive power" by "dismissing the authority of the legislative and judicial branches."
When, in the same speech, Barr accused "the other side" of "the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law," he exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an impartial law enforcement official. Even more troubling -- and telling -- was a later (and little-noticed) section of his remarks, in which Barr made the outlandish suggestion that Congress cannot entrust anyone but the president himself to execute the law. -Eric Holder
"It undermines the need for understanding between law enforcement and certain communities and flies in the face of everything the Justice Department stands for," wrote Holder, adding "I and many other Justice veterans were hopeful that he would serve as a responsible steward of the department and a protector of the rule of law."
So - Eric Holder thinks Barr should be an "impartial law enforcement official," and not a "partisan actor," yet described himself in a 2013 interview as President Obama's "wing-man."
In 2012, 'scandal-free' Obama claimed executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents "gunwalking" operation sought by House investigators investigating the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry at the hands of foreign nationals who used a weapon obtained through illegal straw purchases orchestrated by Obama's ATF.
Holder blasted the contempt votes as "politically motivated" and "misguided."
Silentwistle , 8 minutes ago link
Salsa Verde , 13 minutes ago linkYou know, when everyone speaks of people who should be in jail we always forget about Holder. Thanks for reminding us again what a POS Holder is.
Tachyon5321 , 17 minutes ago linkI dream of the day when families in Mexico who's loved one's were killed by F&F guns get their hands on Holder and tear him to pieces.
mtumba , 21 minutes ago linkAs a result of his stupidity, Attorney General Eric Holder's actions killed US Boarder and Mexican police . Holder should have been charged with homicide for the murders of the US Boarder Gaurds.
Cthonic , 19 minutes ago linkThe Obama turds continue to float to the top of the toilet bowl.
two hoots , 23 minutes ago linkclinton turd
http://jimbovard.com/blog/2014/08/27/eric-holder-waco-coverup/
Holder is another protection card to play, yesterday it was Bill Clinton. They are reaching desperation, bottom of the barrel, and soon all will be naked and exposed. Easy to lose sight of the damage to our nation wrought by this one party that puts it's survival and needs above us all.
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Dec 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
LEEPERMAX , 2 minutes ago link
BOTH the AG and federal prosecutor Durham REJECT the findings. Durham has the ability to conduct a criminal investigation that Horowitz did not. Given this, the IG found evidence to criminally refer FBI officials and campaign spies.
-- GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS (@GEORGEPAPA19) DECEMBER 9, 2019
Remember: the Durham probe became a CRIMINAL investigation as soon as he left Rome with information on Mifsud. IG said he wasn't working for the FBI. Leaves only one other option: CIA, and why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up. Bye bye, Brennan.
-- GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS (@GEORGEPAPA19) DECEMBER 9, 2019
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Dec 11, 2019 | www.theatlantic.com
The report confirmed that the Russia investigation originated, as has been previously reported, with the Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat about Russia possessing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, which the IG determined "was sufficient to predicate the investigation." The widespread conservative belief that the investigation began because of the dubious claims in the Steele dossier was false. "Steele's reports played no role" in the opening of the Russia investigation, the report found, because FBI officials were not "aware of Steele's election reporting until weeks later."
...The IG also "did not find any records" that Joseph Mifsud, the professor who told Papadopoulos the Russians had obtained "dirt" on Clinton, was an FBI informant sent to entrap him.
...Page "did not play a role in the decision to open" the Russia investigation, and that Strzok was "was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters."
...the IG did determine that the Page FISA application was "inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation," which misled the court as to the credibility of the FBI's evidence when seeking authority to surveil Page.
..."This was an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow -- and a lot of people were in on it," Trump declared , while Barr insisted , in a more lawyerly fashion, "The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken."
Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic , where he covers politics.
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Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
12/10/2019
In her usual succinct and clarifying manner, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel took to Twitter overnight to summarize the farcical findings within the Horowitz Report (and Barr and Durham's responses).
In sixteen short tweets , Strassel destroyed the spin while elucidating the key findings of the Horowitz report (emphasis ours):
Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to note what a "low threshold" this is.
Durham's statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on reasonableness.
The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said dossier was as an "essential" part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court
Conversely, the report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his "memo" of Feb 2018.
That doc stated that "FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process" or "omit material information."
Also claimed FBI didn't much rely on dossier.
In fact, IG report says dossier played "central and essential role" in getting FISA warrants.
Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.
The Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the "dossier."
Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly available times, places, title names. Ouch.
IG finds 17 separate problems with FISA court submissions, including FBI's overstatement of Steele's credentials. Also the failure to provide court with exculpatory evidence and issues with Steele's sources and additional info it got about Steele's credibility.
Every one of these "issues" is a story all on its own.
Example: The FBI had tapes of Page and Papadopoulos making statements that were inconsistent with FBI's own collusion theories. They did not provide these to the FISA court.
Another example: FBI later got info from professional contacts with Steele who said he suffered from "lack of self awareness, poor judgement" and "pursued people" with "no intelligence value." FBI also did not tell the court about these credibility concerns.
And this: FBI failed to tell Court that Page was approved as an "operational contact" for another U.S. agency, and "candidly" reported his interactions with a Russian intel officer. FBI instead used that Russian interaction against Page, with no exculpatory detail.
Overall, IG was so concerned by these "extensive compliance failures" that is has now initiated additional "oversight" to assess how FBI in general complies with "policies that seek to protect the civil liberties of U.S. persons."
The Report also expressed concerns about FBI's failure to present any of these issues to DOJ higher ups; its ongoing contacts with Steele after he was fired for talking to media; and its use of spies against the campaign without any DOJ input.
Remember Comey telling us it was no big deal who paid for dossier?
Turns out it was a big deal in FBI/DOJ, where one lawyer (Stuart Evans) expressed "concerns" it had been funded by Clinton/DNC. Because of his "consistent inquiries" we go that convoluted footnote.
IG also slaps FBI for using what was supposed to be a baseline briefing for the Trump campaign of foreign intelligence threats as a surreptitious opportunity to investigate Flynn .
Strassel's last point is perhaps the most important for those on the left claiming "vindication"...
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Please enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing! Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump."
And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees.
Instead... He straightforwardly lays out facts.
Those facts produce a pattern of FBI playing the FISA Court--overstating some info, omitting other info, cherrypicking details.
Americans can look at totality and make their own judgment as to "why" FBI behaved in such a manner.
Finally, intriguing just how many people at the FBI don't remember anything about anything. Highly convenient.
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Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
If Russia spending $100,000 on Facebook ads constitutes election interference, and Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is too - then Hillary Clinton takes the cake when it comes to influence campaigns designed to harm a political opponent.
Contained within Monday's FISA report by the DOJ Inspector General is the revelation that Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Clinton campaign to produce the Steele dossier, " was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media. " ( P. 369 and elsewhere)
(h/t @wakeywakey16 )And when did Steele talk with the media - which got him fired as an FBI source ? Perhaps most notably was Yahoo News journalist Michael Isikoff , who says he was invited by Fusion GPS to meet a "secret source" at a Washington restaurant . That secret source was none other than Christopher Steele , who fed Isikoff information from his now-discredited dossier - and which appeared in a September 23, 2016 article roughly six weeks before the election - which likely had orders of magnitude greater visibility and impact coming from a widely-read, MSM source vs. $100,000 in Russian Facebook ads.
The article suggests that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page "has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials - including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."
This claim was found by special counsel Robert Mueller report to be false . Moreover, the FBI knew about it in December, 2016, when DOJ #4 Bruce Ohr told the agency as much.
Steele told us that in September [of 2016] her and Simpson gave an "off-the-record" briefing to a small number of journalists about his reporting, " reads page 165 of the FISA report, which says that Steele "acknowledged that Yahoo News was identified in one of the court filings in the foreign litigation as being present. "
Put another way, Hillary Clinton paid Christopher Steele to feed information to the MSM in order to harm Donald Trump right before the 2016 election . Granted, there were intermediaries; the Clinton campaign paid law firm Perkins Coie, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Steele. And if asked, we're guessing Clinton would claim she had no idea this happened - which simply isn't plausible given the stakes. Whatever the case - the act of Simpson paying Steele to peddle fiction to the media for the purpose of harming Trump, by itself , constitutes blatant election meddling by every standard set by the left over the past three years.
We're sure Hillary can explain that if and when she jumps into the 2020 race.
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Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
" [T]hese irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions were not satisfactorily explained, " said Barr in a lengthy interview with NBC , just one day after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released the so-called FISA report.
"And I think that leaves open the possibility to infer bad faith . I think it's premature now to reach a judgment on that, but I think that further work has to be done and that's what Durham is doing," he added, referring to US Attorney John Durham - who Barr hand picked to lead a concurrent investigation into the 2016 US election.Barr described Durham's role as "Looking at the issue of how it got started. He's looking at whether or not the narrative of Trump being involved in the Russian interference actually preceded July, and was it in fact what precipitated the trigger for the investigation."
"He's also looking at the conduct of the investigation," added Barr - who then said that he instructed Durham to look just as carefully into the "post-election period."
"I did that because of some of the stuff that Horowitz has uncovered, which to me is inexplicable. Their case collapsed after the election, and they never told the court, and they kept on getting renewals on these applications. There was documents falsified in order to get these renewals . There was all kinds of withholding of information from the court. And the question really is 'what was the agenda after the election that kept them pressing ahead, after their case collapsed?' This is the president of the Untied States!"
https://www.youtube.com/embed/sNhEYGLLS4U
Barr, who has characterized the FBI's actions during Trump-Russia investigation as spying , slammed the Obama DOJ and the press for the Russiagate narrative that President Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.
Surftown , 5 minutes ago link
THORAX , 9 minutes ago linkAre the judges on the FISA court with Chief Justice Roberts' oversight immune from scrutiny?
Congress just quietly reauthorized the FISA Act last March( 85 pct of them Obama appointees)
Do these judges have a hand in the impeachment conspiracy with a blind rubber stamp?
I think they were part of the manufactured 'coup.
Hungarian Pengos , 10 minutes ago linkThe potential timing of the Durham Report release and announcements of indictments for Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch and the rest of the traitors must horrify the demoncrats!
Lord JT , 15 minutes ago linkHorowitz? Schiff? Nadler?
What do they have in common? So here's the deal - I am a dumb goyim that works in banking and finance, which is about 50%+ dominated by the Chosenites.
They also rule politics and the Media, despite being 2% of the country.
What do you need to know? They lie. Repeatedly and boldly. Don't freak out, just understand that culture does not believe in an afterlife where they are judged, so they lie and steal everything in sight. That's this whole impeachment - crazy lies by sociopaths that aren't afraid to lie.
If you know that going in, you can always protect yourself and even be decent business allies (but not too close). That's where Trump has gone all wrong. His daughter even married one of these goofballs who frankly is probably leaking all of the embarrassing stuff. Plan accordingly.
gilhgvc , 19 minutes ago linkPerception management is the name of the game...until some of those responsible are in cuffs, I don't believe anything.
mojo_jojo , 21 minutes ago linkIT WAS A ******* COUP. If repubs had done 1/10th of what dems have we would ALREADY be in a hot civil war
chubbar , 24 minutes ago linkBest part of the Barr interview..."The greatest charge is having an incumbent government use the apparatus of the state to spy on political opponents and influence the outcome of the election. This is the first time I am aware that the incumbent administration spied on a presidential candidate."
Yes he said that.
tmosley , 25 minutes ago linkI want to hear Durham and Barr start using the word TREASON. The sooner we can get down to brass tacks the better.
Teamtc321 , 17 minutes ago linkWhy does everybody keep confusing Barr's citation of the IG report with damnation of the IG report?
This is all going to be part of his case.
You are exactly correct. The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as "Crossfire Hurricane". So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?
Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative Treehouse
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Dec 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
slightlyskeptical , 3 minutes ago link
Cassandra.Hermes , 4 minutes ago link"The report concludes that despite nearly everybody investigating President Trump hating him - and that evidence was fabricated by at least one FBI attorney, and that they misrepresented Christopher Steele's credentials, none of their bias 'tainted' the investigation , and the underlying process was sound."
Who investigating major criminal acts actually likes the perp? It was such a juvenile argument from day 1.
I bet the truth is stretched a bit in just about every subpoena issued, not just FISA ones. It is the nature of things, since you are trying to obtain evidence of crimes that are currently unproven but suspected. As such all subpoena's are issued based on the perception of guilt and not any actual proof of that guilt. This was a non-starter from the beginning.
spiderman5968 , 5 minutes ago linkSteele said he had visited Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and had been "friendly" with her for "some years". He described their relationship as "personal". The former British government spy had even given her a "family tartan from Scotland" as a present, the report quoted him as saying.
morethan1 , 1 minute ago linkHorowitz's report is mostly meaningless.
It all comes down to the Barr/Durham investigation and indictments that follow.
Will they indict the top dogs (Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, Rosenstein, Obama, Strokz, Page, Ohr, McCabe, Yates, Priestap, etc.) and make the long-needed changes to Fed Gov't or indict just a bunch of low-level "Fall Guys" in the alphabet agencies to try to make the public release some steam and then drop it all like a hot potato and keep the Deep State intact.???
If REAL justice isn't served up at that point gov't as we know it will collapse as America descends into anarchy and lawlessness.
The political class and mainstream media needs to be purged and the U.S. Constitution fully restored.
teolawki , 7 minutes ago linkUnfortunately, NOTHING will happen. I've seen this movie before.
JoeTurner , 11 minutes ago linkNot 'tainted' by political bias. Bullfuckingshit!
As I stated not that long ago. You cannot have a corrupt FBI without a corrupt DOJ. And you cannot have a corrupt agency without a corrupt IG. Period. Remember the IRS IG clearing Lois Lerner? Hmmm?
PopeRatzo , 12 minutes ago linkhttps://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1204144525578518528
General Flynn had to be targeted by Deep State because he was the ultimate whistleblower
JoeTurner , 12 minutes ago linkThe only crimes committed were by the Trump campaign and administration. Try to pay attention. Do you need a list of Trump associates who are either in jail or have been convicted and are on their way to jail?
Meanwhile, Hillary's laughing it up with Howard Stern.
It must suck to be you.
Ophiuchus , 9 minutes ago linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipI-uHKizbg&feature=youtu.be
Wow, even fake news NBC is pooping themselves over FISA mishandling. I predict whiplash with how fast the fake news, drive-by media throws Comey, Clapper and Brennan under the bus to protect Hillary and Obongo.
Don't bet on anyone taking a fall. All animals are equal, but some animals, especially pigs, are more equal than others.
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Dec 09, 2019 | eastwestaccord.com
There is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized, writes Weir .
This is becoming quite the meme. Upon reflection, I do think there is something in it. Not this idiotic suggestion that Repubicans have somehow morphed into borscht-swilling, shapka-wearing, Putin-loving Russkies. Indeed, there are hardly any actual Russians like that.
But there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized. Of course it's two separate camps, not a monolith, and the Democrats are at least as guilty as Republicans.
This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences, like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day. Russians scoff at the idea that Putin is able to get his own man elected president of the US when he can't even fix the governor in Irkutsk. But the author of this piece implies that Putin is somehow pulling the strings, not only of Trump but all Republicans?
Another rapidly creeping Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become common coin. And they are not just deployed as simple insults: increasingly they have that "enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch.
Also, it looks like big part of the media have become almost Pravda-like, making ideological mission their main priority. I spend some of my down-time perusing shows from Fox News and MSNBC, which an alien from outer space would think were the propaganda organs of two different, mutually-hostile states -- but both very Soviet-like.
... ... ...
THEATLANTIC.COM
The Russification of the Republican Party
GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president's embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/12/impeachment-republican-party-russia/603088/?fbclid=IwAR1EC0-CDBEx-3SMS1lJTMT2m0xVjfaguZehK4BIeZ5Bov41Ds1XFi_Cbkg
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Dec 09, 2019 | www.unz.com
renfro , says: December 8, 2019 at 4:46 am GMT
The Jews try to run US policy ..but lately the Dem base (and part of the party) has become more pro Palestine.Democratic (Jewish) lawmakers reckon with 2020 rhetoric on Israel aid
December 6, 2019
Presidential candidates who want to place conditions on Israeli military aid have prompted pro-Israel House Democrats to go on the offensive.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
It's becoming harder and harder for pro-Israel Democrats on Capitol Hill to ignore the increasingly critical voices of the US ally within their party and the presidential race.House Democratic leaders -- who happen to be some of the staunchest Israel supporters on Capitol Hill -- this week added language supportive of the annual $3.8 billion military aid package to Israel to a symbolic resolution that endorses a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The stalled resolution passed 226-188, largely along party lines, today. But pro-Israel Democrats only came on board after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., added their new language to the bill. The new provision is a response to the fact that several presidential candidates have come out of the woodwork in recent months with calls to place conditions on the largest recipient of US military aid.
"I'm opposed to conditioning the aid, and I would fight it no matter what," Engel told Al-Monitor. "The Democratic Party has traditionally been a pro-Israel party, and I see no reason for that to change now. If there are people who are Democrats who don't feel that way, then I don't think they should be elected president of the United States."
When Engel's committee first advanced the resolution in July, Democratic leaders opted not to put it on the floor, even as they passed another nonbinding resolution condemning the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions movement 398-17, which was backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
That changed last month after the Trump administration repealed a decades-old legal opinion maintaining that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
"There are those on the far-left side of the Democratic Party -- and some of the presidential candidates -- who are pushing for new conditions on aid, especially in their interactions with Gaza, which is run by Hamas -- a terrorist organization," Gottheimer told Al-Monitor.
An October poll from the liberal Center for American Progress found that 56% of American voters, including 71% of Democrats, oppose "unconditional financial and military assistance to Israel if the Israeli government continues to violate American policy on settlement expansion or West Bank annexation."
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the most vocal proponent of conditioning Israeli military aid in the presidential race -- going even further left than J Street and all his primary opponents. At J Street's conference in October he said that some of the $3.8 billion in annual assistance "should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza."
J Street has set any formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank as its red line for placing conditions on Israeli military aid. But it also supports the $38 billion memorandum of understanding.
Presidential hopefuls Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, have jumped on board with J Street's position. However, the current front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, has flatly ruled out conditioning the aid.
Notably, J Street did not oppose the effort to amend the Lowenthal resolution with the military aid language. That said, progressive Democrats do not necessarily view that provision as incompatible with calls to attach strings to that assistance. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., called the Engel language "meaningless."
"It's just restating what current practice or current law is," Pocan told Al-Monitor. "We don't really see it as affecting the bill one way or the other. At any time if we feel like we're better off putting conditions on money and holding back money, Congress could always do that with any country through the normal process."
Shortly after the vote, Sanders campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., as well as Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked colleagues to sign a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to clarify whether Israel has used US military equipment while demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
The letter, seen by Al-Monitor, notes that the Arms Export Control Act "narrowly conditions the use of transferred US-origin defense articles" and requires the president to inform Congress if the equipment is used for unauthorized purposes
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Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
ilsm -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 01, 2019 at 02:19 PM
Calling Trump 'Putin's boy' brings up coup tactics used by Birchers when Truman fired MacArthur!RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to ilsm... , December 01, 2019 at 02:54 PMBrookings tools (Mr. Vindman (I have silver leaves Vindman does not fit) , Fiona Hill, Holmes eavesdropping....) pleading to Schiff that Trump ain't their kind of 'Murekan empire builder.
Making up "charges", hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'. All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over.
"...Making up 'charges', hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'. All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over."ilsm -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 01, 2019 at 04:47 PM
[Funny (NOT) that they say the same thing about Trump. Your adversaries and yourself would all make better lampshades or bars of soap than you do citizens.Democracy has never been more than an illusion, sometimes just an allusion, particularly though in modern republican times. Leaders have all too rarely been patriotic aside from maybe George Washington, who largely despised the representative government that he had made. TJ did not exactly fall in love with the US Congress either. In these times the political class and their pet sycophants are more idiotic than patriotic.]
One bone: the coup #resistance despises the "office of the president" more than they (swamp trolls like Schiff's tool Vindman) disdain deplorables and the US constitution.Paine -> Paine ... , December 01, 2019 at 06:37 AMIt is a constitutional thingie in my view going back to the Henry Luce media and Birchers/McCarthy (the ragings over "who lost Chiang's fiefdom in China?") going after anyone who they described wrongfully in most cases as "subversives".
I believe that Washington was like Ike as to taking up the executive office.
Eric Finer in an effort to unearth this buried historyanne -> Paine ... , December 01, 2019 at 07:24 AMCalls congressional reconstruction
A second founding of the republicReconstruction like the new deal
Ended by producing its opposite
BUT we progressive spirits
still rightly honor the eraSimilarly
Jacksonianism by some of us not poisoned
By identity pol anachronismsAnd Jeffersonianism
Despite far greater identity transgressionsWhy not radical republicanism ?
"Eric Foner" in an effort to unearth this buried historyCalls Congressional Reconstruction
A second founding of the RepublicReconstruction like the New Deal
Ended by producing its opposite
[ Please be careful in spelling names, and set down where the specific reference is. This will be important, if a reference is set down. Also, further explanation when possible would be helpful. ]
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Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs , December 05, 2019 at 04:53 AM
Could Tax Increases Speed Up the Economy?Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , December 05, 2019 at 04:57 AM
Democrats Say Yes https://nyti.ms/2RlDbJx
NYT - Jim Tankersley - December 5WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Warren is leading a liberal rebellion against a long-held economic view that large tax increases slow economic growth, trying to upend Democratic policymaking in the way supply-side conservatives changed Republican orthodoxy four decades ago.
(Warren Would Take Billionaires Down
a Few Billion Pegs https://nyti.ms/2CtMPRN
NYT - November 10)Generations of economists, across much of the ideological spectrum, have long held that higher taxes reduce investment, slowing economic growth. That drag, the consensus held, would offset the benefits to growth from increased government spending in areas like education.
Ms. Warren and other leading Democrats say the opposite. The senator from Massachusetts, who is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, contends that her plans to tax the rich and spend the revenue to lift the poor and the middle class would accelerate economic growth, not impede it. Other Democratic candidates are making similar claims about their tax-and-spend proposals. Some liberal economists go further and say that simply taxing the rich would help growth no matter what the government did with the money.
Democrats in the past, including the party's 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, have argued that a more modest combination of tax increases and spending programs would expand the economy. But no Democratic nominee before Ms. Warren had ever proposed so many new taxes and spending programs, and leaned so heavily into the argument that they would be, in economist parlance, pro-growth.
That argument tries to reframe a classic debate about the economic "pie" in the United States by suggesting there is no trade-off between increasing the size of the pie and dividing the slices more equitably among all Americans.
Ms. Warren has proposed nearly $3 trillion a year in new taxes on businesses and high-earners, largely focused on billionaires but sometimes hitting Americans who earn $250,000 and above per year. The taxes would fund wide-reaching new government spending on health care, education, and family benefits like universal child care and paid parental leave.
Last month, Ms. Warren wrote on Twitter that education, child care and student loan relief programs funded by her tax on wealthy Americans would "grow the economy." In a separate post, she said student debt relief would "supercharge" growth.
The last batch of economists to disrupt a political party's consensus position were conservative -- the so-called supply-siders who built influence in the late 1970s and gained power in the Reagan administration. Previous Republican presidents had focused on keeping the budget deficit low, which constrained their ability to cut taxes if they did not also cut government spending. Supply-siders contended that well-targeted tax cuts could generate big economic growth even without spending cuts. ...
Ms. Warren is making the case that the economy could benefit if money is redistributed from the rich and corporations to uses that she and other liberals say would be more productive. Their argument combines hard data showing that high levels of inequality and wealth concentration weigh down economic growth with a belief that well-targeted government spending can encourage more Americans to work, invest and build skills that would make them more productive.They also cite evidence that transferring money to poor and middle-class individuals would increase consumer spending because they spend a larger share of their incomes than wealthy Americans, who tend to save and invest.
"The economy has changed, our understanding of it has changed, and we understand the constricting effects of inequality" on growth, said Heather Boushey, the president of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank focused on inequality.
Inequality has widened significantly in America over the last several decades. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans more than tripled from 1979 to 2016, before taxes and government transfer payments are taken into account. For the middle class, incomes grew 33 percent. More than a decade after the recession, wage growth for the middle class continues to run well behind previous times of economic expansion, like the late 1990s.
Research by the economist Emmanuel Saez and colleagues shows that the last time such a small sliver of Americans controlled such a large share of the nation's income and wealth was in the late 1920s, just before a stock market crash set off the Great Depression. World Bank researchers have warned that high levels of inequality are stifling growth in South Africa, which has the globe's worst measured inequality.
"We have an economy that isn't delivering like it used to," said Ms. Boushey, who advised Hillary Clinton's 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. "That's leading people to say let's re-examine the evidence."
The contention that tax and spending increases can lift economic growth is not the only challenge to traditional orthodoxy brewing in liberal economic circles. Some Democrats have also embraced modern monetary theory, which reframes classic thinking that discourages large budget deficits as a drag on growth. Its supporters, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and the economist Stephanie Kelton, an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, argue that the United States government should be spending much more on programs to fight inequality, like a federal job guarantee, without imposing new taxes.
Some of the inequality-focused economists say they are hoping to build new economic models to predict the effects of their policies, though they acknowledge few of those models exist yet. Instead, they rely on evidence about the likely effects of individual programs, added together.
Many economists who study tax policy contend that Ms. Warren's plans -- and other large tax-and-spend proposals from Democratic candidates this year -- would hurt the economy, just as classic economic models suggest.
"Some elements of the large increase in government spending on health and education proposed by Senator Warren would promote economic growth" through channels like improved education, said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written some of the most influential research in the profession on the relationship between tax rates and growth.
But, he said, "I am very skeptical that these growth effects would offset the negative effects on growth of the higher taxes, particularly given that the spending increases are not specifically targeted toward enhancing growth."
Ms. Warren disagrees. In the latest Democratic debate, she said the spending programs funded by her wealth tax would be "transformative" for workers. Those plans would raise wages, make college tuition-free and relieve graduates of student debt, she said, adding, "We can invest in an entire generation's future."
An emerging group of liberal economists say taxes on high-earners could spur growth even if the government did nothing with the revenue because the concentration of income and wealth is dampening consumer spending.
"We are experiencing a revolution right now in macroeconomics, particularly in the policy space," said Mark Paul, an economist who is a fellow at the liberal Roosevelt Institute in Washington. "We can think of a wealth tax as welfare-enhancing, in and of itself, simply by constraining the power of the very wealthy" to influence public policy and distort markets to their advantage.
Taken together, Ms. Warren's proposals would transform the role of federal taxation. If every tax increase she has proposed in the campaign passed and raised as much revenue as her advisers predict -- a contingency hotly debated among even liberal economists -- total federal tax revenue would grow more than 50 percent.
The United States would leap from one of the lowest-taxed rich nations to one of the highest. It would collect more taxes as a share of the economy than Norway, and only slightly less than Italy.
Mr. Sanders's plan envisions a similarly large increase in tax levels. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s proposals are much smaller in scale: He would raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations by $3.4 trillion over a decade, in order to fund increased spending on health care, higher education, infrastructure and carbon emissions reduction.
If Ms. Warren's tax program is enacted, said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at Berkeley who is an architect of her wealth tax proposal, "in my view, the most likely effect is a small positive effect on growth, depending on how the revenues are used."
Another economist who has worked with the Warren campaign to analyze its proposals, Mark Zandi of Moody's, said he would expect her plans to be "largely a wash on long-term economic growth."
Researchers at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College projected this summer that Ms. Warren's wealth tax and spending policies would generate a 1.7 percent increase in the size of the economy. A preliminary study of a wealth tax like Ms. Warren's proposal, by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, found that it would reduce the size of the economy by a similar 1.7 percent. The model uses the sort of classic methodology that liberals are now rebelling against and did not evaluate Ms. Warren's spending proposals.
Historical experience offers few parallels for assessing the economic effects of a taxation-and-spending program on the scale of Ms. Warren's ambitions. A 2002 study of wealth taxes in rich countries found that those taxes, most of which have since been abandoned, reduced economic growth slightly on an annual basis.
Conservative economists roundly disagree that large tax increases can spur faster growth, even those who say government spending on paid leave and child care may get more Americans into the labor force. They say a wealth tax on the scale of Ms. Warren's proposal would greatly reduce savings and investment by the rich.
"What a wealth tax does is, it directly taxes savings," said Aparna Mathur, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who favors a narrow paid leave program and whose research finds benefits from reducing tax rates on business and investment. "If you're taxing savings, you're implicitly taxing investment. So how can that possibly be pro-growth?"
The supply-side economists' plans were similarly denounced -- George Bush called them "voodoo economic policies" while running for president in 1980 -- but in time dominated Republican proposals.
Some members of the new liberal revolt against tax orthodoxy welcome the comparison to the supply-side uprising.
"While I think that the supply-siders were wrong, and were always wrong, they were reacting to very real economic problems in the 1970s," said Michael Linden, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal policy and advocacy group. "There was something really wrong with the economy at the time. I think there is now."
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Dec 06, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
WJ , December 5, 2019 at 3:06 pm
Said it before and I'll say it again, Warren's personal ambition is often what manifests her poor political instincts. Why did she claim Native American Heritage? Why did she endorse HRC in 2016? Why did she ambiguously support, then unambiguously back away from, M4A?
This trend leads me to suspect that she will not easily back out of the race, and cannot be trusted finally to endorse Sanders in 2020 any more than she could be in 2016. I suspect, in any case, that many of her voters would not default to Sanders but to Buttigieg in any case. They seem to be mostly white professionals between 30-60yrs old who make $120,000/year.
Hepativore , December 5, 2019 at 2:19 pm
Wow, Sanders has really been pulling ahead of Warren if the polls over the past few days are to be believed. I am hoping that this trend continues. Warren's overly-complicated healthcare proposal which she decided to backpedal on at the last moment seems like it has really cost her.
I kind of wonder at this point why Warren decided to run for president in the first place. She seems like the type of person who would rather follow than lead, and would be ill-suited to be president as she would be forced to take a position on something. Warren would have been better served to be clear about what her actual positions are instead of trying to have it both ways. Her constant mind-changing and backpedaling in response to whomever has the political upper-hand at the moment has angered both the DNC establishment as well as the progressive left.
Lambert Strether Post author , December 5, 2019 at 2:22 pm
> angered both the DNC establishment as well as the progressive left.
Warren tried to straddle, and lost both.
Samuel Conner , December 5, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it in a letter to "Mr FJ Hooker" as he was contemplating a push across the Rappahannock in the wake of Lee's move westward in June 1863,
"like a bull stuck across a fence that cannot gore to the front or kick to the rear"
I think it was you, Lambert, who drew my attention to "Rich and Tracey's Civil War podcast", and I am grateful.
Lambert Strether Post author , December 5, 2019 at 2:42 pm
Isn't it great? I just listened to that episode!
Trent , December 5, 2019 at 3:34 pm
Love the podcast because we need more stuff like that, but Rich could use a shot of charisma ;)
flora , December 5, 2019 at 3:04 pm
Warren tried to straddle, and lost both.
See Jim Hightower's definition of the political middle of the road.
https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Nothing-Middle-Stripes-Armadillos/dp/0060929499Arizona Slim , December 5, 2019 at 3:37 pm
And there is nothing, I do mean nothing , that stinks worse than a dead armadillo.
Darius , December 5, 2019 at 3:37 pm
I think Warren is running for treasury secretary in a Biden administration. The theory being that that will be her reward for stopping Sanders. Everybody has an angle. Except Bernie. Can someone show me his angle?
NotTimothyGeithner , December 5, 2019 at 4:44 pm
Warren may be many things, but she despises Biden. She has enough self respect to never work for the turd.
hunkerdown , December 5, 2019 at 4:56 pm
No neoliberal should be assumed to have self-respect. If they did, they wouldn't be neoliberals.
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Dec 06, 2019 | www.nbcnews.com
It has long required the support of the wealthy -- and a certain level of personal wealth -- to run for president of the United States. In 2016, billions of dollars were raised by Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. But the rich control much of this cash flow . In 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top .01 percent of all income earners in the United States accounted for 29 percent of all political committee fundraising.
There are many reasons why this is a dangerous thing. But a big one is accountability.
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Dec 06, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Fiery Hunt , December 5, 2019 at 3:06 pm
Hey NCers I've got a question.
Does anyone know how the delegates are allocated based on the 15% threshold?
For example, today's CA poll has Sanders at leading with 24% and Warren the only other candidate above 15% (at 22%).
My preliminary search says if you get x% of the vote, you get x number of delegates .So what happens to the 56% of delegates that correspond to votes for people other than Sanders and Warren? Or do Sanders and Warren split them somehow?
Fiery Hunt , December 5, 2019 at 3:16 pm
Nevermind I found it.
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Dec 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
"Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: report" [ The Hill ].
"People familiar with the matter told The Post that Barr said he does not agree with the report's finding that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016.
The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to be made public in a week. But a draft is being discussed behind the scenes, and the attorney general reportedly is not persuaded that the FBI investigation was justified.
The draft report is now being finalized and shown to the witnesses and offices investigated by Horowitz.
People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Barr believes information from other agencies such as the CIA could change Horowitz's finding that the investigation was warranted."
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Dec 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
While there are still 15 candidates running for the Democratic nomination (after the withdrawal of Kamala Harris earlier today), only four are polling in double digits, with most either at 1% or 0%. But Obama said whoever gets the nod should get the vote.
"There will be differences" between the candidates, Obama said, "but I want us to make sure that we keep in mind that, relative to the ultimate goal, which is to defeat a president and a party that has taken a sharp turn away from a lot of the core traditions and values and institutional commitments that built this country," those differences are "relatively minor."
"The field will narrow and there's going to be one person, and if that is not your perfect candidate and there are certain aspects of what they say that you don't agree with and you don't find them completely inspiring the way you'd like, I don't care," he said. "Because the choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent in this race."
Obama was directly addressing Silicon Valley's wealthiest Democratic donors, telling them to "chill" in their debate over the party's candidates, and seeking to ease the tensions among tech billionaires who have broken into separate camps backing Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and -- most surprisingly -- Elizabeth Warren , according to recode.
Obama may have his job cut out for him: with many Democratic voters confused or merely bored silly by the current roster of candidates, two newcomers, Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entered the race adding further to the confusion. Last month, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, drew fewer than 100 people to a South Carolina "Environmental Justice" forum. And she's a frontrunner!
Meanwhile, Gallup released a poll last week that had some troubling news for Democrats, as only 66% of the party faithful said they're enthusiastic about the upcoming election. And while for Republicans the number is 65%, "this differed from the typical pattern Gallup has seen over the years, whereby those who identify with the political party of the incumbent president have been less enthusiastic about voting than members of the opposing party," Gallup wrote.
Ironically, Obama isn't alone in saying Democrats need to hold their nose when they vote for the eventual nominee. Joe Biden's wife, Jill, said in August that her husband might not be the best candidate, but told voters "maybe you have to swallow a little bit" and vote for him anyway.
"Your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care, than Joe is," Jill Biden said on MSNBC, "but you've got to look at who's going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, 'OK, I personally like so-and-so better,' but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump."
During a campaign stop in New Hampshire, she repeated the point. "I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that. But I want you to think about your candidate, his or her electability, and who's going to win this race. So I think if your goal -- I know my goal -- is to beat Donald Trump, we have to have someone who can beat him," she said.
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Dec 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,
There is new evidence that U.S. Attorney John Durham is getting to the root of criminal abuses by senior U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials in their conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign, transition and presidency. Mr. Durham's mandate from Attorney General William Barr -- to uncover the seditious plot behind the Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the Constitution since the nation's founding.
Mr. Durham's apparent interest in FBI source Stefan Halper and the contract vehicles available to the Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessments, for whom Halper worked, is an important clue.
Likewise, Mr. Durham's travel to Italy for talks with the Italian government and their intelligence service points to another possible clue concerning the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.
For the purposes of the manufactured Trump-Russia hoax, one need only remember the associations of Halper with Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page -- and Joseph Mifsud with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy junior advisor -- to the Trump campaign.
The intelligence agencies of the federal government are prohibited from targeting American organizations in the United States. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 states:
Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States . No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the Attorney General. Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where:
(a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or
(b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.
This prohibition on running penetration operations against domestic political organizations is a legal and political "hangover" from the 1960s civil disturbances that saw (among a host of other covert action programs) US Army Counterintelligence agents working undercover against the militant Leftists organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the "Church Committee," was empaneled in 1975 under the leadership of Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) to review and make recommendations on intelligence operations. The Church Committee was controversial. Critics claimed the committee exposed the "crown jewels" of U.S. intelligence and hobbled our ability to conduct legitimate collection activities. Today's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Court were inspired by the final reports of the Church Committee.
The seditious coup plotters working against Trump knew the legal prohibitions on what they planned to do. How to target Trump & Co. in a "legal" manner? Was it possible, or more importantly, desirable, to have a legal finding from Attorney General Loretta Lynch justifying their plan to frame-up Trump & Co.? That would authorize their operation -- but would Lynch support it? Could Lynch be counted on? Did they want a piece of paper like that floating around Washington D.C.? No, there had to be a better way to pull off the coup.
The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party's candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) "threat" that could then be "imported" back into the United States. Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as "lures" (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.
We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, "You get all our oconus lures approved? ;)."
To inoculate themselves from further charges of misconduct and criminality, the FBI's mutually agreed upon lie is that their investigation of Trump/Russia began on July 31, 2016 with the improbable name "Crossfire Hurricane." That coincides nicely with their manufactured FCI "event," allowing the full-bore sabotage of all things and persons "Trump." The coup plotters used a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge as the opportunity for Carter Page to meet and develop a friendship with Stefan Halper. This is roughly the same time period that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer reported the supposedly drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos concerning the Russians having Hillary's emails to the FBI. Papadopoulos had already serendipitously met the mysterious Joseph Mifsud in Rome during the second week of March 2016. Learning that Papadopoulos would be joining the Trump campaign, Mifsud let Papadopoulos know that he had many important connections with Russian government officials.
In July 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was questioned closely by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) concerning the persons and sequence of events detailed above.
The summation of Mueller's testimony was, "Well, I can't get into it."
The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC. A bright note in the so far grim saga is that one of the collateral casualties has filed a civil lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia against Stefan Halper and MSNBC for defamation, conspiracy and tortious interference. It's the closest thing we've seen to justice to date. The complaint makes remarkable and insightful reading.
It is now time for Mr. Durham to "get into it," in a manner Mr. Mueller was either unwilling or unable to do. Time is of the utmost importance. The American public needs to see action. Indictments and trials are the only antidote for the poison of treasonous sedition.
* * *
Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer.
devnickle , 6 minutes ago link
nsurf9 , 1 hour ago linkFor the fuckers here.
I have researched this "Six ways to Sunday"
To quote Schmucker.
Since Junior, we've had 911, and TARP. Obama put the globalist **** storm on overdrive. Libya is slave trading. 16th. Century ****. He put Nazis in charge of Ukraine. So much other ****. I'm not wasting my breath. See what is in front of you. Democrats are ******* liars. Republicans are Democrats in name only. There a few who aren't that. 80 to 90% of Washington is not your friend.
Learn to discern.
Schooey , 1 hour ago linkWith a half-dozen immunities given out like candy, smashed hard-drives, deleted emails, and a gaggle of hostile dem-attorneys and countless dem-FBI agents to finishing off destroying, sweeping under the rug, and otherwise covering-up the remainder stray evidence - during the dems unsuccessful tax-payer-financed "fishing expedition" - Good Luck!
Joe's already been kind enough to have video-taped his criminal extortion admission. Just get the rest of the evidence and indict Quid-Pro-Joe and Billion-Dollar-Hunter and this $hiff-show ends - immediately - then its not digging dirt - its Trumps sworn oath and responsibility.
PS: Tax paying republican American citizens want their grafted money back.
Teamtc321 , 1 hour ago linkHorowitz is deep state, from what has leaked about "report", from (((NYC))) and appointed by WJC I believe. If Barr is the same, e.g. Epstein died from over exposure to coincidences, no justice is coming.
Cash Is King , 1 hour ago linkThe Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as "Crossfire Hurricane". So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?
Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative Treehouse
TheFQ , 1 hour ago link"The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots & Tyrants!" Thomas Jefferson
We need to expose and bleed these treasonous bastards dry!
Pritchards Ghost , 54 minutes ago link@Chris Farrell: Agreed.
If there are no indictments against the following, then we have to decide as WE THE PEOPLE what course of action we need to take to correct this situation.
Why?
If the perpetrators of treason do not face consequences, then we have no rule of law at all.
That is a situation which IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
Here is my list of those I believe CLEARLY COMMITTED TREASON:
- Obama
- Brennan
- Clapper
- Clintons
- Biden
- Lynch
- Comey
- Sztrok
- Page
- McCabe
- Ohr
- Mifsud
- Halper
This is only a short list - and is not complete.
Jim in MN , 53 minutes ago linkThe Constitution is a peace treaty. The best bulwark we have against our baser selves.
Kayhla the Prettiest , 47 minutes ago link"If all men were angels, no government would be necessary" --Federalist Papers
TeethVillage88s , 12 minutes ago linkSo why is it that we accept demons as our governors?
CheapBastard , 1 hour ago linkPolitical Science 101, first day: There' are only two types of authority. Legitimate (consent of the governed) or illegitimate (barrel of a gun).
I would indict Mewller and Comey for starters. Offer them a plea deal to rat on the other traitors --- 20 years in prison instead of life.
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Dec 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
China was once very dependent on US chips for its phones. The latest Chinese phones have no US parts.
The Wall Street Journal reports Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips .
Yet Another Trump Trade WinAmerican tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late: It is now building smartphones without U.S. chips.
Huawei's latest phone, which it unveiled in September -- the Mate 30 with a curved display and wide-angle cameras that competes with Apple Inc.'s iPhone 11 -- contained no U.S. parts, according to an analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese technology lab that took the device apart to inspect its insides.
In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated. That move stopped companies like Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. from exporting chips to the company, though some shipments of parts resumed over the summer after companies determined they weren't affected by the ban.
Meanwhile, Huawei has made significant strides in shedding its dependence on parts from U.S. companies. (At issue are chips from U.S.-based companies, not those necessarily made in America; many U.S. chip companies make their semiconductors abroad.)
Huawei long relied on suppliers like Qorvo Inc., the North Carolina maker of chips that are used to connect smartphones with cell towers, and Skyworks Solutions Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based company that makes similar chips. It also used parts from Broadcom Inc., the San Jose-based maker of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips, and Cirrus Logic Inc., an Austin, Texas-based company that makes chips for producing sound.
- Trump cut off supplies so China looked elsewhere.
- Trump changed his mind.
- This is what constitutes a win.
"When Huawei came out with this high-end phone -- and this is its flagship -- with no U.S. content, that made a pretty big statement," said Christopher Rolland, a semiconductor analyst at Susquehanna International Group.
Huawei executives told Rolland that the company was moving away from American parts, but it was still surprising how quickly it happened.
This was likely going to happen anyway, but Trump escalated the speed at which it happened.
Trade Deal?Standard Assumption for 17 Months
- Reuters reports U.S.-China Trade Deal 'Stalled Because of Hong Kong Legislation'
- MarketWatch reports China 'Insists' on Tariff Rollbacks as Part of 'Phase One' Trade Deal
Assuming there is a deal, the standard assumption for 17 months, Trump will announce two key elements.
Greatest Deal in History
- China will resume buying the same amount of soybeans as before.
- China will resume buying the same amount of chips as before.
The longer this takes the more wins there will be.
With that in mind, please recall Another Trump Tariff Success Story: Vietnam .
And despite the fact that Trump's China Tariffs Made Matters Made the Global Manufacturing Recession Worse and has killed US farmers, It's important to remember, Trump is collecting "huge tariffs".
So please brush aside this recession warning: Freight Volumes Negative YoY for 11th Straight Month .
myne , 1 minute ago link
greatdisconformity , 1 minute ago linkThe trade war is the first act in the much larger game of hegemony.
Both sides are disentangling.
Apple finished their Indian plant.
Huawei went ex-US (but almost certainly not US IP)
Europe is already muttering about human rights in Hong Kong and Xiangjang.
We're nearly ready for act 2. That's when Europe joins in on squeezing trade, and the rest of the democratic world and a few others is bullied and bribed to follow.
Noob678 , 14 minutes ago linkThat was the game from day one.
Soon there will be no US parts in anything made in China.
Because there are no industries left here who can make them.
They have all died, or been bought and relocated.
Take away software and vapid entertainment programming, and the US has *** for consumer technology.
***.
Omega_Man , 12 minutes ago linkDo you know why Russia still sells rocket engines to US after being hit US sanctions? Don't tell me they need US dollar.
Do you know that China is facing US embargo under the pretext of national security from 1949 until now and things allowed to export to China mostly agriculture produce, gas and oil? This is the reason they develop their own technologies which the media told me stolen from the US even that the US doesn't have like 5G, quantum satellite, hypersonic weapons just to name a few.
Do you know where soybeans in US came from?
schroedingersrat , 11 minutes ago linkrussia needs to stop selling those engines to merica and cut them out of space... what a dumb move... russia always trying to be friends with evil merica
victorher , 16 minutes ago linkIts because not everyone is as psychopathic as the US
davelis , 1 hour ago linkPlainly, China will never buy the same amount of soybeans or chips than before as Russia will never accumulate US dollars in its Reserve. They have discovered than US is not a reliable partner.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 55 minutes ago linkThose that think that China is only about ripping off US technology are going to be surprised. Sure that was once China's main method as it was for the early USA to rip off British textile secrets. Trump trying to take down China's biggest technology company has been a real wake up call for them. Now, they will own all of the content and will dominate in Asian markets, the middle east, etc. They already did it in solar panels and much else. They have a plan. They build infrastructure, we let it ours decay. They invest in education, we leave out students in debt up to their eyeballs and then give them Starbucks jobs. They have high speed trains everywhere, we have Amtrak. They are looking outward, we are looking inward. America first, rah rah. This will end badly - for the USA.
The Palmetto Cynic , 52 minutes ago linkonly bc ppl in the usa are pushing it that way
no average american benefits from international trade unless the product is unattainable state side. if we can grow it, we should. if we can make it, we should. excess can be sold outside the nation but since everything has been weaponized, we are the ones caught in the middle who suffer.
tariffs are good and we should use them to protect our industries. the problem is that our industry was destroyed before implementing tarrifs.. that part doesn't make sense and all of our major corporations have sold out anyways, further screwing john q public because lets be real, companies are out for profit and shareholder return, not protecting employees and consumers. so they could care less where its being made / sold as long as they see their bottom line increase, no worries.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 34 minutes ago linkAnd if the US doing all of that internally was a good idea, someone would be building the manufacturing capacity as I type this....but they ain't.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 41 minutes ago linkproblem is big business doesn't want to pay it. it has always been that way. when the money system was put in place, business owners didn't like the idea of increased competition (less slaves and more company owners) and therefore they were given the ability to claim you for tax purposes, hence why anytime you take a job they want your SS#. investment in the past happened because of things that were to come in the future. the future in america from her current vantage is trans/post humanism with the idea of automation, human/machine integration and that leaves little room or interest in building $100m slave factories for working class people to grind away in
I am Groot , 1 hour ago linkchips have been made consistently in Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea for the better part of almost 25 years, not real sure how any of what you said is relative to current events. just syncrhonicity and morons like you saying dumb ****.
beemasters , 1 hour ago linkWow, the article is really insulting to the Chinese. Like building a smart phone for them was like landing on the moon or something. They steal everything from everyone anyways, so who cares what they build.......
fezline , 1 hour ago linkNow the only NSA backdoor to Huawei is completely shut.
porco rosso , 1 hour ago linkThis is why they are trying to ban Chinese hardware... not because they fear they are spying on us but because their govt mandated backdoors aren't installed on Chinese hardware. The US govt wants to ban their use because they can't spy on them... That is the real reason.
Asoka_The_Great , 1 hour ago linkUS is losing the technology race against China. In the first phase China copied the tech, now it is on par, and in five to ten years the murican chip manufacturers are out of business.
The point is this: the muricans are lazy bastards, most of the brain power is imported. They lived too long off the dollar reserve currency status, soon enough nobody will interested in that toilet paper anymore.
Anonymous IX , 1 hour ago linkTwo years ago, Donald *** Trumptard on behalf of his handler, the US War State/Dark State/Deep State , launched a world wide war against the Chinky company, Huawei, in order, to kill it.
But that failed spectacularly. Not only is Huawei not dead, but its revenue actually grown 24% in 2019.
Now, its smart phones, and 5G cell tower equipments are totally free of US components.
WHY IS THE US DARK STATE SO TERRIFIED OF HUAWEI'S 5G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY?
The US Dark State/War State/Deep State, that is the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/MIC/MSM . . . etc has forced every western tech companies to install backdoors and malwares on their equipments, except Huawei. They have tried to force Huawei to install those NSA backdoors and malwares, in 2014, but the company categorically refused.
"The real issue is that nothing has changed since a 2014 report from The Register that Huawei categorically refuses to install NSA backdoors into their hardware to allow unfettered intelligence access to the data that crosses their networks.
All our emails, text messages, phone calls, internet searches, web browsing, library records, . . . etc, are recorded and stored by NSA/CIA's vast servers farms.
Now, Huawei is not only the leading 5G wireless provider, but it is the only one, so far. The other companies like Nokia and Ericsson are far behind.
5G is going to completely replace 4G and 3G. It is about 200 times faster than 4GLTE, in download speed.
What this means is that if the world adopts the Huawei equipments and standards, it will threaten to UNDO the US Dark State's vast global surveillance network.
This is what terrifies the US Dark State. Their vast Global Surveillance Network is the basis of its power, and tools to enslave mankind.
There is a very good reason, why the American Founding Fathers , enacted every measures, to protect our rights and privacy, so that we will not be controlled and enslaved by the tyranny of totalitarian government, which is already upon us, in the form of US Dark State/War State .
The US Dark State/Deep State/War State does not represent America. It is Un-American. It is not the American Republic founded by our Founding Fathers, and enshrined in the US Constitution.
Asoka_The_Great , 50 minutes ago linkMaybe so, Asoka. I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some purport the family carrying that lineage is named Li.
The U.S. is slowly but surely being isolated for The Great Fall...when we lose world currency status. The Banking Cartel will evidently make huge money and gain enormous power once the U.S. collapses. China already has the massive surveillance state, lack of privacy, institutionalized social scoring, and workers' living cubes located on factory premises...so the Rothshilds are in love. Sigh. So much control!! So much degradation!!! They're in love!!!
"I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some purport the family carrying that lineage is named Li."
They are trying hard to infiltrate China. But the Chinese banks and financial service firms are State Owned . They are hard penetrate. That is why they are using Donald *** Trump to launch the Mother of All Great Trade War , to force the Chinese to open up their financial sector for infiltration and plundering.
Plus, Chinese and westerner looks distinctively different. And so, they are trying the inter-marriage trick with the rich and powerful Chinese families.
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Dec 01, 2019 | nationalinterest.org
This is still a race for a party nomination, and it is well known how political battles at this stage typically focus narrowly on what are perceived to be the parochial concerns of the party's base and take on a different character in the general election. But positions taken now can impose constraints later on. Moreover, Democratic primary voters ought to be learning about what difference the various contenders would make in executing the powers of the presidency, not just in who has the most attractive ideas about policies that cannot be imposed by fiat.
Foreign policy is where more attention and debate are most required, and not just because foreign policy nearly always gets inadequate attention in political campaigns. It also is where a president has the most power to make a difference even without getting Congress to go along with the president's program. This fact is reflected in how many presidents late in their presidencies, especially in second terms, have turned more of their attention to foreign relations as an area where they can make a difference after experiencing frustration in trying to get their domestic programs through Congress.
Many issues in foreign policy could profitably be discussed more than they are now, but priority should be given to those subjects on which Trump has caused the most damage. Candidates should explain how they intend to repair that damage, not just what their policies would be if they somehow could be written on a clean slate. The slate on which the next administration's foreign policy will be written starts out very dirty. Coming after Trump will be a major, task-defining fact about the next administration's foreign policy challenges.
The heavy damage to U.S. relations with the European allies represents another especially dirty part of the slate that the next administration will have to tend to. Brexit will be an added complication in addressing this problem and in a sense is another part of Trump's legacy given the way he has cheered on the Brexiteers, contrary to U.S. interests.
Issues examined by the current impeachment proceeding represent more damage-repair needs. Ukraine is a large and important country and constructing a U.S. policy that adequately reflects Ukraine's delicate situation between East and West would be a challenge in any event. Now it has been made more difficult by Trump and Rudy Giuliani's setting back of Ukraine's efforts to stamp out corruption and subordinating an aid relationship to dirt-digging for domestic political reasons. What are the Democratic candidates' specific ideas for repairing this damage, and for fitting the repairs into a sensible policy toward not just Ukraine but also Russia?
To emphasize these foreign policy challenges is not to diminish the amount of Trump-inflicted damage that extends to domestic matters as well, and the need for the next administration to repair that damage as well. Perhaps the greatest over-arching damage, spanning both the domestic and foreign sides, is that the nation seems to have become inured to wrongdoing because of the sheer volume of it, with attention to each offense quickly fading as it is succeeded by a new offense or attention-hogging presidential outburst. What will the next president do to restore a sense of national outrage over wrongdoing whenever it occurs, be it blatant self-dealing, corruption of U.S. foreign relations, or something else?
Such problems may not have as much resonance in Iowa caucuses as the cost of health care, but they have a lot more to do with who will make the best president.
Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing editor to The National Interest, where he writes a blog .
MaskOfZero • 5 days ago • edited ,
Emidio Borg • 11 days ago • edited ,"The next president will, for example, have to deal with the enormous loss of U.S. credibility during the past three years, which has stemmedin large part from Trump's reneging on or withdrawing from agreements such as the Paris accord on climate change, arms control accords withRussia, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which restricted Iran's nuclear program."
What a load of hooey this article is. U.S. credibility with whom? Failed Merkel? Failed Macron?...
The Mugged Liberal • 13 days ago ,It is our weapons manufacturers who bankroll our political establishment, consequently our foreign policy is whatever they say it is.
Carl Braun • 18 days ago ,Failure of the past three years but no mention of the failures of Obama? Sending an aging hippie James Taylor to console islamic terrorist victims in Paris apparently counts as a major foreign policy success and that mean Trump refuses to perpetuate. And then there's the cross the red line in Syria and we'll do nothing.
Or maybe ship weapons secretly to Islamic terrorists calling them freedom fighters and surprise surprise, the weapons from Obama are used to murder American diplomats in Benghazi. Then cover that up by blaming it on a video from a guy in Los Angeles and sending out a team to blatantly lie about the event.
Now there's real foreign policy you can depend on - from the Democrats.
And of course from Paul Pillar.
Airbrush2020 Me • 18 days ago • edited ,What's Your Foreign Policy?
A. Orange man bad.
Need more taxes for my apology diplomacy.
More pallets of cash for the mullahsWhat is the PURPOSE of US Foreign Policy? To protect the US homeland and US interests abroad (freedom of navigation, freedom of commerce and trade, and the protection of US citizens travelling abroad to name a few).
Unfortunately, US Policy really refers to US interventionism across the globe. Covert activities are presumably necessary to protect US interests so as to thwart the covert activities of our enemies. In practice, what the US really does is protect the interests of friendly countries and US-based multi-national corporations...and the whole thing is smoke and mirrors (hidden from the American people). Thus, we really have NO IDEA what US Foreign Policy is, or what we are doing behind the scenes. That's on both Democrats and Republicans.
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Dec 01, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne , November 28, 2019 at 12:34 PM
https://truthout.org/articles/warrens-new-proposal-for-prescription-drugs-is-flying-under-the-radar/November 25, 2019
Warren's New Proposal for Prescription Drugs Is Flying Under the Radar
By Dean BakerEarlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren put out a set of steps that she would put forward as president as part of a transition to Medicare for All. The items that got the most attention were including everyone over age 50 and under age 18 in Medicare, and providing people of all ages with the option to buy into the program. This buy-in would include large subsidies, and people with incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level would be able to enter the Medicare program at no cost.
These measures would be enormous steps toward Medicare for All, bringing tens of millions of people into the program, including most of those (people over age 50) with serious medical issues. It would certainly be more than halfway to a universal Medicare program.
While these measures captured most of the attention given to Warren's transition plan, another part of the plan is probably at least as important. Warren proposed to use the government's authority to compel the licensing of drug patents so that multiple companies can produce a patented drug.
The government can do this both because it has general authority to compel licensing of patents (with reasonable compensation) and because it has explicit authority under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of any drug developed in part with government-funded research. The overwhelming majority of drugs required some amount of government-supported research in their development.
These measures are noteworthy because they can be done on the president's own authority. While the pharmaceutical industry will surely contest a president's use of the government's authority to weaken their patent rights, those actions would not require congressional approval.
The other reason that these steps would be so important is that there is a huge amount of money involved. The United States is projected to spend over $6.6 trillion on prescription drugs over the next decade, more than 2.5 percent of GDP.
The government has explicit authority under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of any drug developed in part with government-funded research.
This is an enormous amount of money. We spend more than twice as much per person on drugs as people in other wealthy countries.
This is not an accident. The grant of a patent monopoly allows drug companies to charge as much as they want for drugs that are necessary for people's health or even their life.
While other countries also grant patent monopolies, they limit the ability of drug companies to exploit these monopolies with negotiations or price controls. This is why prices in these countries are so much lower than in the United States.
But even these negotiated prices are far above what drug prices would be in a free market. The price of drugs in a free market, without patent monopolies or related protections, will typically be less than 10 percent of the U.S. price and in some cases, less than 1 percent.
This is because drugs are almost invariably cheap to manufacture and distribute. They are expensive because government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive.
The rationale for patent monopolies is to give companies an incentive to research and develop drugs. This process is expensive, and if newly developed drugs were sold in a free market, companies would not be able to recover these expenses.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren proposes an increase in public funding for research.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren proposes an increase in public funding for research. This would be an important move toward an increased reliance on publicly funded biomedical research.
There are enormous advantages to publicly funded research over patent monopoly-supported research. First, the government is funding the research. It can require that all results be fully public as soon as possible so that all researchers can quickly benefit from them.
By contrast, under the patent system, drug companies have an incentive to keep results secret. They have no desire to share results that could benefit competitors.
Public funding would also radically reduce the incentive to develop copycat drugs. Under the current system, drug companies will often devote substantial sums to developing drugs that are intended to duplicate the function of drugs already on the market. While there is generally an advantage to having more options to treat a specific condition, most often, research dollars would be better spent trying to develop drugs for conditions where no effective treatment currently exists.
Ending patent monopoly pricing would also take away the incentive for drug companies to conceal evidence that their drugs may not be as safe or effective as claimed. Patent monopolies give drug companies an incentive to push their drugs as widely as possible.
The opioid crisis provides a dramatic example of the dangers of this system. Opioid manufacturers would not have had the same incentive to push their drugs, concealing evidence of their addictive properties, if they were not making huge profits on them.
In short, Senator Warren's plans on drugs are a really huge deal. How far and how quickly she will be able to get to Medicare for All will depend on what she can get through Congress. But her proposal for prescription drugs is something she would be able to do if elected president, and it would make an enormous difference in both the cost and the quality of our health care.
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Nov 30, 2019 | www.unz.com
In November, Barack Obama, who had avoided commenting on the Democratic presidential primary, came out forcefully in opposition to the extreme positions taken by some leading progressive contenders, positions that could cause the Democrats to be beaten by Trump in the 2020 election. Obama was a very popular president among Democrats, and what he has to say carries considerable weight with them. While this may not be his intent, Obama's position could open the field for Hillary Clinton to enter the fray and quite possibly become the Democrats' nominee, given the lackluster performance of leading "moderate" Joe Biden, whose weaknesses have been brought out by the mainstream media, despite their animosity toward Trump.
Now many in the Democratic Party leadership, as well as wealthy Democratic donors, have been concerned for some time about the radical nature of some of the economic policies advocated by the leading progressive Democratic contenders. They fear that instead of the 2020 election revolving around Trump with his low approval ratings, and very likely his impeachment, which would seem to be a slam-dunk victory for Democrats, it would focus on those radical economic proposals. Many voters are skeptical about how free college for all, free health care for all, high-paying jobs in "green energy" -- after greatly reducing the use of fossil fuels, free childcare for all, just to name some of the "free" things that have been promised, would really work. Instead of raising taxes on the middle class, most of these free things would purportedly be paid for by the super-wealthy, which would exclude mere millionaires such as Bernie Sanders (estimated wealth $2 million) and Elizabeth Warren (estimated wealth $12 million) who are the leading progressive contenders.
Obama began stressing his concern about the danger of radicalism in an October speech at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. And he did this not by dealing with presidential candidates but with youth who think they can immediately change society. "This idea of purity and you're never compromised, and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly," Obama lectured. "The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws."
It was at a gathering of Democratic donors in Washington, D.C., in November that Obama cautioned Democratic candidates not to go too far to the left since that would antagonize many voters who would otherwise support the Democratic candidate. "Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality ," Obama asserted. "The average American doesn't think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it." Although Obama did not specify particular Democratic candidates, his warning was widely interpreted as being directed at Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Currently, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, according to national polls, is Joe Biden, who is considered a moderate. But Biden has a number of problems. He continues to make gaffes while speaking, and during his long career in the Senate took positions that are antithetical to the Democratic Party of today. Moreover, he lacks the charisma to attract large crowds to his events. Thus, it is questionable that he has the capability to attract large numbers of Democratic voters to the polls in November 2020.
According to Politico Magazine , Obama was recently discussing election tactics with an unnamed current candidate and "pointed out that during his own 2008 campaign, he had an intimate bond with the electorate" and he is quoted as adding, "And you know who really doesn't have it ? Joe Biden."
Biden's appeal already seems to be waning. For example, in November, a Marquette Law School poll, which is considered the gold-standard survey in swing state Wisconsin, which the Democrats need to win the 2020 election, shows Trump leading Biden 47 percent to 44 percent. In October, Trump had trailed Biden by 6 points (44 percent to 50 percent), and in August, Trump trailed Biden by 9 points (42 percent to 51 percent). In short, Biden is losing support. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by a slender margin of 0.77 percent, with 47.22 percent of the total votes over the 46.45 percent for Hillary Clinton.
Another problem Biden faces is the corrupt activities of his son Hunter and brother James, who have taken advantage of their connection with him. The mainstream media has so far largely kept this mostly under wraps, but this tactic won't be successful as the election approaches. In fact, the progressive Democrats such as Bernie Sanders are likely to bring this up in a desperate effort to be nominated. And already these issues are being mentioned by the alternative media. For instance, there is an article in the non-partisan, anti-government Intercept titled, "Joe Biden's Family Has Been Cashing in on His Career for Decades. Democrats Need to Acknowledge That," and comparable articles in the conservative Washington Examiner such as, "Hunter Biden-linked company r eceived $130M in special federal loans while Joe Biden was vice president," and "Hunter Biden has 99 problems , and Burisma is only one."
David Axelrod, Democratic strategist and longtime aide to Barack Obama, said concerns about Biden's electability clearly influenced multi-billionaire (estimated $53 billion) and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's entrance into the contest for the Democratic nominee for president. "There's no question that Bloomberg's calculus was that Biden was occupying a space, and the fact that he's getting in is a clear indication that he's not convinced Biden has the wherewithal to carry that torch," Axelrod said. "So yeah, I don't think this is a positive development for Joe Biden."
Similarly, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon contended that "centrist Democrats and wealthy donors have lost confidence in Biden's ability to stop Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination." Bannon added that with Bloomberg entering the Democratic presidential race, "Biden's fundraising will get even shakier than it already is. There's only room for one moderate in this race and Bloomberg threatens Biden's status as the centrist standard-bearer."
Bloomberg's "stop and frisk" policy as mayor , which largely targeted blacks and Hispanics, should make it virtually impossible that he could be the Democratic nominee, despite his recent apology. Unless he has become senile in his late 70s, Bloomberg should well understand this since he did not make his billions by being stupid. It could be that he intends to serve as a stalking horse to draw Hillary Clinton into the contest by showing the weakness of Biden. Then like Superwoman, Hillary can enter the fray, appearing not to act for her own sake but to save the country from a likely second term for President Trump.
Similarly, Mark Penn, who was chief strategist for Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, said Bloomberg's entrance could cause Clinton to consider to run and decide there's "still a political logic there for her."
As Biden's support slips away, Clinton's should rise. Clinton has been recently promoting a book she co-wrote with her daughter, Chelsea, in Britain. In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live , Clinton said "many, many, many people" are pressuring her to jump into the 2020 presidential race and that she thinks about this "all the time." Clinton told the host that she is under "enormous pressure" but said it is not in her plans, though she cryptically added that she would "never say never."
Dick Morris, who was once a close confidant of the Clintons during Bill Clinton's time as Arkansas governor and U.S. president recently said in a radio interview that Hillary Clinton likely wants to run for the presidency in 2020. "My feeling is that she wants to ," Morris said. "She feels entitled to do it. She feels compelled to do it. She feels that God put her on the Earth to do it. But she's hesitant because she realizes the timing is bad."
However, Morris contends that Clinton believes that she has to "wait until Biden drops out because he's obviously next in line for it, and if he goes away, there's an opening for her." According to Morris' scenario, Clinton would become the moderate candidate opposed to the leading progressive, Elizabeth Warren.
Morris has not been in touch with the Clintons for many years, and has become strongly critical of them, so his claim might be questionable. Nonetheless, his portrayal of Hillary's current thinking seems quite reasonable.
A Fox News poll included Clinton along with the active Democratic candidates in a hypothetical election with Trump, and Hillary came out ahead of him by two percentage points. While some actual candidates did somewhat better than Hillary, she did quite well for someone who is not currently running for office.
Furthermore, a Harris Harvard poll in late October asked the question, "Suppose Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, and John Kerry decides [sic] to enter the race, who would you support as a candidate for President?" Joe Biden received the support of 19 percent of Democrat respondents while Clinton was a close second with 18 percent. Elizabeth Warren came in third at 13 percent, John Kerry was at 8 percent, and Bloomberg was at 6. Again, Clinton does quite well for someone who is not actually running for president.
One might think that if references to family members' corruption damaged Biden, then Clinton would be subject to worse damage in that area, since she and her husband Bill were connected with far more corrupt activities -- Whitewater, Travelgate, the Lewinsky affair, the Paula Jones affair, t the death of Vince Foster, the Clinton Foundation, her private server, and so on. But these issues are already known and are presumably already taken into account by the voters, whereas the Biden family's corrupt activities are so far largely unknown.
It should be pointed out that Clinton has a number of positives as a presidential candidate. Although losing in the Electoral College in 2016, Clinton had garnered 3 million more votes more than Trump. The election was decided by a total of 80,000 votes in three states. It is highly unlikely that such a fluke could be duplicated.
Clinton's staff had been overconfident assuming victory, which was based on their polling of various states, and as a result began to focus on competing in states well beyond those Clinton needed for victory.
Moreover, one key event outside the control of Clinton's staff was FBI Director James Comey's investigation of Clinton's use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Most crucial were his July 2016 public statement terminating the investigation, with a lengthy comment about what Clinton did wrong, and his October 28 reopening the inquiry into newly discovered emails and then closing it two days before the election, stating that the emails had not provided any new information. The October 28 letter, however, probably played a key role in the outcome of the election. As statistician Nate Silver maintains: "Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had 'learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton's lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.'"
[Silver's organization FiveThirtyEight had projected a much higher chance (29 percent) of Donald Trump winning the presidency than most other pollsters]
Clinton has also helped to convince many Democrats and members of the mainstream media that the 2016 election was stolen from her by Russian agents If this were really true – which is very doubtful – then Hillary should be the Democrats' candidate for 2020 since Russian intervention should not be as successful as it allegedly was in 2016.
In endorsing Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, Obama stated. "I don't think that there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office." He has yet to make such an endorsement for Biden and privately, as mentioned earlier, said he is a poor choice for a nominee. He might ultimately endorse Biden, but he certainly would not renege on what he said four years ago about Clinton if she became the Democrats' standard-bearer.
Should Clinton opt to run, she would have no trouble raising money since she set a record in 2016 of $1.4 billion and wealthy donors want a moderate to be the Democratic nominee. It would seem likely that she would enter the contest if Biden has serious trouble. She would miss some state primaries since it would be too late to register in them but given the crowded field of candidates, there is a likelihood that there will be a brokered convention, that is, the convention will go past the first ballot. Since the superdelegates would be allowed to vote in all rounds after the first, they could determine the winner, which would probably mean the selection of a candidate who would be seen to have the greatest chance of winning, and that would likely be Hillary Clinton, if she has entered the fray.
I discussed the merits of Pete Buttigieg in a previous article in Unz Review, and what I write here might seem to conflict with that. However, while Buttigieg is doing quite well in the polls, he still does not get much support from blacks and Latinos, which is essential to become the Democrats nominee for president. Buttigieg could, however, be nominated for vice president or, more likely, given an important cabinet position since the vice-presidential slot would probably be reserved for a black or Latino if a white person were picked as the presidential nominee, which currently seems likely.
But because of Buttigieg's relatively hardline foreign policy , which largely meshes with that of Clinton's, and his wide knowledge and language ability, Buttigieg would fit well in the all-important position of secretary of state in a Clinton administration. Moreover, Buttigieg, whose tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will end in January 2020, would almost certainly be willing to take such a position, which could serve as a jumping-off point for the presidency in the future.
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Nov 30, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Just as Barr noted Mueller's more equivocal finding on obstruction of justice, the Times acknowledges a "mixed bag of conclusions" that is "likely to give new ammunition to both Mr. Trump's defenders and critics in the long-running partisan fight over the Russia investigation."
Specifically: "Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. was careless and unprofessional in pursuing the Page wiretap, and he referred his findings in one instance to prosecutors for potential criminal charges over the alteration of a document in 2017 by a front-line lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 37, in connection with the wiretap application."
"The F.B.I. did cite the dossier to some extent to apply for the wiretap on Mr. Page," the Times reports elsewhere. "The inspector general will fault the F.B.I. for failing to tell the judges who approved the wiretap applications about potential problems with the dossier, the people familiar with the draft report said. F.B.I. agents have interviewed some of Mr. Steele's sources and found that their information differed somewhat from his dossier."
Oh.
Like the Mueller report, this falls well short of the maximalist conspiracy claims in circulation. Partisans were unrealistic to expect such unambiguous findings from Mueller or Horowitz, which is why Democrats are writing their own uncomplicated narrative in the Trump-Ukraine impeachment proceedings.
But if there was reason to be concerned about Trump-Russia contacts during the campaign, the investigators and corners they may have cut in probing the matter are not altogether unproblematic either -- and the full report could shed more light on how.
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Nov 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Factotum , 27 November 2019 at 11:57 AM
WSJ columnist today raises an old obscure issue today about the Clinton emails and Comey's calculated exoneration of Clinton's culpability.This story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Comey claimed when confronted with this memo, Lynch merely smiled like the Cheshire cat and nothing more was done.
This memo was later discredited as an alleged planted Russian hoax. Yet the memo story is again put in lead position on the opinion pages of the WSJ this very morning. Why was that? Not clear, but does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be part of the upcoming Horowitz report?
(WSJ: 11/27/19 - Holman Jenkins, Jr. - "Who will turn over the 2016 rocks")
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Christopher Hull via The Epoch Times,
The Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of the Trump -- Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The connection hasn't been previously reported.
According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
In addition, however, a court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls" to The Washington Post. Specifically, the filing states, "ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post Reporter David Ignatius."
The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA. Moreover, according to the court filing, the tasks assigned to "known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI" Halper "seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent)."
Baker didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The filing notes that Flynn's defense team has requested phone records for then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , likewise in order to confirm contacts with Ignatius. The filing singles out records for Jan. 10, 2017, when, according to the filing, "Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn.'"
Clapper didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The Pentagon's current inspector general has already found that Baker's office "did not maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA personnel had with Professor Halper." As a result, according to the inspector general, ONA staff "could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."
Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in November 2017 started an investigation into charges that Baker retaliated against a whistleblower who red-flagged "rigged" contracts, including Halper's. Another $11 million in contracts under scrutiny went to the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), which is run by a schoolmate of Chelsea Clinton, whom she has referred to as her "best friend."
According to the whistleblower's attorney, "Baker's interest was his awareness of the LTSG-Clinton connection; his presumptive desire to exploit that to his advantage in the event of a Clinton election win; and the fact that contractors like LTSG served as a lucrative landing pad for ONA retirees."
The attorney charged that Baker's claims about the whistleblower were "demonstrably false," calling Baker "partisan and highly vindictive."
At the time, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, called Baker "a shallow and manipulative character that should have gone with the change in administration." Perle further charged that the whistleblower "clearly was the target, for political reasons, of an effort to push him out of government," saying "he's a Trump loyalist, and it was launched and sustained by an Obama holdover."
That inquiry is being carried out by the inspector general's Investigations of Senior Officials Directorate.
Raising additional questions, a 2016 report further revealed that the ONA had failed to produce the top-secret net assessments the office was established to conduct for more than 10 years, even with a yearly budget approaching $20 million.
Baker was named as ONA director on May 14, 2015, during the Obama administration. A contemporaneous report called his appointment "part of a wave of new Pentagon personnel moves in recent days, senior-level officials who will outlast President Obama's final term in office." Baker replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed "Yoda" for his "wizened appearance, fanatical following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature." Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in selecting Baker, "passed over several of Marshall's acolytes who were in the running for the position."
The House Judiciary and Oversight committees -- which interviewed almost two dozen witnesses -- concluded in December 2018 that the Obama Justice Department treated Trump and Clinton unequally, affording Clinton and her associates extraordinary accommodations, while potentially abusing surveillance powers to investigate Trump's associates.
Jacqueline Deal, president of LTSG, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times: "My colleagues and I began performing work in support of the Office of Net Assessment during the George W. Bush administration, over a decade before the office's current director was appointed. None of the awards received by LTSG from the Department of Defense resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary [Hillary] Clinton. Any statement or implication otherwise is false."
my new username , 2 minutes ago link
KuriousKat , 1 hour ago linkThe Bush and Clinton families are joined at their corrupt hips.
The ONA is a CIA slush fund.
steelframe7 , 1 hour ago linkBaker replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed “Yoda” for his “wizened appearance, fanatical following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature.” Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in selecting Baker, “passed over several of Marshall’s acolytes who were in the running for the position.”
Holy ****...The replacement head of the Highlands Group..he may as well be that white bearded guy in the matrix.. Hes the director of the MIC CIA NSA. ..the whole ball of wax..puts it all together...only he is not Yoda like before him..like putting a restaurant fast food manager in charge of the manhattan project. I know those acolytes must be really pissed..and probably a potential source of leaks.
Investigations my eye! This has been going on since Moby **** was a minnow.
McCabe has been out there making money while under criminal referral.. That investigation is DONE and still nothing happens.
The public information available on at least 50 of these double dealers is enough to send them all up the river as of a few YEARS ago...but we have to have more investigations...that's so they can figure out how to cover it all up.
Fire these creeps. Hire Sidney Powell.. They'll be swinging inside of six months.
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stever , Nov 26 2019 21:01 utc | 9
"An impeachment trial in the Senate would be a disaster for the Democrats.
I can not see why the Democrats would want to fall into such a trap. House leader Nancy Pelosi is experienced enough to not let that happen."The real reason in my opinion that Pelosi went along with impeachment was that she saw Bernies message getting through, and even though the DNC pushed all the conserva-dem candidates they could into the race, Bernie is still doing well and gaining. An impeachment trial would require Bernie to attend the hearings rather that campaigning. Also Wall Streets best friend Obama has just stated that Bernie is not a Democrat and that would require Obama to get on the speaking circuit to campaign against him - you know for the sake of the corporations - and those 500k speaking thank you gigs. They would rather elect Trump than Bernie - that is why I think Pelosi would go along with an impeachment trial in the Senate - Bernie is the greater threat.
Likklemore , Nov 26 2019 21:01 utc | 10
The idea to censure Trump and move on has been aired since mid 2017. The latest was Forbes.com billwhalen 26 September 2019 Linkpretzelattack , Nov 26 2019 21:16 utc | 11I ordered a truckload of pop corn to snack on during the trial in the Senate. Just imagine Joe Biden under cross examination as he flips 'n flops! "Was that me in the Video, I can't recall."
Guess I will have to unpack some popcorn. At this phase in the process an impeachable offence remains undefined!??
House Judiciary Committee Sets Date For Impeachment Hearing, Invites Trump To TestifyWith interest (even among Democrats) in the impeachment process sliding, the House Judiciary Committee is set to take over the impeachment probe of President Trump next week, scheduling a Dec. 4 hearing.As The Hill reports, behind Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the committee will hear from legal scholars as Democrats weigh whether the evidence turned up in their weeks-long impeachment inquiry warrants the drafting of articles aimed at removing the president from office.
The hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday, will focus on the definition of an impeachable offense and the formal application of the impeachment process. The panel will invite White House lawyers to attend and participate.
Ahead of the hearing, Nadler wrote to Trump requesting his participation - or that of White House counsel - as part of ensuring "a fair and informative process."[.]
Trump will take a page from the other president who campaigned on the "do nothing congress"
and now Obama weighs in to warn against the real danger to the democrats, Bernie Sanders. that's who they have to beat, and Gabbard. They don't give much of a damn about beating Trump.Wind Hippo , Nov 26 2019 21:21 utc | 12b, there seems to be a critical flaw in your analysis--you seem to base it on a premise that the goal of the Democratic establishment is to win elections/gain power/govern. It's not, it's to ensure the continuing enrichment of themselves and their oligarch peers, financial industry, military, pharma, etc.vk , Nov 26 2019 21:23 utc | 13The question people like Pelosi (worth $100 million or so btw along with her husband whose business she enriches via her position) are pondering isn't "Will doing x, y, z help Trump win?" It's "Will doing x, y, z ensure Bernie Sanders doesn't win?"
Maybe this is useful to understand the DNC's situation:jared , Nov 26 2019 21:25 utc | 14This pretty much confirms my and many others here hypothesis that the Dems are fighting a "war on two fronts": one against Trump nationalist capitalism and the other against the "democratic socialists" who have been flocking to their party machine since 2014.
No group of adults is that stupid. They are doing and will do as they are required to do by their owners.Jen , Nov 26 2019 21:31 utc | 15Of all the things that the Democrats could impeach President Trump over, the one thing they seized upon was the issue that had the most potential to blow back on them and destroy Joe Biden's chances of reaching the White House. Whoever had that brilliant idea and put it as the long straw in a cylindrical prawn-chip can along with all the other straws for pulling out, sure didn't think of all the consequences that could have arisen. That speaks for the depth (or lack thereof) of the thinking among senior Democrats and their worker bee analysts, along with a narrow-minded outlook, sheer hatred of a political outsider and a fanatical zeal to match that hatred and outlook.William Gruff , Nov 26 2019 21:37 utc | 16The folks who hatched that particular impeachment plan and pitched it to Nancy Pelosi must have been the same idiots in the DNC who dreamt up the Russiagate scandal and also pursued Paul Manafort to get him off DJT's election campaign team. Dmitri Alperovich / Crowdstrike, Alexandra Chalupa: we're looking at you.
Impeachment takes Sanders out of the campaign and that opens things up for the CIA/establishment's "Identity Politics Candidate #3" , Mayor Butt-gig.karlof1 , Nov 26 2019 21:52 utc | 17That said, since "Everyone who doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable misogynist!" didn't work as expected, I wonder what makes them think "Everyone who doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable homophobe!" will work any better?
Lots of agreement here with the overall situation becoming clearer with Bloomberg's entrance and the outing of Obama's plans. I just finished writing my response to Putin's speech before the annual United Russia Party Congress on the Open Thread and suggest barflies take 10 minutes to read it and compare what he espouses a political party's deeds & goals ought to be versus those of the West and its vassals.James Speaks , Nov 26 2019 22:58 utc | 21Clearly, the goal is to prevent the US Polity from clawing back power from the 10% and enacting policies to their benefit. Meanwhile, a new form of Transnational Nationalism continues to take shape that will soon present a serious threat to the Financialized Globalizers and their Cult of Debt. Too many seem to laugh off the entire situation by dismissing it as Kabuki Theatre, which I see as self-serving and shortsighted since there're several very real crises we're in up to our collective armpits.
A full blown impeachment trial that exposes the entire Russia-gate/Ukraine-gate/Whatever-gate sham is what this country needs.librul , Nov 26 2019 22:59 utc | 22Obviously, a sufficient number of secure Republican representatives are needed to vote in favor of impeachment to allow this circus to continue to its bizarrely entertaining, Democratic Party destroying end.
The MSM will declare Trump guilty - that is, he has earned impeachment for Ukrainegate.karlof1 , Nov 26 2019 23:28 utc | 25There are Democrats still under the illusion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. Dems tell us that Trump *obstructed* the Mueller investigation thus Trump could not be nailed, nonetheless Trump is guilty of collusion until proven innocent.
Back to Ukrainegate. Bet the MSM sells Ukrainegate this way: Trump is guilty in Ukrainegate and should be impeached, but Democrats are moving on to focus on the election. And besides, Dems will tell us, the dastardly Republicans in the Senate will corruptly block Trump's impeachment.
Tulsi Gabbard Tweet not specifically about impeachment but begs numerous questions:snake , Nov 26 2019 23:30 utc | 26"My personal commitment is to always treat you and all Americans with respect. Working side-by-side, we can defeat the divisiveness of Donald Trump, and usher in a 21st century of peace, human dignity, & true equality. Working side by side, we can make Dr. King's dream our reality ." [My Emphasis]
Questions: Is Trump divisive, or is it the D-Party and Current Oligarchy that make him so; and which is more important to defeat? Which party "usher[ed] in the 21st century" with several wars and abetted the next two? How did Obama, Slick Willie or his wife advance "human dignity & true equality"? How does her last sentence differ from "Hope you can believe in"? Hasn't her D-Party worked tirelessly for decades to circumvent the goals she espouses? Wouldn't Gabbard have a better chance running as an Enlightened Republican than as a Renegade Democrat if her goal's to defeat Trump?
American Democracy is political professional wrestling, Kabuki Theater, and mediocre Reality TV all rolled into. by: AK74 @ 4 <= binary divide <=conducted by the USA, is not about America, Americans or making America great again, its about the welfare of [the few<= which most Americans would not call fellow Americans].ptb , Nov 26 2019 23:42 utc | 27Sasha.@ 23 I don't understand where you are coming from.. thank Korlof1 @18 for posting that Putin talk alert. excerpts from the talk.. => The priority [of United Russia has been] the protection of the people's interests, the interests of [the] Motherland, and ..responsible [approach] to ..country, its security, stability and people's lives in the long-term perspective.
The party.. offered a unifying agenda based on freedom and well being, patriotism, ..traditional values, a strong civil society and a strong state. The key issue in the party's work .being together with the people, Karlof1@18 <=this talk suggest change in Russian leadership that are not congruent with your [Sasha] comment @23. I hope you will make more clear what you spent sometime writing ( and for that effort I thank you) but it is not yet clear what you mean.. .
Re: Brenda Lawrence talking about censure rather than impeachment:psychohistorian , Nov 27 2019 0:14 utc | 31That is what they call a "trial balloon." If there isn't too much of a freakout among the true-believer base, and I don't think there is, it'll be an option they will at least take seriously. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to bet on rational thinking at this point. Anyway I agree it's the best move for congressional Democrats.
Yet another other option is to continue the investigation indefinitely. I'm going to say it is their default move actually. In that case, the House Judiciary Committee would spend a few weeks putting on their own show, then say they would like more evidence to be really sure, returning matters to the House Intelligence Committee, and we repeat the cycle.
I am liking all the commenters here that understand that there is only one empire party with two mythical faces. I think this kabuki is necessary if you don't have a major WAR to keep the masses focused on or otherwise distracted from the underlying R2P which I translate to Rape2Protect.AK74 , Nov 27 2019 0:51 utc | 34It is sad to see us all talking about which of the lesser of horrible evils will continue the leadership of American faced empire.....I hope it crashes soon and takes the global elite down with it.....how many barflies are ready to stand up and say NO to the owners of the Super-Priority derivatives that will say they own the world because of their casino (no skin in the game) bets that are currently "legal" in America when the crash comes?
@ snakeGuest , Nov 27 2019 1:27 utc | 36American "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see much greater hostility to -- if not outright rebellion against--the American military and spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance they get. That should tell you all you need to know about Americans.
If this show should teach people in the US anything (again), it is how both US parties descend like vultures onto countries where they manage to take over the government. Five billion poured into Ukraine with the requisite murder and mayhem, and who knows how many billions come pouring back out. It's a real jackpot for those in the right positions to scoop it into their pockets.Dave , Nov 27 2019 1:38 utc | 37The average people in the US don't even have a genuine safety net. Important for all those productive resources to go to pedophile islands and sinecures for coke head sons of politicians, obviously.
Re: #3 Allen – well said. The GOP is the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party the rich pay to keep the left at bay when the Republicans lose.Yeah, Right , Nov 27 2019 1:38 utc | 38The problem with this prediction is that the MSM has been breathlessly pronouncing that THIS IS EXPLOSIVE EVIDENCE!!!! pretty much every day and after every witness testimony.Josh , Nov 27 2019 1:49 utc | 39So if you are a member of the public who gets their "information" from the MSM (and, be honest, that is most of the people in the USA) then you have been force-fed is that Trumps defense against these allegations has already been shredded, and that his guilt has already been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
How can those opinion-makers then turn around and say "Nah, it'll be fine" and settle for a mere censure?
Wouldn't the Sheeple respond with a fully-justified "Hey, hang on! What gives?"
The Democrats has leapt on a Tiger. Nobody made them do it, but now they are there I don't think they are going to be able to leap off.
Some of the first-term nobodies, maybe, but not the Schiffs and the Pelopis and the Nadlers.
Hang on for dear life and hope for a miracle is probably their only option now.
And, who knows, that trio may be so incompetent that they actually think they are going to win.
Via, perhaps, One who has established Truth, Standing, and Right, Declaring so.... Lawfully.pretzelattack , Nov 27 2019 1:56 utc | 40james, the deck is stacked even more against independents than it is against actual mildly leftist candidates who run as democrats. there are a substantial number of people who think the only way to change the country is to take over the democratic party. frankly, that isn't going to happen, and nobody is going to win as an independent candidate with all the procedural rules making it so hard to even get on the ballot, while the state government, which is invariably controlled by one of the two parties, throws every roadblock, legal and illegal, in the way. my gut feeling is things are going to have to get quite a bit worse before the citizenry starts to explode, and there's no telling how that process will work out, and no way to control it once it reaches critical mass.Duncan Idaho , Nov 27 2019 2:13 utc | 43The US is a one party State-- Pepsi _Pepsi Lite. Both parties are capitalist. It is rather humorous the attention paid to a Dim vs Repug argument. Small thinking for small minds---Rob , Nov 27 2019 2:13 utc | 44As I posted at the beginning of the impeachment process, the Dems would be foolish to hang it all on the arcane shenanigans in Ukraine but rather should impeach Trump on the numerous more serious breaches and crimes that he has committed. I also worried that the Democratic Party leaders would blow the opportunity to demonstrate that Trump and the Republican Party are rotten to the core and harmful to the country. And so they have blown it. What an inept pack of asses.juliania , Nov 27 2019 2:26 utc | 46I would think that even censure is still going to be a hot potato for the Democrats. Looking at the procedure as far as wikipedia describes it, it hasn't done anything of significance when it comes to being used against a president, especially as the Democrats won't want to censure Trump for matters in which they themselves are equally complicit, as has been discussed here.karlof1 , Nov 27 2019 2:29 utc | 47That means they would be censuring on the same shaky grounds that they would have impeached him, which only prolongs attention upon the dubious claims of the indictment. It seems to me Trump will, rather than be shamed by the process, only be saying 'Make my day', and hopefully have his Attorney General come forward with exonerating revelations on that issue in the judicial proceeding that it was my contention the impeachment effort had been a last ditch one to forestall such.
Wishful thinking on that, I know - but at least that probe has merit.
Grieved @42--ben , Nov 27 2019 2:52 utc | 48Thanks for your reply! And thanks for linking the Keen video! Made a comment on that thread.
As I wrote when the possibility of Trump's impeachment arose almost as soon as he was inaugurated, the entire charade reminds me of Slick Willie's impeachment, trial and exoneration--the Articles of Impeachment utilized were such that he'd avoid conviction just as they will be for Trump.
Allen @ 3 said; "The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy."Trisha , Nov 27 2019 3:07 utc | 49With very few exceptions, you nailed it..Your description of the Dem. party is sad, but true.....
Oh dear, sadly this was so easy to predict.dltravers , Nov 27 2019 3:45 utc | 50Maybe the Dims will creep past the yawning Trump trap and get around to minor policy issues, like crafting and passing a real Green New Deal bill.
Again, sadly, so easy to predict nothing of the sort happening.
Not having much time to watch the show trial it appears to me the Democrats still have a set of very weak candidates. Anyone who knows Biden knows he in not now and never will be able to handle a campaign against Trump.MT_bill , Nov 27 2019 4:18 utc | 53Trump is up against an entrenched powerful bureaucracy and people who buy ink by the 55 gallon barrel. The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi. The rank and file Democrats are tired of the elite political class in the same fashion that the rank and file Republicans were tired of the political establishment which caused then to turn to Trump.
Is the Democrat political establishment smart enough to take a few steps back and push forward some outsiders? I doubt that but they would not lose much if they did. Any new leaders would have the same stable of bureaucrats to pick from which will still be there long after they are gone.
The real Trump move would be to hit the twitter right before the house impeachment vote and announce that he has instructed the House Republicans to vote for impeachment.AntiSpin , Nov 27 2019 4:42 utc | 55He could lay out his story about how the American People never got to hear the full story because of house dems, and how the Senate would fully investigate the 2016 election, Russiagate, Ukraine, and whatever else they want. Maybe even make Hillary testify. Heads would explode and his base would love it.
j @ dltravers | Nov 27 2019 3:45 utc | 50librul , Nov 27 2019 5:56 utc | 56"The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi."
Mayor Pete -- are you serious? I urge you to take a look at these two articles before making any other public endorsements.
All About Pete
by Nathan J. Robinson
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-peteIs Pete Buttigieg A Shill For The Donor Class?
by Miles Mogulescu | November 23, 2019
https://ourfuture.org/20191122/is-pete-buttigieg-a-shill-for-the-donor-classThe...***The***...core takeaway, the battle at the heart of Russiagate/Ukrainegate, is that it does not matter who the People elect as President and what platform he was elected on the Deep State will decide foreign policy.A User , Nov 27 2019 9:12 utc | 61RE: Posted by: Sabine | Nov 27 2019 7:39 utc | 61TJ , Nov 27 2019 10:48 utc | 63democrats republicans makes no difference both teams are managed by self serving scum who refuse to allow "what the people want" to distract them from the big one. "what can I steal?".
People meed to appreciate two things about both the dems and the rethugs. The first is they supply a much-needed insight into: "How low can I go as a worthless hang off the wagon by me fingernails, careerist. The second? That every hack must understand that eventually every talking head is seen for the ugly sellout which they are.
There is no 'honourable way through this mess', one either quietly resigns pulling the pin on the worst of us all, or one accepts the previously unacceptable, that we are most likely both musically n functionally illiterate but it never matters what-u-say, what really counts is what you do.
Whoever it was the Democrats should shun that person before it creates more damage to their party.vk , Nov 27 2019 11:54 utc | 64I would disagree here. If the Democrats continue they will destroy themselves hopefully leading to Mutually Assured Destruction as they would need to do something very drastic to destroy the Republicans in return e.g. expose 9/11, Iraq etc, let the swamp / Deep State go M.A.D. and from the political ashes parties and politicians can rise who are actually working for the betterment of the USA and its people.
snake , Nov 27 2019 13:05 utc | 65To the people here clamoring for Bernie Sanders to go independent: The American electoral system is very unique. The two parties -- GOP and Dems -- are much more than mere political parties: they are the American electoral machine itself. It is impossible to win the presidency without being the candidate of one of the two, that's why Trump also didn't go as an independent either.
Bernie Sanders is different from all other independent presidential candidates in American History because he was the first to really want to win. That's why he penetrated the Democratic machine, even though he became senator many times as an independent. He read the conjuncture correctly and, you have to agree, he's been more influential over American political-ideological landscape than all the other independents put together (not considering Eugene Debs as an independent).
@ snakeAmerican "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see much greater hostility to--if not outright rebellion against--the American military and spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance they get.
That should tell you all you need to know about Americans. by: AK74 @ 34
<= No not yet do I agree with you.. The American young people are forced into the military in order to afford to be educated, and in order to have access to health care and good-level workforce entry jobs especially the military is default for children of struggling parents that cannot fund a college education or for the kids who are not yet ready to become serious students.
The USA has not always discounted America or denied Americans. When I grew up, a college education was very affordable, health care was available to even the most needy at whatever they could afford, most of us could work our way through the education and find decent entry level jobs if we were willing to dedicate ourselves to make the opportunity of a job into a success (education, degrees, licenses were not needed, just performance was enough). Unfortunately third party private mind control propaganda was used to extend into fake space, the belief that the USA provides a valuable service to American interest. As time went on, the USA had to hid its activities in top secret closets, it then had to learn to spy on everyone, and it had to prosecute those (whistle blowers) who raised a question. Hence the predicament of the awaken American dealing with friends that still believe the USA is good for America.. Others hope the good times will return but the USA tolerance for descent is dissipating. After the 16th amendment and the federal reserve act in 1913 the USA began to edge America out in favor of international globalization.
Most of the really important parts of what made the USA great for Americans has been sold off [privatized] and the protections and umpiring and refereeing that the USA used to provide to keep the American economic space highly competitive and freely accessible to all competitors has not only ceased, but now operates as a monopoly factory, churning out laws, rules and establishing agencies that make the wealthy and their corporate empires wealthier, richer and more monopolistic at the expense of everyday Americans.
The USA began to drop America from its sights after WWII. The USA moved its efforts and activities from American domestic concerns to global concerns in 1948, neglected its advance and protect American ideology; it imposed the continental shelf act in 1954 and the EPA act in 1972, in order to force American industry out of America (the oil business to Saudi Arabia and OPEC); by 1985-95 most businesses operating in America were either forced to close or forced to move to a cheap third world labor force places.. .<=the purpose is now clear, it was to separate Americans from their industrial and manufacturing know-how and to block American access to evolving technology . At first most Americans did not notice.
Many Americans are only now waking to the possibility that things topside have changed and some are realizing just how vulnerable the US constitution has made the USA to outside influence. .. thanks to the USA very little of good ole America remains. but the humanity first instinct most Americans are born with remains mostly unchanged, even though the globalist have decimated religious organizations, most Americans still believe their maker will not look favorably on those who deny justice, democracy or who abuse mankind. The USA has moved on, it has become a global empire, operating in a global space unknown to most Americans. The USA has created a world of its own, it no longer needs domestic America, it can use the people and resources of anyone anywhere in the world for its conquest.
The last two political campaigns for President were "Change=Obama" and "Make America Great Again=Trump"; neither of these two would have succeeded if Americans did not feel the problem.
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Nov 24, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
The Democratic contender parroted neocon regime-change myths in an interview on "Pod Save America," writes Ben Norton.
... ... ...
Reiterates Her Neoconservative Policies Against Venezuela
Elizabeth Warren repeated her support for regime change in Venezuela in an interview in September with the Council on Foreign Relations , a central gear in the machinery of the military-industrial complex. "Maduro is a dictator and a crook who has wrecked his country's economy, dismantled its democratic institutions, and profited while his people suffer," Warren declared. She referred to Maduro's elected government as a "regime" and called for "supporting regional efforts to negotiate a political transition." Echoing the rhetoric of neoconservatives in Washington, Warren called for "contain[ing]" the supposedly "damaging and destabilizing actions" of China, Russia, and Cuba. The only point where Warren diverged with Trump was on her insistence that "there is no U.S. military option in Venezuela."
Soft-Pedals Far-Right Coup in Bolivia
While Warren endorsed Trump's hybrid war on Venezuela, she more recently whitewashed the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.
On Nov. 10, the U.S. government backed a far-right military coup against Bolivia's democratically elected President Evo Morales , a leftist from the popular Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and the first Indigenous head of state in a country where nearly two-thirds of the population is Native.
Warren refused to comment on the putsch for more than a week, even as the far-right military junta massacred dozens of protesters and systematically purged and detained elected left-wing politicians from MAS.
Finally, eight days after the coup, Warren broke her silence. In a short tweet, the putative progressive presidential candidate tepidly requested "free and fair elections" and calling on the "interim leadership" to prepare an "early, legitimate election." What Warren did not mention is that this "interim leadership" she helped legitimize is headed by an extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, the unelected "interim president" Jeanine Añez. Añez has referred to Bolivia's majority-Indigenous population as "satanic" and immediately moved to try to overturn the country's progressive constitution, which had established an inclusive, secular, plurinational state after receiving an overwhelming democratic mandate in a 2009 referendum.
Añez's ally in this coup regime's interim leadership is Luis Fernando Camacho , a multi-millionaire who emerged out of neo-fascist groups and courted support from the United States and the far-right governments of Brazil and Colombia. By granting legitimacy to Bolilvia's ultra-conservative, unelected leadership, Warren rubber-stamped the far-right coup and the military junta's attempt to stamp out Bolivia's progressive democracy. In other words, as The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal put it, Liz's Big Structural Bailey compliantly rolled over for Big IMF Structural Adjustment Program .
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone , and the producer of the " Moderate Rebels " podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com , and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
This article is from The Grayzone .
Skip Scott , November 23, 2019 at 07:57
H Beazley-
A vote for evil is never a good choice, and choosing a candidate you perceive as a lesser evil still condones evil. Allowing the Oligarchy to limit your choice gives them the power to continue advancing evil policies. They control both major parties. You may succeed in getting non-gender specific restrooms in your Starbucks, but the murdering war machine will continue unabated.
JoAnn , November 23, 2019 at 01:41
Now, we are seeing the true colors of candidates, who have professed to be progressive. Sanders went on a "tirade" against Maduro during the last "debate" I saw. Tulsi Gabbard has stayed against US Imperialism, but, I'm sure the Democratic policy controllers will never nominate her. I foresee I'll be voting for the Socialist next year.
Raymond M. , November 22, 2019 at 18:09
""""On Nov. 10, the U.S. government backed a far-right military coup against Bolivia's democratically elected President Evo Morales bla blla bla".
And the 3 right wing candidates spent more time slinging mud at at each other than at Morales. Had the CIAs top front man Ortez stepped aside, the vote would not have split and allowed Morales to claim a first round victory and avoid a run-off that he would have lost. And the right wing Christian fundamentalist for sure was a CIA plant who manged to split the vote further.
Under the Trump administration, the CIA can even run a coup right.
Piotr Berman , November 22, 2019 at 15:25
If only those anti-Western rulers seen the light and joined RBWO (rule* based world order, * rules decided in DC, preferably by bipartisan consensus), then the economy would run smoothly and the population would be happy. Every week gives another example:
By The Associated Press, Nov. 21, 2019, BOGOTA, Colombia
Colombians angry with President Iván Duque and hoping to channel Latin America's wave of discontent took the streets by the tens of thousands on Thursday in one of the biggest protests in the nation's recent history. [ ] Police estimated 207,000 people took part. [ ] government deployed 170,000 officers, closed border crossings and deported 24 Venezuelans accused of entering the country to instigate unrest.
So if only Iván did not start unnecessary conflict with Maduro, these 24 scoundrels would stay home and the trouble would be avoided. Oh wait, I got confused
CitizenOne , November 21, 2019 at 22:10
You must imagine that when candidtes suddenly become mind control puppets what is going on. The scariest thing in American Politics is how supposedly independent and liberal progressives somehow swallow the red pill and are transported into the world of make believe. Once inside the bubble of fiction far removed from human suffering which is after all what politicians are supposed to be about fixing they can say crazy things. Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump are the only souls to retain their independent (yet opposite) minds and both of them got the boot for being different.
Hide Behind , November 21, 2019 at 20:44
The puppet masters are experts, on the one hand there is A Republican, and on the other is a Democrat, but even they mess up now and then get the different strings tangled. Some come back on stage on the different hand so to save time they give a puppet two faces.
Watching same puppets gets old so every so often 2-4-6 they restring an old one that was used as props in past, change their makeup a bit to give them new faces. We do not actually elect the puppet, we instead legitimize the Puppeteers who own' s the only stage in town.
Those who choreograph the movements and change the backgrouds, media outlets and permanent bureaucrats know the plays before they are introduced, and they know best how to get adults to leave reality behind and bring back their childhood fantacies. Days of sugar plums, candy canes, socks filled with goodies and not coal, tooth fairys, and kind generous Fairy God Mothers.
Toy Nutcracker soldiers that turn into Angelic heros, Yellow brick roads, Bunnies with pocket watches, and and magic shoes of red, or of glass in hand of handsome Princes and beautiful Princesses, all available if we vote. So who votes, only those who control the voting puppets know that reality does not exist, they twitch we react, and at end of voting counts one of hand's puppets will slump and cry, while others will leap and dance in joy, only for all to end up in one pile until the puppeteers need them for next act.
Frederike , November 21, 2019 at 17:30
"What Warren did not mention is that this "interim leadership" she helped legitimize is headed by an extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, the unelected "interim president" Jeanine Añez.
Añez has referred to Bolivia's majority-Indigenous population as "satanic" and immediately moved to try to overturn the country's progressive constitution, which had established an inclusive, secular, plurinational state after receiving an overwhelming democratic mandate in a 2009 referendum."
Doesn't Warren claim to have indigenous ancestors herself and was proud of it? She caused Trump to call her "Pocahontas"? She agrees to support the unelected interim president Jeannine Añez, who refers to indigenous inhabitants as satanic? Warren is a very horrible person, inhumane, amoral, and rather stupid overall, who wants to get rich. Everything she agreed to in the interview listed above is pathetic. I had no idea that she is such a worthless individual.
arggo , November 22, 2019 at 19:57
"neocon" explains this. She seems to have the support of very foundational structures that enabled Hillary Clinton Democrats to attack and destroy Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Cara , November 21, 2019 at 15:40
Warren has not lost my vote for the simple reason she never had it in the first place. None of this, sickening as it is, comes as any surprise. Warren is an unapologetic capitalist. She's like Robert Reich in that regard. They both believe capitalism–if reformed, tweaked a bit here and there–can work. To give her credit, she's always been very honest about that. And of course our doctrine of regime change is all in the service of capitalism. Unless I'm simply confused and mistaken.
Sherwood Forrest , November 22, 2019 at 09:38
Yes, Capitalist First! That makes it so difficult for any aware person to believe she sincerely supports a wealth tax, Universal Healthcare, Green New Deal, College loan forgiveness, family leave or anything else the 1% oppose. Because promising like Santa is part of Capitalist politics, and then saying," Nah, we can't afford it."
Piotr Berman , November 22, 2019 at 16:08
I personally think that capitalism with "human face" and robust public sector is the way to go. But imperialist imposition and aggression is not the part of "human face" that I imagine.
So Warren's imperialist positions are evil and unnecessary to preserve capitalism, how that projects at her as a person it is hard to tell. A Polish poet has those words spoken by a character in his drama "On that, I know only what I heard, but I am afraid to investigate because it poisons my mind about " (Znam to tylko z opowiada?, ale strzeg? si? tych bada?, bo mi truj? my?l o ) As typical of hearsay, her concept of events in Venezuela, Bolivia etc. is quite garbled, she has no time (but perhaps some fear) to investigate herself (easy in the era of internet). A serious politician has to think a lot about electability (and less about the folks under the steam roller of the Empire), so she has to "pick her fights".
It is rather clear that American do not care if people south of the border are governed democratically or competently, which led Hillary Clinton to make this emphatic statement in a debate with Trump "You will not see me singing praises of dictators or strongmen who do not love America". One can deconstruct it "if you do not love America you are a strongman or worse, but if you love America, we will be nice to you". I would love to have the original and deconstructed statement polled, but Warren is not the only one afraid of such investigations. So "electability" connection to green light to Bolivian fascist and red light to Bolivarians of Venezuela is a bit indirect. Part of it is funding, part, bad press.
brett , November 21, 2019 at 15:15
I'm sorry but you all need to come to terms with the farce that is the American political system. Anyone who was supporting Warren or even considering voting for her for ANY reason is apparently either in denial or is being duped. Warren is a Madison Avenue creation packaged for US liberal consumption.
She is a fraud and a liar. One trained in psychology can see, in her every movement and utterance, the operation that is going on behind the facade. Everything Warren says is a lie to someone. She only states truth in order to later dis-inform. Classic deception. She (her billionaires) has latched on to the populism of the DSA etc. in order to sabotage any progressive momentum and drive a stake in it.
Rob Roy , November 22, 2019 at 00:40
She hangs out with Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright, two evil women if ever there were. Now they make the three witches brewing one coup/regime change after another. She's not smart enough to see that HRC and MA are leading her around by her nose. People should call out this phoney everywhere she goes. BTW, Rachel Maddow completes an odious clique.
Piotr Berman , November 22, 2019 at 16:13
This is a bit of exaggeration. The three ladies are more like good students, they did not write the textbook but they good grades for answering as written, or like cheerleaders, they jump and shout but they do not play in the field. Mind you, "interagency consensus" was formed without them.
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 14:53
The DNC's strategy for this election is to ensure that Bernie doesn't go into the Convention with enough delegates to win the first ballot. (Once voting goes past the first ballot, super-delegates get to weigh in and help anoint a candidate who's friendly to the Party's plutocratic-oligarch principals.)
That's the reason the DNC is allowing and encouraging so many candidates to run. Warren's specific assignment is to cannibalize Bernie's base and steal delegates that would otherwise be his, by pretending to espouse most of his platform with only minor tweaks. She's been successful with "better educated," higher-income liberal Democrats who consider themselves well informed because they get their news from "respectable" sources -- sources that, unbeknownst to their target audiences, invariably represent the viewpoint of the aforementioned plutocratic oligarchs.
Absolutely nothing in Warren's background supports her new calculatedly progressive primary persona. She was a Reagan Republican. When the Republican Party moved right to become the party of batshit crazy and the Democratic Party shifted right to become the party of Reagan Republicans, she became a Democrat. She's not a good actress, and it takes willing suspension of disbelief to buy into her performance as a savvier, wonkier alternative to Bernie. And when she's pressed for details (Medicare for All) and responses to crises (Venezuela and Bolivia), the cracks in her progressive façade become patently obvious. She's a sleeper agent for Democratic-leaning plutocrats, like Obama was in 2008, and she would never get my vote.
PS: Impressed by Warren's progressive wealth-tax plan? Don't be. Our country's billionaires know she won't fight for it, and that if she did, Congress would never pass it. (They know who owns Congress.) Besides, do you really think Pocahontas would beat Trump? Do you think Sleepy Joe would? The billionaires wouldn't bet on it. And they're fine with that. Sure, they'd like someone who's more thoroughly corporatist on trade and more committed to hot régime-change wars than Trump is, but they can live just fine with low-tax, low-regulation Trump. It's the prospect of a Bernie presidency that keeps them up at night and their proxies in the Democratic Party and allied media are doing everything they can to neutralize that threat.
mbob , November 21, 2019 at 18:13
@Peter
Thanks for this beautiful post. I agree with it 100%. I've been trying to figure out why Democrats are so consistently unable to see through rhetoric and fall for what candidates pretend to be. Part of it is wishful thinking. A lot of it is, as you wrote, misplaced trust in "respectable" sources. I have no idea how to fix that: how does one engender the proper skepticism of the MSM? I haven't been able to open the eyes of any of my friends. (Fortunately my wife and daughter opened their own eyes.)
Warren is, if you look clearly, driven by her enormous ambition. She's the same as every other candidate in that regard, save Bernie.
Bernie is driven by the same outrage that we feel. We need him.
Dan Kuhn , November 21, 2019 at 14:31
In the last Israeli massacre on Gaza she was all for the IDF killing Palistinians. Americans like to look at the CCP and cry about China being a one party state. Well is the US not a one party state?= Are the views of the Democrats and Republicans not the same when it comes to slaughtering people in the third world? There is not a razor`s edge between them. Biden, Warren, Sanders, Trump, Cruz and Pense they are all war criminals, or if elected will soon become war criminals.
From someone who at the beginning showed promise and humanity, she has turned into Albright and Clinton. How f**king sad is that?
Dan Kuhn , November 21, 2019 at 14:33
Better to see her for what she really is now then after the election if she were to win. She is disgusting in her inhumanity.
Rob , November 21, 2019 at 13:43
This Is, indeed, disturbing and disappointing. Warren seems so genuinely right on domestic economic and social issues, so how could she be so wrong on foreign policy issues? The same principles apply in both–justice, fairness, equity, etc. That said, she is no worse than any of the other Democratic candidates in that regard, with the exceptions of Sanders and Gabbard, so if Warren becomes the nominee, I will support her over Trump. It's a lesser of two evils choice, but we must recognize that no candidate will be perfect–ever.
Dan Kuhn , November 21, 2019 at 14:36
Far better to stick to your principles and write in " None of the above." believe me with this article we can easily see that Trump is no worse nor better than Warren is. They are both pretty poor excuses as human beings.
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 16:04
@Rob:
If you'll allow me to fix that for you, "What Warren tactically claims to support, in the primaries, seems so genuinely right on domestic economic and social issues ." I'm convinced Warren is an Obama 2.0 in the making. I don't think anyone can match Obama's near-180° turnabout from his 2008 primary platform and that if Warren is elected, she will try to make Wall Street a little more honest and stable, maybe advocate for a $12 minimum wage, and maybe try to shave a few thousand dollars off student-loan debts. I suppose that technically qualifies as less evil than Trump. But I fully expect her to jettison 90% of her primary platform, including a progressive tax on wealth and Medicare for All. And when you factor in her recently confirmed approval of US military and financial imperialism -- economic subversion and régime-change operations that cost tens of thousands of innocent foreign lives, and other peoples their sovereignty -- at what point does "less evil" become too evil to vote for?
John Drake , November 21, 2019 at 13:13
" presidential candidate tepidly requested "free and fair elections". Such a statement ignores the fact that Evo Morales term was not up; therefore elections are not called for. This means she supports the coup. Restoration of his position which was illegally and violently stolen from him are in order not elections until his term is up.
Her position on Venezuela is nauseating; as the article states classic neo-conservative. Maybe Robert Kagan will welcome her into their club as he did with Hillary.
Warren used to be a Republican, she has not been cured of that disease; and is showing her true colors. Maybe it's best as she is differentiating herself from Bernie. I was concerned before she started down this latest path that she would do an Obama; progressive rhetoric followed by neo-liberal-or worse- behavior once in office. Maybe she is more honest than Obama.Guy , November 21, 2019 at 12:40
Warren can't be very informed about what democracy actually means .Democracy is not the same as capitalism . Not a US citizen but am very disappointed with her stated platform . Short of divine intervention Tulsi will never make it but Sanders for president and Tulsi as VP would do just fine to re-direct the US foreign policy and maybe ,just maybe make the US more respectable among the rest of the nations of the world.
Piotr Berman , November 22, 2019 at 16:17
It would make a lot of sense from actuarial point of view. The chances that at least one person on the ticket would live healthily for 8 years would be very good, without Tulsi
Punkyboy , November 21, 2019 at 12:02
I was pretty sure Warren was a Hillary clone; now I'm absolutely sure of it. Another election between worse and worser. I may just stay home this time, if the world holds together that long.
Socratic Truth , November 21, 2019 at 11:42
Warren is just another puppet of the NWO.
Ma Laoshi , November 21, 2019 at 11:12
I remember years and years ago, I guess about when Lizzie first entered Congress, that she went on the standard pandering tour to the Motherland and an astute mind commented: Zionism is typically the gateway drug for Democratic would-be reformers. Once they've swallowed that fundamental poison, the DNC feels secure it's just a matter of time before they Get With the Program 100%. Given that "Harvard" and "phony" are largely synonymous, what else could've been expected?
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 15:32
@Ma Laoshi:
Speaking of Harvard, having contemplated the abysmal track record compiled by our "best and brightest" -- in Congress, in the White House, and on the federal bench -- I am now almost as suspicious of the Ivy League as I am of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security (WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas). The mission of both is to train capable, reliable, well-compensated servants to the US plutocracy. (And the only reason I say "almost" is because a non-negligible number of black sheep have come out of the Ivy League and I'm not aware of any that have come out of WHINSEC.)
Sam F , November 23, 2019 at 18:59
Harvard admissions are apparently largely bought, and doubtless those of Yale and others. MIT was strictly militarist warmongers in the 1970s, and one compete with 80% cheaters.
Dfnslblty , November 21, 2019 at 11:12
" The only point where Warren diverged with Trump was on her insistence that "there is no U.S. military option in Venezuela." " Hell, one doesn't need a military option after immoral, illegal and crippling sanctions. This essay is the most disturbing piece all year-2019.
Vote anti-military – vote nonviolence. Don't give these murderers anything but exposure to humane sensibilities.
Freedomlover , November 21, 2019 at 17:43
I didn't think Trump supported a military solution in Venezuela. That was John Bolton's baby and Trump fired him as one would hope he would soon fire Pompeo as has been hinted at. Trump campaigned on ending wars of choice but has given in to the MIC at almost every turn. Maybe he will resign in leiu of being impeached. We might then see a Rand Paul vs. Bernie Sanders. I could live with either one
Skip Scott , November 21, 2019 at 09:12
Once again the Democratic Party is pushing to have our choice for 2020 be between corporate sponsored war monger from column A or B.
I wish Tulsi would "see the light" and run as an Independent in 2020. There is absolutely no way that she gets the nod from the utterly corrupt DNC. She is abandoning her largest base (Independents) by sticking with the Democratic Party. Considering the number of disgruntled non-voters, she could easily win the general election; but she will never win the Democratic primary. The field is purposely flooded to ensure the "superdelegates" get the final say on a second ballot.
AnneR , November 21, 2019 at 08:50
Warren is as inhumane, amoral and imperialist as anyone in the WH and the US Congress, and she is certainly kindred in spirit, thought and would be in deed, as Madeline Albright, the cheerful slaughterer of some 500,000 Iraqi children because the "price was worth it." Of course, these utterly racist, amoral people do not have to pay "that price" nor do any of their families. (And let us not forget that Albright and Killary are good friends – Warren is totally kindred with the pair, totally.)
And clearly Warren – like all of the Demrat contenders – is full on for any kind of warfare that will bring a "recalcitrant" country into line with US demands (on its resources, lands etc.). She is grotesque.
She and those of her ilk – all in Congress, pretty much, and their financial backers – refuse to accept that Maduro and Morales *both* were legally, legitimately and cleanly re-elected to their positions as presidents of their respective countries. But to do that would be to go against her (commonly held) fundamental belief that the US has the right to decide who is and is not the legitimate national leader of any given country. And what policies they institute.
Anyone who supports economic sanctions is supporting siege warfare, is happily supporting the starvation and deprivation of potentially millions of people. And shrugging off the blame for the effects of the sanctions onto the government of the sanctioned country is heinous, is immoral and unethical. WE are the ones who are killing, not the government under extreme pressure. If you can't, won't accept the responsibility – as Warren and the rest of the US government clearly will not – for those deaths you are causing, then stay out of the bloody kitchen: stop committing these crimes against humanity.
Cara , November 21, 2019 at 15:25
Please provide documentation that Sanders is, as you claim, a "full-on zionist supporter of "Israel" and clearly anti-Palestinian." Sanders has been quite consistent in his criticism of Israel and the treatment of Palestinians: timesofisrael.com/bernie-sanders-posts-video-citing-apartheid-like-conditions-for-palestinians; and; jacobinmag.com/2019/07/bernie-sanders-israel-palestine-bds
Piotr Berman , November 21, 2019 at 16:46
"Sanders is less so, but not wholly because he is a full-on zionist supporter of "Israel" and clearly anti-Palestinian"
Sanders is definitely not "full-on zionist supporter", not only he does not deny that "Palestinians exist" (to died-in-the-wool Zionists, Palestinians are a malicious fiction created to smear Israel etc., google "Fakestinians"), but he claims that they have rights, and using Hamas as a pretext for Gaza blockade is inhumane (a recent headline). One can pull his other positions and statements to argue in the other direction, but in my opinion, he is at the extreme humane end of "zionist spectrum" (I mean, so humane that almost not a Zionist).
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Nov 24, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
likbez 11.25.19 at 2:56 am 46
Glen Tomkins 11.24.19 at 5:26 pm @43
And again, if we do win despite all the structural injustices in the system the Rs inherited and seek to expand, well, those injustices don't really absolutely need to be corrected, because we will still have gotten the right result from the system as is.
This is a pretty apt description of the mindset of Corporate Democrats. Thank you !
May I recommend you to listen to Chris Hedge 2011 talk On Death of the Liberal Class At least to the first part of it.
Corporate Dems definitely lack courage, and as such are probably doomed in 2020.
Of course, the impeachment process will weight on Trump, but the Senate hold all trump cards, and might reverse those effects very quickly and destroy, or at lease greatly diminish, any chances for Corporate Demorats even complete on equal footing in 2020 elections. IMHO Pelosi gambit is a really dangerous gambit, a desperate move, a kind of "Heil Mary" pass.
Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. And that's what happening right now and that's why I suspect that far right populism probably will be the decisive factor in 2020 elections.
IMHO Chris explains what the most probable result on 2020 elections with be with amazing clarity.
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Nov 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
I want to remind you of Bill Barr's speech to the Federalist Society a week ago. He made a specific point about the plot to sabotage Donald Trump's Presidency :
Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous – indeed incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.
I believe that Bill Barr intentionally signaled that the sedition by the intelligence community, the FBI and the Department of Justice will not be allowed to slide. But he is going to do everything to punish them according to the law. He is committed to a rule of law and enforcing the laws of this country.
And then there is John Durham .
In the late 1990s, Durham was tapped by Bill Clinton's justice department to investigate Boston police and FBI agents' connections with infamous gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. That investigation ultimately identified corrupt law enforcement officials who had given the killer information he then used to kill informants and eventually became a part of the case that led to Bulger's conviction.
Durham's investigation implicated Robert Mueller. According to knowledgeable sources, the Clinton Justice Department would not allow Durham to bring charges against Mueller :
In the 1980's, while Mr. Connolly was working with Whitey Bulger, Mr. Mueller was assistant United States attorney in Boston in charge of the criminal division and for a period was the acting United States attorney here, presiding over Mr. Connolly and Mr. Bulger as a ''top-echelon informant.'' Officials of the Massachusetts state police and the Boston Police Department had long wondered why their investigations of Mr. Bulger were always compromised before they could gather evidence against him, and they suspected that the F.B.I. was protecting him.
Law enforcement officials also have said they wondered why the United States attorney's office seemed to give Mr. Bulger impunity. But hearings by United States District Judge Mark Wolf in 1998 found that Mr. Connolly had not told his bosses in the United States attorney's office about his work with Mr. Bulger. In general, Judge Wolf found what he described as a culture of secrecy in the F.B.I.'s handling of its informants that sometimes subverted the purpose of the program.
I do not believe that Bill Barr is going to prevent John Durham from following the evidence and charging those culpable with crimes. I suspect that this fact is weighing heavily on Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennab, Jim Clapper and others in the FBI, DOJ and intelligence community. We will know more in a month.
blue peacock , 23 November 2019 at 02:14 AM
LarryJack said in reply to blue peacock... , 23 November 2019 at 11:55 AMThe most important outcome is transparency, where the public gets to see the breadth & depth of the activities including the collusion with the media to shape the narrative and the use of Congressional committees to further the narrative.
The public needs to be able to read about the entire plot and all the sub-plots and the cast of characters with the roles each played.
We need this to be able to comprehend the extent of violence to the rule of law by those entrusted with enforcement of the law and the operation of the nations' intelligence agencies.
We can judge when Durham is done if Barr's speech to the Federalist Society was just rhetorical or if he really meant it.
Yes. Agree. Informing the public about the true scale of the operation would be very helpful.Patrick Armstrong -> Jack... , 23 November 2019 at 02:05 PMThat's the acid question: What will Barr deliver?
Of course if he does that the propaganda organs will unleash their vitriol on him and claim he is Trump's bag carrier. It's not gonna change the minds of any NeverTrumper. It's value will be a record for posterity.
It is worth pondering, what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up? After all he is one of them. Bill & Hillary attended his wedding to Melania. He has been photographed at parties with Epstein and moved in celebrity social circles. He's been more zionist than others before him and he's fed the MIC handsomely. He's not reformed the surveillance state one iota. It remains at least as secretive and powerful as before. He's allowed multinational US corporations to repatriate overseas profits to buyback stock that financially rewards the managerial class. He's done nothing that attacks elite interests. Is it just that he beat them at their own game and their egos are bruised? In his first run for public office he wins the biggest prize by defeating the Bush dynasty and Senators and Governors long in Republican Party leadership and then the Most sure thing, the so entitled Clinton machine.
You see similar smear operations on Tulsi too. At least with her one can argue that she has never been a club member.
"what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up?"Diana C , 23 November 2019 at 11:51 AMI don't think it's that hard to figure out: he's too orange, he's too much of an outsider, he broke Hillary's dream.
But the real crime was saying that the US should try to get along with Russia.
If he had never said the word "Russia" or "Putin" they'd still hate him but we'd be on the level of psychiatrists speculating that Twitter makes you crazy or something. And it would the the dims and their tame presstitutes saying that without the (powerful) back up of the deepstate/borg/blob
You can't run much of an impeachment circus on POTUS's choice of hair product, but Russia Russia Russia, that keeps going. He colluded with Putin; OK we can't prove that but he wasn't exonerated; he weakened brave little Ukraine in its fight against Putin. That's all they've got.
I did hear Barr's definition of "The Resistance" and was so happy that someone finally explained how evil that idea is in our Democratic Republic. I was so sick of those smug people I have met who proudly proclaim their allegiance to "The Resistance," as if they count themselves equal to the French Resistance in WWII against the Nazis.Paul Damascene , 23 November 2019 at 11:51 AMMy wish is that any of the "Resistance" who have made their living on tax-funded salaries are ripped out of those positions and placed in tax-funded prison cells. And this time, I would like it if they would be properly guarded so that they can't escape their shame and punishment through what will be judged as suicide.
In fact, I might enjoy it if the Smithsonian's National Zoo would add displays of the Resistors right next to any sort of display of venomous snakes.
(There, I've vented my frustration about how long this process for justice has taken and for the hours and hours of Adam Schiff on television screens. I am not usually a bitter person, but this whole episode has taken its toll on many of us who are just mere citizens and tax payers.)
Among the questions that Larry's contribution begs here, is whether branches of this investigative trail lead back to Mueller himself. If we believe Durham will follow it to Whitey Bulger and Mueller's potential involvement in enabling murder, then why not to Uranium One, and his role in the approval of the sale, the (non)investigation of the bags of cash changing hands, the contributions to the Clinton Foundation and the Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000.And if there, then why not to Mueller's role in the lead up, and follow up to 911?
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Nov 22, 2019 | www.mintpressnews.com
The opposing positions of Warren and her primary opponent Bernie Sanders on Bolivia highlight an increasingly clear policy gap between the two Democratic frontrunners.
11-20-19
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential nomination frontrunner Elizabeth Warren endorsed the recent U.S. backed military coup d'état in Bolivia Monday. Warren's statement carefully avoided using the word "coup," and instead referred to the new government of Jeanine Añez as an "interim leadership," effectively validating the new administration.She stated that the Bolivian people "deserve free and fair elections, as soon as possible," implying that the October 20 vote, won convincingly by President Evo Morales, was not clean, thus taking essentially the same position as the Trump administration, who made no secret of their relief that Morales was ousted.
Posted by: pogohere | Nov 21 2019 18:37 utc | 85 Elizabeth Warren's Support for Bolivia Coup Consistent With Other Hawkish Foreign Policy Positions
The opposing positions of Warren and her primary opponent Bernie Sanders on Bolivia highlight an increasingly clear policy gap between the two Democratic frontrunners.
11-20-19Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential nomination frontrunner Elizabeth Warren endorsed the recent U.S. backed military coup d'état in Bolivia Monday. Warren's statement carefully avoided using the word "coup," and instead referred to the new government of Jeanine Añez as an "interim leadership," effectively validating the new administration.She stated that the Bolivian people "deserve free and fair elections, as soon as possible," implying that the October 20 vote, won convincingly by President Evo Morales, was not clean, thus taking essentially the same position as the Trump administration, who made no secret of their relief that Morales was ousted.
Posted by: pogohere | Nov 21 2019 18:42 utc | 86
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Nov 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jackrabbit , Nov 21 2019 16:08 utc | 72
ralphieboy @60:... five of his closest advisers and associates have been convicted or pleaded guilty of felony crimesThis is just a smear because the crimes of these guys had nothing to do with the office of President.
Manafort
He was likely set up and had no policy role. AFAIK, he has very little connection to Trump - but some connection to Roger Stone.Roger Stone
Self-destructed by lying to Congress (and others) about his connections to Wikileaks. No impact on policy. His demise had nothing to do with Trump.Flynn
He was likely set up because he told the world that the Obama Administration had made a "wilful decision" to support the rise of ISIS. That set-up came before the election. No affect on policy and Trump was not involved.Cohen
As Trump's fixer he's closely connected to Trump but the Stormy Daniels fiasco had no connection to policy.Papadopoulos
Fingered in the Russiagate nonsense, his "felony" was deceptiveness during an interview and that brought him 14 days in jail. Unlikely that he had any measurable affect on policy or close connection to Trump himself.
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Nov 15, 2019 | www.asiatimes.com
Numbers show joke is on the US, not Huawei US ban lit a fire under Huawei, seen taking lead in smartphones and awash in cash as bonds trade at a premium
By Umesh Desai
Unlisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies was made an international pariah by US regulators earlier this year after a ban on buying key parts and on access to crucial markets.
You think that sounded the death knell for the company? Think again.
This week, Huawei announced a US$286 million bonuses bonanza to its employees . Its bonds continue to trade above par, and its cash balances are massive. Hardly the signs of a company struggling under sanctions.
The company has repeatedly denied US allegations that it is a front for the Chinese government – the justification Washington cited for banning US companies from using Huawei-manufactured gear.
Huawei is the world's biggest telecom equipment maker and it's the second biggest smartphone maker.
According to data from International Data Corporation, smartphone shipments in the July-September quarter rose 18.6% to 66.6 million, just behind global leader Samsung's 78.2 million.
"Huawei has been gaining market share in China and overseas despite US trade war frictions and may become the leading smartphone maker in the next two quarters," said Nitin Soni, director of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings.
He said telcos across emerging markets, which are facing capital expenditure pressures and limited 5G business viability in the short term, may be willing to buy Huawei's 5G equipment given it is cheaper and has better technology than European counterparts.
It's not just Soni. Industry leaders also acknowledge Huawei's quality standards .
Indian telco Bharti Enterprises' chairman Sunil Mittal said recently, for example, "I can safely say their products in 3G and 4G that we have experienced are significantly superior to Ericsson and Nokia. I use all three of them. "
Indeed, the bond-market performance of the unrated, unlisted company confirms Huawei's strength. Its dollar-denominated bonds traded in global markets are changing hands at above par, indicating bond investors are confident about the company's cash position and liquidity situation.
Its bonds due 2025, which pay a coupon of 4.125%, are trading at a price of $104 while the holder would only get $100 at maturity. The premium would be compensated by the annual coupon, which would reduce the yield. The bonds are currently yielding 3.4% compared with the 4.25% yield at the time of the issuance. In price terms the bonds have rallied from $99 in 2015 to $104. Prices move inversely to yields.
The financial highlights also betray no signs of weakness. The company has a cash hoard of $39 billion and generates $10 billion from operations each year.
So, in fact, the US ban on Huawei may be helping the company.
"A ban on US companies such as Google to supply software to Huawei may lead to faster innovation by Huawei to develop its own operating system and chips," said Soni.
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Nov 14, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
Nomad Money said in reply to Buscar Mañana... , November 11, 2019 at 09:08 AM
"In 2019, the bottom 99% of families will pay 7.2% of their wealth in taxes, while the top 0.1% of households will pay just 3.2%."
~~Elizabeth Warren~do you see how EW has finally opened our eyes?
sure! poor people think about wealth as being income. they think about Wealth as being their salary. from the perspective of a wealthy senator wealth is a function of assets. EW had the guts to share this perspective with us, to open our eyes to reality.
we should not be taxing the payroll we should not be taxing the capital gains and other income. we should be taxing non productive assets, assets which cannot be hidden which cannot be taken off shore.
the Swiss have such a tax. all of their real estate is taxed at a rate of 0.3% per annum. it would be easy for us to stop all local taxes All County taxes all state taxes and all federal tax then initiate a 1% tax on all real property unimproved and on all improved real property. we should continue this tax until our federal debt is completely discharged. such a taxation shift would revv up our productive activity and increase our per capita GDP. as usual there would be winners and there would be losers. the losers would be those who want more inequality and the winners would be
those who want more
equality
.!
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Nov 14, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
No, the really intense backlash against Warren and progressive Democrats in general is coming from Wall Street . And while that opposition partly reflects self-interest, Wall Street's Warren hatred has a level of virulence, sometimes crossing into hysteria, that goes beyond normal political calculation.
What's behind that virulence?
First, let's talk about the rational reasons Wall Street is worried about Warren. She is, of course, calling for major tax increases on the very wealthy, those with wealth exceeding $50 million, and the financial industry is strongly represented in that elite club. And since raising taxes on the wealthy is highly popular , it's an idea a progressive president might actually be able to turn into real policy.
Warren is also a big believer in stricter financial regulation; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was highly effective until the Trump administration set about gutting it, was her brainchild.
So if you are a Wall Street billionaire, rational self-interest might well induce you to oppose Warren. Neoliberal_rationality/ does not, however, explain why a money manager like Leon Cooperman -- who just two years ago settled a suit over insider trading for $5 million, although without admitting wrongdoing -- would circulate an embarrassing, self-pitying open letter denouncing Warren for her failure to appreciate all the wonderful things billionaires like him do for society.
Nor does it explain why Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term "revenue maximizing" -- a standard piece of economic jargon -- describing it as "disgustingly immoral."
The real tell here, I think, is that much of the Wall Street vitriol now being directed at Warren was previously directed at, of all people, President Barack Obama.
Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s. He did, however, refer on a few occasions to "fat cat" bankers and suggested that financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with " Obama rage ," and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012.
I wonder, by the way, if this history helps explain an odd aspect of fund-raising in the current primary campaign. It's not surprising that Warren is getting very little money from the financial sector. It is, however, surprising that the top recipient isn't Joe Biden but Pete Buttigieg , who's running a fairly distant fourth in the polls. Is Biden suffering from the lingering effects of that old-time Obama rage?
In any case, the point is that Wall Street billionaires, even more than billionaires in general, seem to be snowflakes, emotionally unable to handle criticism.
I'm not sure why that should be the case, but it may be that in their hearts they suspect that the critics have a point.
What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today's Wall Street tycoons don't build anything tangible. They don't even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.
Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy -- and America is well past that point .
Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it's not surprising that people who couldn't handle Obama's mild, polite criticism are completely losing it over Warren.
What this means is that you should beware of Wall Street claims that progressive policies would have dire effects. Such claims don't reflect deep economic wisdom; to a large extent they're coming from people with vast wealth but fragile egos, whose rants should be discounted appropriately. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .
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Nov 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Does Schiff's Impeachment Lynch Mob Signal The End Of America's Two-Party Political System? by Tyler Durden Tue, 11/12/2019 - 21:45 0 SHARES
Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
If anything good can come from the Democrat's incessant efforts to impeach Donald Trump it will be the outgrowth, from the nurturing 'mother of necessity,' of a more inclusive political system that acknowledges more than just a compromised duopoly as the voice of the American people.
With complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, the Democrat House Intelligence Committee under Adam Schiff has abandoned all pretense of democratic procedure in their effort to remove the 45th President of the United States from office.
Indeed, the Democrats have provided the Republicans with a Machiavellian crash course on the subtle art of decadent behavior for getting what you want , which of course is ultimate political power, and to hell in a proverbial hand basket with the consequences. The Republicans have been snoozing through a game of 2D checkers, holding out hope that Sheriff Billy Barr and his deputy John Durham will round up the real criminals, while the Democrats have been playing mortal combat.
The dark prince in this Gothic tale of diabolical, dare I say biblical, proportions is none other than Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, who, like Dracula in his castle dungeon, has contorted every House rule to fit the square peg of a Trump telephone call into the bolt hole of a full-blown impeachment proceeding. Niccolò Machiavelli would have been proud of his modern-day protégé.
As if to mock the very notion of Democratic due process, whatever that means, Schiff and his torch-carrying lynch mob took their deliberations down into the dank basement, yes, the basement, of the US Capital where they have been holding secretive depositions in an effort to get some new twist on the now famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky back in June. But why all the cloak and dagger theatrics when the transcript has long been available for public consumption?
At one point, the frazzled Republicans bared a little backbone against this bunker mentality when they crashed the basement meetings for some really outstanding optics. Schiff, betraying a lack of foresight, could not defenestrate the well-dressed hooligans since the meetings, as mentioned, are being held inside of a windowless dungeon. The Republican troublemakers were ushered back up the stairs instead.
Considering what Prince Schiff has managed to pull off over the course of this not-made for television impeachment process is astounding, and could not have happened without the drooling complicity of the lapdog media corporations. Schiff got the ball bouncing when he performed a Saturday Night Live skit of the Trump-Zelensky phone call on the hallowed floor of Congress. The imaginary voices in Schiff's head made the president sound like a mafia boss speaking to one of his lackeys.
Not only did Schiff survive that stunt, it was revealed that he blatantly lied, not once but several times, about his affiliation with the White House insider, reportedly a CIA officer, who, without ever hearing the Trump-Zelensky phone call firsthand, blew the whistle anyways. The Democrats claim Trump was looking for some 'quid pro quo' with Kiev, which would dig up the dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for the release of $400 million in military aid. The transcript, however, points to no such coercion, while Zelensky himself denies that he was pressured by Trump.
Meanwhile, Schiff has taken great efforts to keep the identity of the whistleblower a 'secret' out of "safety concerns." The Republicans in the House said they will subpoena the whistleblower for the public impeachment that starts next week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters. Yet Schiff has awarded himself the power to reject any witnesses the Republicans may wish to grill.
"We'll see if he gives us any of our witnesses," Jordan said.
A person need not feel any particular fondness for Donald Trump to find these circumstances surrounding the impeachment show trial as disgraceful, dishonorable and beneath the dignity of the American people. And whether they want it or not, the fallout from Schiff's shenanigans will have repercussions long into the future of the US political system, which is groaning under the weight of corruption and deceit.
It is doubtful the Republicans will soon forgive and forget what the Democrats have put them through ever since Trump entered office in 2016. From Russiagate to Ukrainegate, the Trump White House has been held hostage by a non-stop, media-endorsed hate campaign to oust a democratically elected POTUS. Although it would be difficult for the Republicans, who lack the support of the media, an overwhelmingly left-leaning propaganda machine, to exact an equal amount of revenge on the Democrats when the latter have one of their own in the White House, they will certainly try. This will lead the Republic into an inescapable vortex of infighting where the sole function of the political system will be based on that of vengeance and 'pay backs' and more waste of time and money as the parties investigate the crimes of the other side.
The public, which is slowly awakening to the problem, will ultimately demand new leadership to break the current two-party internecine struggle. Thus, talk of a civil war in the United States, while possible, is being overplayed. The truth will be much simpler and far less violent.
Out of the dust and ashes of the defunct duopoly that is now at war with itself, the American people will soon demand fresh political blood in Washington and this will bring to the forefront capable political forces that are committed to the primary purpose of politics: representing the needs of the people, once again. Tags Politics
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Nov 11, 2019 | www.unz.com
Beckow , says: November 9, 2019 at 12:47 pm GMT
Recent class history of US is quite simple: the elite class first tried to shift the burden of supporting the lower classes on the middle class with taxation. But as the lower class became demographically distinct, partially via mass immigration, the elites decided to ally with the ' underpriviledged ' via identity posturing and squeeze no longer needed middle class out of existence.alexander , says: November 9, 2019 at 11:38 am GMTWhat's left are government employees, a few corporate sinecures, NGO parasitic sector, and old people. The rest will be melded into a few mutually antagonistic tribal groups providing ever cheaper service labor. With an occasional lottery winner to showcase mobility. Actually very similar to what happened in Latin America in the past few centuries.
The truth is that for the Clintonite-Bushite elite almost all Americans are 'deplorable'. What is fun for them is to play geopolitics – the elite version of corporate travel perks – just look at how shocked they are that Trump is not playing along.
BUILDING OUT vs. BLOWING UPSafeNow , says: November 9, 2019 at 6:01 pm GMTChina 2000-2020 vs. USA 2000-2020
Unlike the USA (under Neocon stewardship) China has not squandered twenty trillion dollars of its national solvency bombing countries which never attacked it post 9-11.
China's leaders (unlike our own) never LIED its people into launching obscenely expensive, illegal wars of aggression across the middle east. (WMD's, Mushroom clouds, Yellow Cake, etc.)
China has used its wealth and resources to build up its infrastructure, build out its capital markets, and turbo charge its high tech sectors. As a consequence, it has lifted nearly half a billion people out of poverty. There has been an explosion in the growth of the "middle class" in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are now living comfortable "upwardly mobile" lives.
The USA, on the other hand, having been defrauded by its "ruling elites" into launching and fighting endless illegal wars, is now 23 trillion dollars in catastrophic debt.
NOT ONE PENNY of this heinous "overspending" has been dedicated to building up OUR infrastructure, or BUILDING OUT our middle class.It has all gone into BLOWING UP countries which never (even) attacked us on 9-11.
As a consequence , the USA is fast becoming a failed nation, a nation where all its wealth is being siphoned into the hands of its one percent "war pilfer-teers".
It is so sad to have grown up in such an amazing country , with such immense resources and possibilities, and having to bear witness to it going down the tubes.
To watch all our sovereign wealth being vaporized by our "lie us into endless illegal war" ruling elites is truly heartbreaking.
It is as shameful as it is tragic.
That's fascinating about the declining "middle class" usage. A "soft synonym" that has gone in the opposite direction, I think, is "the community."LoutishAngloQuebecker , says: November 9, 2019 at 6:31 pm GMTThe white middle class is the only group that might effectively resist Globohomo's designs on total power.Svevlad , says: November 9, 2019 at 6:32 pm GMTBlacks? Too dumb. Will be disposed of once Globohomo is finished the job.
Hispanics? Used to corrupt one party systems. Give them cerveza and Netflix and they're good.
East Asians? Perfectly fine with living like bug people.
South Asians? Cowardly; will go with the flow.The middle class is almost completely unique to white people.
Racial aliens cannot wrap their minds around being middle class. They think I'm crazy for appreciating my 2009 Honda Accord. They literally cannot understand why somebody would want to live a frugal and mundane life. They are desperate to be like Drake but most end up broke. It will be very easy for GloboHomo to control a bucket of poor brown slop.
Ah yes, apparatchiks. The worst kind of personCounterinsurgency , says: November 9, 2019 at 7:36 pm GMT@Achmed E. NewmanMark G. , says: November 9, 2019 at 8:20 pm GMTThere IS a black middle class, but a big chunk of that works for governments of all shapes and sizes.
Strictly speaking, there is no more "middle class" in the sense of the classical economists: a person with just enough capital to live off the income if he works the capital himself or herself. By this definition professionals (lawyers, dentists, physicians, small store owners, even spinsters [1] and hand loom operators in a sense) were middle class. Upper class had enough property to turn it over to managers, lower class had little or no property and worked for others (servants and farm workers, for example). Paupers didn't earn enough income per year to feed themselves and didn't live all that long, usually.
What we have is "middle income" people, almost all of whom work as an employee of some organization -- people who would be considered "lower class" by the classical economists because they don't have freedom of action and make no independent decisions about how the capital of their organizations is spent. Today they are considered "intelligentsia", educated government workers, or, by analogy, educated corporate workers. IMHO, intelligentsia is a suicide job, and is responsible for the depressed fertility rate, but that's just me.
Back in the AD 1800s and pre-AD 1930 there were many black middle class people. usually concentrating on selling to black clientele. Now there are effectively none outside of criminal activities, usually petty criminal. And so it goes.
Of course, back then there were many white middle class people also, usually concentrating on selling to white clientele. Now there are effectively none, except in some rural areas. And so it goes.
Counterinsurgency
1] Cottagers who made their living spinning wool skeins into wool threads.
@unit472 A lot of the middle class are Democrats but not particularly liberal. Many of them vote Democrat only when they personally benefit. For example, my parents were suburban public school teachers. They voted for Democrats at the state level because the Democrats supported better pay and benefits for teachers but voted for Republicans like Goldwater and Reagan at the national level because Republicans would keep their federal taxes lower. They had no political philosophy. It was all about what left them financially better off. My parents also got on well with their suburban neighbors. Suburbanites generally like their local school system and its teachers and the suburban school systems are usually careful not to engage in teaching anything controversial. A lot of the government employed white middle class would be like my parents. Except in situations where specific Republicans talk about major cuts to their pay and pensions they are perfectly willing to consider voting Republican. They are generally social moderates, like the status quo, are fairly traditionalist and don't want any radical changes. Since the Democrats seem be trending in a radical direction, this would put off a lot of them. Trump would be more appealing as the status quo candidate. When running the last time, he carefully avoided talking about any major cuts in government spending and he's governed that way too. At the same time, his talk of cutting immigration, his lack of enthusiasm for nonwhite affirmative action, and his more traditional views on social issues is appealing to the white middle class.anon [201] • Disclaimer , says: November 9, 2019 at 8:33 pm GMTWealth held by the top 1% is now close to equal or greater than wealth held by the entire middle class.WorkingClass , says: November 9, 2019 at 11:55 pm GMTSomething similar was seen in the 1890's, the "gilded age". This is one reason why Warren's "wealth tax" has traction among likely voters.
The term middle class is used in the U.S. to mean middle income. It has nothing to do with class. Why not just say what you mean? Most of the middle class that we say is disappearing is really that rarest of phenomenons. A prosperous working class. The prosperous American working class is no longer prosperous due to the Neoliberal agenda. Free trade, open borders and the financialization of everything.Rosie , says: November 10, 2019 at 2:21 am GMTAmericans know nothing of class dynamics. Not even the so called socialists. They don't even see the economy. All they see is people with infinite need and government with infinite wealth. In their world all of Central America can come to the U.S. and the government (if it only wants to) can give them all homes, health care and education.
Lets stop saying class when we mean income. Not using the word class would be better than abusing it.
Anyway. Yes. Middle Class denotes white people. The coalition of the fringes is neither working, middle nor ruling class. They are black or brown. They are perverts or feminists. If the workers among them identified as working class they would find common ground with the Deplorables. We can't have that now can we.
@Audacious EpigoneRosie , says: November 10, 2019 at 2:25 am GMTAre we to the point where we've collectively resigned ourselves to the death of the middle class?
In the neoliberal worldview, the middle class is illegitimate, existing only as a consequence of artificial trade and immigration barriers. Anytime Americans are spied out making a good living, there is a "shortage" that must be addressed with more visas. Or else there is an "inefficiency" where other countries could provide said service or produce said product for less because they have a "comparative advantage."
@WorkingClassAnyway. Yes. Middle Class denotes white people. The coalition of the fringes is neither working, middle nor ruling class. They are black or brown. They are perverts or feminists. If the workers among them identified as working class they would find common ground with the Deplorables. We can't have that now can we.
I don't know about that anymore. Increasingly, "middle class" means Asian, with Whiteness being associated with the lower middle class (or perhaps "working class"). Sometimes the media uses the term " noncollege Whites," which I think is actually very apt. They are the ones who identify with Whiteness the most.
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Well, that's clarifying. "Backbone of our democracy." That's about what you would expect a Harvard faculty member to say.Nov 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Thank you, @BlackWomxnFor ! Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy and I don't take this endorsement lightly. I'm committed to fighting alongside you for the big, structural change our country needs. https://t.co/KqWsVoRYMb
-- Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019
JoeMerl • 2 days ago • edited
People need to remember that we literally didn't even have democracy until the trans movement started and finally brought us to The Right Side of History.
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Nov 09, 2019 | www.asiatimes.com
America's misguided war on Chinese technology
By Jeffrey D Sachs November 8, 2019
The worst foreign-policy decision by the United States of the last generation – and perhaps longer – was the "war of choice" that it launched in Iraq in 2003 for the stated purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that did not, in fact, exist. Understanding the illogic behind that disastrous decision has never been more relevant, because it is being used to justify a similarly misguided US policy today.
The decision to invade Iraq followed the illogic of then-US vice-president Richard Cheney, who declared that even if the risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands was tiny – say, 1% – we should act as if that scenario would certainly occur.
Such reasoning is guaranteed to lead to wrong decisions more often than not. Yet the US and some of its allies are now using the Cheney Doctrine to attack Chinese technology. The US government argues that because we can't know with certainty that Chinese technologies are safe, we should act as if they are certainly dangerous and bar them.
Proper decision-making applies probability estimates to alternative actions. A generation ago, US policymakers should have considered not only the (alleged) 1% risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands, but also the 99% risk of a war based on flawed premises. By focusing only on the 1% risk, Cheney (and many others) distracted the public's attention from the much greater likelihood that the Iraq war lacked justification and that it would gravely destabilize the Middle East and global politics.
The problem with the Cheney Doctrine is not only that it dictates taking actions predicated on small risks without considering the potentially very high costs. Politicians are tempted to whip up fears for ulterior purposes.
That is what US leaders are doing again: creating a panic over Chinese technology companies by raising, and exaggerating, tiny risks. The most pertinent case (but not the only one) is the US government attack on the wireless broadband company Huawei. The US is closing its markets to the company and trying hard to shut down its business around the world. As with Iraq, the US could end up creating a geopolitical disaster for no reason.
I have followed Huawei's technological advances and work in developing countries, as I believe that fifth-generation (5G) and other digital technologies offer a huge boost to ending poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals. I have similarly interacted with other telecom companies and encouraged the industry to step up actions for the United Nations' SDGs. When I wrote a short foreword (without compensation) for a Huawei report on the topic, and was criticized by foes of China, I asked top industry and government officials for evidence of wayward activities by Huawei. I heard repeatedly that Huawei behaves no differently than trusted industry leaders.
The US government nonetheless argues that Huawei's 5G equipment could undermine global security. A "back door" in Huawei's software or hardware, US officials claim, could enable the Chinese government to engage in surveillance around the world. After all, US officials note, China's laws require Chinese companies to cooperate with the government for purposes of national security.
Given the technology's importance for their sustainable development, low-income economies around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G rollout. Yet despite providing no evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away from Huawei
Now, the facts are these. Huawei's 5G equipment is low-cost and high-quality, currently ahead of many competitors, and already rolling out. Its high performance results from years of substantial spending on research and development, scale economies, and learning by doing in the Chinese digital marketplace. Given the technology's importance for their sustainable development, low-income economies around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G rollout.
Yet despite providing no evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away from Huawei. The US claims are generic. As a US Federal Communications Commissioner put it , "The country that owns 5G will own innovations and set the standards for the rest of the world, and that country is currently not likely to be the United States." Other countries, most notably the United Kingdom, have found no back doors in Huawei's hardware and software. Even if back doors were discovered later, they could almost surely be closed at that point.
The debate over Huawei rages in Germany, where the US government threatens to curtail intelligence cooperation unless the authorities exclude Huawei's 5G technology. Perhaps as a result of the US pressure, Germany's spy chief recently made a claim tantamount to the Cheney Doctrine: "Infrastructure is not a suitable area for a group that cannot be trusted fully." He offered no evidence of specific misdeeds. Chancellor Angela Merkel, by contrast, is fighting behind the scenes to leave the market open for Huawei.
Ironically, though predictably, the US complaints partly reflect America's own surveillance activities at home and abroad. Chinese equipment might make secret surveillance by the US government more difficult. But unwarranted surveillance by any government should be ended. Independent UN monitoring to curtail such activities should become part of the global telecommunications system. In short, we should choose diplomacy and institutional safeguards, not a technology war.
The threat of US demands to blockade Huawei concerns more than the early rollout of the 5G network. The risks to the rules-based trading system are profound. Now that the US is no longer the world's undisputed technology leader, President Donald Trump and his advisers don't want to compete according to a rules-based system. Their goal is to contain China's technological rise. Their simultaneous attempt to neutralize the World Trade Organization by disabling its dispute settlement system shows the same disdain for global rules.
If the Trump administration "succeeds" in dividing the world into separate technology camps, the risks of future conflicts will multiply. The US championed open trade after World War II not only to boost global efficiency and expand markets for American technology, but also to reverse the collapse of international trade in the 1930s. That collapse stemmed in part from protectionist tariffs imposed by the US under the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act , which amplified the Great Depression, in turn contributing to the rise of Adolf Hitler and, ultimately, the outbreak of World War II.
In international affairs, no less than in other domains, stoking fears and acting on them, rather than on the evidence, is the path to ruin. Let's stick to rationality, evidence and rules as the safest course of action. And let us create independent monitors to curtail the threat of any country using global networks for surveillance of or cyberwarfare on others. That way, the world can get on with the urgent task of harnessing breakthrough digital technologies for the global good.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Nov 09, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
snoopydawg on Thu, 11/07/2019 - 9:25pm
Bain Capital was co-founded by Mitt Romney.
Deval Patrick is a Managing Director.
Elizabeth Warren wants Patrick in her administration. @EmmaVigeland @atrios @NomikiKonst @_michaelbrooks @BernieBroStar
-- Eric J - #Bernie2020 (@EricJafMN) November 8, 2019
Deval Patrick served on the board at subprime mortgage giant Ameriquest. Melody Barnes is on the board at bigwig defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Textbook cases of the revolving door corruption Warren frequently attacks. https://t.co/KU3Ct3j9eC
-- Zach Carter (@zachdcarter) November 8, 2019
If she really cared about the policies she is running on she would have endorsed Bernie. Period. It was during the primary that Hillary said, "single payer will never ever happen here."
Bernie was running on it and yet Warren did not endorse him for it. If she actually wants to help us she would drop out and tell people to vote for Bernie. Sure everyone has the right to run for president, but we know or believe that she is only running to keep Bernie from becoming president.
She is lying to us about not taking money from rich people and corporations because she took their money for her senate campaign and transferred it to her presidential campaign. If she isn't up front about this then how can we trust her on anything else?
Chuck Todd is such a toolMy jaw is on the floor.
Elites eliting about elites while elitseplaining to working Americans about how they are going to vote for some elites and beat the Republicans elite. https://t.co/l0W8QPUT0E
-- Nomiki Konst(@NomikiKonst) November 8, 2019
"Who is to the left of Bloomberg on guns and climate change?" Hmm let me think...of course it's not Biden. Nor Harris...Kilobits.... Buttigieg or even Warren. Doh!
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Nov 09, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
petal , November 8, 2019 at 2:29 pm
Warren did that(what Alex Thompson tweeted about) at her town hall here. Called herself a teacher, really pushed her teacher history, and asked "Are there any teachers in the crowd", etc etc. It was so fake and pandering. I wanted to barf. Do people really fall for this stuff? The folksy garbage was poured on mighty thick. I was sitting there thinking "Come on, lady-you've been a professor at the highest profile law school in the country for how long now?"
Lambert Strether Post author , November 8, 2019 at 2:33 pm
> The folksy garbage was poured on mighty thick.
Lime green Jello with marshmallows. That's the sort of thing I think of. Food I'd avoid at a church basement supper if at all possible.
petal , November 8, 2019 at 2:49 pm
Yep.
It's funny-I spent 10 years at Harvard, and I lived near The Yard and the law school. I knew a lot of faculty at H, and was privy to a lot of the politics that went on. My bs detector was honed there. At the town hall, I could see right through her. It was all so familiar. Don't underestimate the cunning and doublespeak. What is that quote-"When someone shows you who they are, believe them"?Pavel , November 8, 2019 at 3:58 pm
Why didn't she proclaim her great groundbreaking achievement of being Harvard's "first woman of color" professorial appointment? Isn't she proud of that any more?
Dog, that woman seems to be in a race to seem the least authentic. Can't her staff tell her to act natural?
After I post this comment, I'm gonna get me a beer.
Phillip Allen , November 8, 2019 at 8:16 pm
"Can't her staff tell her to act natural?"
Why assume that what we see isn't her natural self, such as it is? Or, rather, that there's anything more genuinely human underneath the pandering, opportunistic surface? As Petal cited above, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."
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Nov 09, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
lotlizard on Fri, 11/08/2019 - 1:12am
@on the cusp
Debbie Wasserman Schultz could come roaring back as House Appropriations Committee chair.https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article236811358.html
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Nov 08, 2019 | en.wikipedia.org
Noam Chomsky , in a 2017 BBC interview, contended that "the Democrats gave up on the working class forty years ago." [32]
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Nov 08, 2019 | www.unz.com
Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:
The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack" in 2016, only, as I have previously explained , ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and fund-raising. We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation " Intelgate ," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in his new book . Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain. We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media -- leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert Mueller report. And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations still being directed at him? Similarly, as I have asked repeatedly, if confronted with a US-Russian Cuban missile–like crisis -- anywhere Washington and Moscow are currently eyeball-to-eyeball militarily, from the Baltic region and Ukraine to Syria -- will Trump be as free politically as was President John F. Kennedy to resolve it without war? Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war. Whether President Trump serves one or two terms, he must be fully empowered to cope with the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation. That requires ridding him and our nation of Russiagate allegations -- and that in turn requires learning how such allegations originated.
Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies, particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly, they have not been.
However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.
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Nov 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media MeddlingElection meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud LawsuitThe proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's AllegationsIf Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate PowerA 2014 study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process. " [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
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Nov 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media MeddlingElection meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud LawsuitThe proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's AllegationsIf Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate PowerA 2014 study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process. " [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
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Nov 07, 2019 | archive.is
The defense counsel also took issue with Jared Beck for what they termed as: " Repeatedly promoted patently false and deeply offensive conspiracy theories about the deaths of a former DNC staffer and Plaintiffs' process server in an attempt to bolster attention for this lawsuit." This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the defense counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process.
They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory.
The DNC defense lawyers then argued:
" There is no legitimate basis for this litigation, which is, at its most basic, an improper attempt to forge the federal courts into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political party selected its candidate in a presidential campaign ."
The brief continued:
" To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office."
It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process is protected under the first amendment. If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee had no established fiduciary duty "to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent." It seems here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.
Adding to the latest news regarding the DNC Fraud Lawsuit was the recent finding by the UK Supreme Court, which stated that Wikileaks Cables were admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.
If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did in favor the campaign of Hillary Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign.
The outcome of the appeal of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit remains to be seen.
Elizabeth Vos is the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief at Disobedient Media .
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Nov 07, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
Donald 11.07.19 at 4:37 am 64
" In a sense, the current NeoMcCartyism (Russophobia, Sinophobia) epidemic in the USA can partially be viewed as a yet another sign of the crisis of neoliberalism: a desperate attempt to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade using scapegoating -- creation of an external enemy to project the problems of the neoliberal society.
I would add another, pretty subjective measure of failure: the degradation of the elite. When you look at Hillary, Trump, Biden, Warren, Harris, etc, you instantly understand what I am talking about. They all look like the second-rate, if not the third rate politicians. Also, the Epstein case was pretty symbolic."
I had decided to stay on the sidelines for the most part after making a few earlier comments, but I liked this summary, except I would give Warren more credit. She is flawed like most politicians, but she has made some of the right enemies within the Democratic Party.
On Trump and " the Deep State", there is no unified Deep State. There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details.
They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes.
He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria.
But yes, scapegoating is a big thing with liberals now. It's pathetic. Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence .
For the most part, if we have a horrible political culture nearly all the blame for that is homegrown.
Donald 11.07.19 at 4:40 am (no link)
Sigh. Various typos above. Here is one --Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.
--I meant to say I would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.
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Nov 06, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne said... http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/steven-rattner-s-rant-against-warren
November 5, 2019
Steven Rattner's Rant Against Warren
By Dean BakerThe New York Times gives Steven Rattner * the opportunity to push stale economic bromides in columns on a regular basis. His column ** today goes after Senator Elizabeth Warren.
He begins by telling us that Warren's plan for financing a Medicare for All program is "yet more evidence that a Warren presidency a terrifying prospect." He goes on to warn us:
"She would turn America's uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste, *** European-style system. If you want to live in France (economically), Elizabeth Warren should be your candidate."
It's not worth going into every complaint in Rattner's piece, and to be clear, there are very reasonable grounds for questioning many of Warren's proposals. However, he deserves some serious ridicule for raising the bogeyman of France and later Germany.
In spite of its "dirigiste" system France actually has a higher employment rate for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) than the United States. (Germany has a much higher employment rate.) France has a lower overall employment rate because young people generally don't work and people in their sixties are less likely to work.
In both cases, this is the result of deliberate policy choices. In the case of young people, the French are less likely to work because college is free and students get small living stipends. For older workers, France has a system that is more generous to early retirees. One can disagree with both of these policies, but they are not obvious failures. Large segments of the French population benefit from them.
France and Germany both have lower per capita GDP than the United States, but the biggest reason for the gap is that workers in both countries put in many fewer hours annually than in the United States. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an average worker in France puts in 1520 hours a year, in Germany just 1360. That compares to 1780 hours a year in the United States. In both countries five or six weeks a year of vacation are standard, as are paid family leave and paid sick days. Again, one can argue that it is better to have more money, but it is not obviously a bad choice to have more leisure time as do workers in these countries.
Anyhow, the point is that Rattner's bogeymen here are not the horror stories that he wants us to imagine for ordinary workers, even if they may not be as appealing to rich people like himself. Perhaps the biggest tell in this piece is when Rattner warns us that under Warren's proposals "private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency, would be effectively eliminated."
Okay, the prospect of eliminating private equity, now we're all really scared!
* https://fortune.com/2010/12/30/ex-car-czar-steve-rattner-settles-pay-to-play-scandal/
** https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/medicare-warren-plan.html
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigisme
Dirigisme is an economic doctrine in which the state plays a strong directive role, as opposed to a merely regulatory role, over a capitalist market economy.
Reply Tuesday, November 05, 2019 at 11:34 AM
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Nov 06, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs , November 05, 2019 at 08:28 AM
Wake up, Democrats https://nyti.ms/32fUM7y
NYT - David Leonhardt - November 5Maybe this is the wake-up call that Democrats need.
My old colleagues at The Upshot published a poll yesterday (*) that rightly terrified a lot of Democrats (as well as Republicans and independents who believe President Trump is damaging the country). The poll showed Trump with a good chance to win re-election, given his standing in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.
This was the sentence, by Nate Cohn, that stood out to me: "Nearly two-thirds of the Trump voters who said they voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 say that they'll back the president" in hypothetical match-ups against Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
Democrats won in 2018 by running a smartly populist campaign, focused on reducing health care costs and helping ordinary families. The candidates avoided supporting progressive policy dreams that are obviously unpopular, like mandatory Medicare and border decriminalization.
The 2020 presidential candidates are making a grave mistake by ignoring the lessons of 2018. I'm not saying they should run to the mythical center and support widespread deregulation or corporate tax cuts (which are also unpopular). They can still support all kinds of ambitious progressive ideas -- a wealth tax, universal Medicare buy-in and more -- without running afoul of popular opinion. They can even decide that there are a couple of issues on which they are going to fly in the face of public opinion.
But if they're going to do that, they also need to signal in other ways that they care about winning the votes of people who don't consider themselves very liberal. Democrats, in short, need to start treating the 2020 campaign with the urgency it deserves, because a second Trump term would be terrible for the country.
What would more urgency look like? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would find some way to acknowledge and appeal to swing voters. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would offer more of a vision than either has to date. Pete Buttigieg, arguably the best positioned to take advantage of this moment, would reassure Democrats who are understandably nervous about his lack of experience. And perhaps Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar can finally appeal to more of Biden's uninspired supporters. ...
* One Year From Election, Trump Trails Biden but
Leads Warren in Battlegrounds https://nyti.ms/2NDDeNb
NYT - Nate Cohn - November 4 - Updated
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Nov 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
The Bloomberg News headline on November 2 was stark: "Nancy Pelosi Is Worried 2020 Candidates Are on Wrong Track." Wrong track as in, the Democrats are on their way to losing the upcoming presidential election. As reporter Sahil Kapur put it, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi is issuing a pointed message to Democrats running for president in 2020: Those liberal ideas that fire up the party's base are a big loser when it comes to beating President Donald Trump."
Among the losing ideas Pelosi cited was Medicare for All. And in fact, the plans of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders -- each struggling to get to the left of the other in the Democratic primary -- are becoming the stuff of both consternation and comedy. Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live mocked Warren's $52 trillion health plan: "We're talking trillions! When the numbers are this big, they're just pretend!"
We can observe: being the butt of jokes about fiscal recklessness is not how one wins a presidential election. Or as Pelosi observed, "Remember November. You must win the Electoral College."
Invoking her own ideological credentials, Pelosi tossed a sharp query at insurgent Democrats as a whole: "As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: what are you thinking?" As the Bloomberg piece explained, Pelosi was aiming, yet again, at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive "Squad." Pelosi and the Democratic establishment worry that democratic socialists and Third World-minded radicals will take the party into George-McGovern-in-1972 territory (as this author here at TAC suggested might well happen last year).
AdvertisementPelosi would certainly seem to know a lot about left-wing liberalism; her most recent rating from Americans for Democratic Action was an A+ 95 percent. Indeed, while she's old enough to remember poor McGovern, she also remembers, more recently, Walter Mondale. In 1984, the Democrats held their national convention in Pelosi's hometown, giving Mondale their presidential nomination. Whereupon Republicans gleefully tagged him as a "San Francisco Democrat." Mondale was from Minnesota, but no matter -- he lost 49 states.
Mindful of that baleful history, Pelosi offered a fascinating lesson in political non-transitivity, between her hometown and another Great Lakes state: "What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan. What works in Michigan works in San Francisco -- talking about workers' rights and sharing prosperity."
In other words, while one can sell Midwestern mutualism in San Francisco, one can't sell San Francisco liberalism in Michigan -- which is hardly a Republican bastion.
Yet if we look closer at Pelosi's liberalism, we note something interesting. On strictly economic issues, as distinct from sociocultural issues, she's not that left-wing. Yes, she describes herself as a "left-wing San Francisco liberal," but most of her leftism is focused on lifestyle. Her economic style is, in fact, distinctly Clintonian neoliberal. Here's more from the Bloomberg story: "Pelosi said Democrats must stick with pay-as-you-go rules to avoid adding to the debt, a point of contention with left-leaning figures who want to permit more deficit spending for ambitious liberal priorities. 'We cannot just keep increasing the debt,' she said."
We can note that "pay-go" is about as orthodox an economic nostrum as one can find these days; it's typically associated with deficit-minded "budget hawks," of the type funded by the late Pete Peterson, a big-time Republican who crusaded for cuts to earned entitlements.
Indeed, Peterson, who made a small fortune at Lehman Brothers and a big fortune at the Blackstone Group, would have been pleased to read more of what Pelosi had to say. According to Bloomberg, she "stopped short of endorsing a tax on wealth, an idea that Warren and Sanders have embraced as a means to reduce income inequality and expand the safety net."
One might presume that the 18 billionaires who live in San Francisco were duly pleased by their representative's restraint. They might be generous donors to the Democratic Party and to other good causes, and thus have proven their commitment to social justice. Thus they need to conserve their capital, to continue their good works -- that's Pelosi's fat cat-friendly position.
Moreover, it's not just billionaires that Pelosi is looking out for; in addition, she's protective of mere millionaires . Per Bloomberg: "She also steered clear of backing a cap on pay for chief executive officers."
Yes, in that same interview, Pelosi called Donald Trump's 2017 tax-cut bill "dumb" -- and that will check the box for Democratic partisans and inattentive ideologues.
But then she added something curiously centrist. She said she wanted any changes in the tax bill to be aimed at lowering the debt and to be "bipartisan." To those paying close attention, these are signal code words, suggesting, yet again, that Pelosi sees any possible tax increase as a deficit reduction tool, as opposed to added fiscal support for a spending spree. Moreover, in saying that she wants any revision of the tax bill to be bipartisan, she's making Republicans integral to the process -- and that can't be pleasing to AOC-type tax-raisers.
Nobody's accusing Pelosi of being a conservative. Yet her legendary leftism does seem to be curiously concentrated in the lifestyle area -- especially the San Francisco area. For instance, there's the Equality Act, which Pelosi identifies as a top legislative priority, even as Republicans have so far blocked it. In the words of the Heritage Foundation's Ryan T. Anderson , the bill would
force employers to cover abortion, and medical professionals to perform or assist in performing abortions force employers to pay for sex "reassignment" procedures in their health insurance plans, and require medical professionals to perform them. . . . force all schools and businesses to open their women's bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and sports teams to boys who "identify as" girls and to men who "identify as" women.
That's a tall order of social liberalism, or, as some might prefer to describe it, left-wing hegemonism.
Indeed, bills such as the Equality Act are so egregious and extreme that one might begin to suspect that they serve a purpose beyond advancing the goals of Planned Parenthood and Drag Queen Story Hour. And what purpose might that be? Perhaps Pelosi seeks to cloak her neoliberal economic agenda in the bright raiment of avant-garde sexual progressivism. That would be sort of a neat trick, right? That is, Pelosi has carpentered a platform that includes planks favorable to both tycoons and transgenders -- and yet the pro-trans plank is what generates the most headlines, pro and con. To put it another way: the LGBTQ-friendly plank obscures the billionaire-friendly plank.
Pelosi is a smart woman. She's been around politics all her life; both her father and brother were mayors of Baltimore. So if she's found a new kind of high-low political formula -- combining the rich and the risqué -- it's surely not an accident. And it's certainly working for her: she was re-elected last year to her 17th term by a 73 percent margin . She has, in fact, engineered a new kind of Democratic political machine, one that's also working in other big cities.
There's just one thing: as Pelosi herself says, the San Francisco model can't sell in Michigan and, by extension, in probably 35 other states. So in 2020, if the Democrats continue to lurch left, on both economic and cultural issues, they could well find themselves McGovern-ized, or Mondale-ized.
For her part, Pelosi will say that she tried to warn them: think Michigan Wolverines, she said, not San Francisco drag queens. Yet even if the Democrats lose the presidential election next year, Pelosi will survive, continuing to be a best friend to both billionaires and drag queens. Of course, Pelosi, 79, can't be their best friend forever , yet it's a safe bet that her successor will try to follow the same model.
As we have seen, it's questionable whether the Pelosi Model helps the Democratic Party as a whole. But for those financing it, and flaunting it, it's working just fine.
James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at . He served as a White House policy aide to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
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Nov 04, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
With the U.S. presidential cycle gearing up, Elizabeth Vos takes stock of lessons from 2016.
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium NewsE stablishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2016 Democratic primary debate. (YouTube/Screen shot)
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
"Bernie or Bust" protesters at the Wells Fargo Center during Democrats' roll call vote to nominate Hillary Clinton. (Becker1999, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel <
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